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[Selatius]

129. I would say gross income inequality was due to a lack of market regulation, not tariffs.

In those days, you didn't have agencies like the SEC regulating the markets against people purposely gaming the system, engaging in reckless banking practices, pumping and dumping stocks, or just plain selling fraudulent securities. The recklessness seen during this period led to the passage of the Glass-Steagall Act several years later, in the midst of the Great Depression, preventing bank consolidation between commercial banking entities and investment banks, precisely because it caused a major conflict of interest that would encourage executives and loan officers to engage in risky or downright unlawful behavior.

As we saw, this law was repealed in the last years of Clinton under the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 preceding the cratering of the US economy in 2008 in the worst downturn seen since the Great Depression.