The New Robber Barons: Part VI — What Comes Next: Can the Public Take Back the Future?

By Iron Ideals Ida Tarbell (pen sharp as ever ✒️⚔️Ouch!)

Ida’s Trumpet Blast 📯

When I wrote of Standard Oil, I said: “Men who have great wealth and great power must be held accountable to the people.” I still believe it. Only now, the barons do not just own oil wells — they own your rent 🏘️, your data 📱, your retirement fund 💼, and even your attention span ⏳.

The question is no longer, “Are we in a Second Gilded Age?” The question is, “Do we intend to end it?”

🛠️ The Reform Playbook

1. Break the Monopolies 🏛️⚔️

   • Enforce antitrust laws with teeth again.

   • Amazon, Google, Meta, BlackRock — if they’re too big to compete, they’re too big to exist.

2. Tax Justice 💵⚖️

   • Close loopholes, end offshore shell games 🏝️.

   • Raise effective corporate tax rates so schoolteachers don’t carry Wall Street on their backs. 🍎

3. End the Buyback Binge 📊🚫

   • Ban or heavily restrict stock buybacks.

   • Profits should build businesses, not inflate executive bonuses.

   • Shareholders rights do not supersede citizen rights nor human rights

4. Empower Workers 🤝💪

   • Support unions, co-ops, and profit-sharing models. ( Worker Owned )

   • If productivity rises, wages must rise too. End the 50-year wage freeze.

5. Invest in the Nation 🌱🚧

   • Infrastructure, education, green energy, Fusion ⚡️ Power

   • Strip-mining America ends only when we start building America again.

💡The Public’s Role

The robber barons did not end themselves. They were ended by the public — outraged voters, muckraking journalists, reformers, and workers who refused to tighten their belts any further. 🗳️📰✊

If you wait for CEOs in Patagonia vests to “do the right thing,” you’ll wait until the oceans boil. 🌊🔥 Change comes when the people demand it — loudly, persistently, and with the law on their side.

Ida’s Final Word 🪶

The old robber barons thought themselves invincible. They were not. The new robber barons think the same. They are wrong.

So I leave you, dear reader, with this truth:

A democracy cannot survive on strip-mined wages, cocaine-fueled buybacks, and tax-dodging empires. It can only survive when the people rake the muck, shine the light, and refuse to let the future be pawned off to the highest bidder.

The first Gilded Age ended because the people demanded it. This one will end the same way. 🗽🔥