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Reader question: Please explain this phrase: Gilded Age levels of income inequality. Gilded Age levels? My comments: In other words, a great degree of unfairness in income distribution – a few, very few, people make a lot while most others make little, very little. The degree of inequality is so great, in fact, that it rivals the levels of wealth inequality of the Gilded Age era of yesteryear America. All you need do is learn a bit about the Gilded Age of America. Literally, Gilded Age is an age of sparkling rapid economic growth – To gild, as in the phrase gilding the lily, is to cover it with a thin layer of gold or something that looks like gold. Gilding the lily, of course, is quite unnecessary as the lily is beautiful as it is. Gilded Age is a similar metaphor. If the phrase is not coined by Mark Twain, then the great American writer certainly popularized it with his book Gilded Age: A Tale of Tragedy. The book is a get-rich-quick story of a few brothers and sisters in the late 19th century. Read it, if you haven’t – much of Twain’s descriptions resonate today and more so in China than perhaps America itself, where capitalism has moved on from its rudimentary crudeness in the early days. Anyways, late 19th century represents America’s great economic leap forward. Amid the great march west, after the discovery of gold and oil and the expansion of rail roads, a few Americans became the first millionaires in history. These super rich, in contrast, made ordinary working families look very poor. | 
