Holy Cross History Professor Talks to NBC News About the Gilded Age and Today's Populism

The debate over increasing taxes on the wealthy has dominated the early days of the 2020 presidential race, with some Democrats proposing tax hikes as high as 77 percent. This populist movement, thought to be in response to the rise of powerful billionaires, has many drawing parallels between the present and the Gilded Age of the late 1800s.

So is today's Democratic rhetoric in alignment with the Gilded Age era? Are we living in a second Gilded Age? NBC News recently called upon Ed O'Donnell, associate professor of history at Holy Cross, to bring some clarity to this issue.

"The big question was whether you can have a functioning democracy when you have a small number of people with staggering loads of wealth," said O'Donnell.  In the interview, O'Donnell went on to say that "the fear of a rising aristocracy within a democracy was quite real" in the late 1800s, as is today.

O'Donnell, who is teaching a course on Gilded Age America, has been a sought-after expert for the media, most recently having contributed to the PBS documentary, "The Gilded Age."

To read the full article, go to NBCNews.com.