Tag Archives: gilded age

In 1900, the wealthiest one per cent of people in Britain controlled an estimated 70 per cent of all personal wealth. By 1990, that share had fallen to under 20 per cent. It was the most sustained redistribution of wealth in British history, and it was not inevitable. It was the product of deliberate policy choices: progressive taxation, labour rights, universal public services, and democratic reform.

That settlement is now being unmade. The wealthiest one per cent of UK households again hold the same share of wealth as the entire bottom half combined. The 50 wealthiest families hold more combined wealth than 34 million people. UK billionaire wealth has grown roughly four times faster than median household wealth since 2008. We are living in a new Gilded Age, and it should trouble liberals deeply, because concentrated wealth is concentrated power, and concentrated power is the enemy of individual freedom.

This is the point that gets lost when inequality is treated as a concern only for the left. The liberal tradition, at its best, has always understood that freedom without material security is hollow, and that unchecked economic power threatens political liberty just as surely as unchecked state power. Lloyd George understood this when he introduced the People’s Budget of 1909. Beveridge understood it when he identified Want as one of the five giants to be slain. The question is whether today’s liberals are willing to apply that same logic to the new concentrations of wealth and power that define our era.

At A Just Society, we argue that they should, and we have set out a detailed programme for how. Our proposals operate across the same three domains that ended the first Gilded Age: taxation, universal provision, and democratic reform.

Limitarianism would introduce a progressive annual levy on extreme wealth: 1 per cent on fortunes between £5 and £10 million, 2 per cent up to £1 billion, and 3 per cent above that. The revenues would be earmarked for opportunity-enhancing investment: ending child poverty, a £10,000 citizens’ inheritance for young adults, care provision, and the green transition. This is not punitive redistribution. It is the principle that extreme fortunes built on shared foundations should sustain those foundations.