In Second Gilded Age, Trump shows no sign of taking on rigged system

More 70 years ago progressive policies reined in the robber barons, but today's superrich face no foe in the White House

America's role as the world's economic superpower was established in the period between 1870 and the start of the first world war. The country boomed, immigrants arrived in their millions and the rich coined it in. Even now the names are familiar: John D Rockefeller; Andrew Carnegie; the Vanderbilt family. They called it the Gilded Age.

Never before had America's superrich had it so good and, until recently, it was assumed they would never have it so good again. Yet the 2017 billionaires report compiled by the Swiss bank UBS and the consultancy firm PwC finds that the clock would have to be turned back to 1905 - when the Russians were having a trial run for their revolution and Queen Victoria had been dead only four years - to find a time when wealth was so concentrated.