Mega-wealthy as historical trend markers?

[c1ue]

I came across this in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/business/20070715_GILDED_GRAPHIC.html#

Can't post the image since it is flash, but an errant thought came out:

If you look at the individuals represented, there are several periods where it appears the ridiculously wealthy seemed to have gained their fortunes:

Beginning of the US: 1780-1820

Civil War: 1860-1890

Gilded Age: 1900-1930

Yet the pre-eminent period of American prosperity - 1950 to 1970 - has only 1 (Walton - being charitable).

Is there a correlation?

[Uncle Jack]

Looking at Gates it says "The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the wealthiest in the world, with an endowment of $33B."

Then you look at Warren Buffett's bio and you see "In 2006 he donated $31B to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation."

Come on, Bill. Ante up.

[Rajiv]

From the NY Times article "The Richest of the Rich, Proud of a New Gilded Age" (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/business/15gilded.html)

Only twice before over the last century has 5 percent of the national income gone to families in the upper one-one-hundredth of a percent of the income distribution — currently, the almost 15,000 families with incomes of $9.5 million or more a year, according to an analysis of tax returns by the economists Emmanuel Saez at the University of California, Berkeley and Thomas Piketty at the Paris School of Economics.

Such concentration at the very top occurred in 1915 and 1916, as the Gilded Age was ending, and again briefly in the late 1920s, before the stock market crash.

Is this therefore a harbinger of things to come?

[Tet]

From the NY Times article "The Richest of the Rich, Proud of a New Gilded Age" (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/business/15gilded.html)

Is this therefore a harbinger of things to come?

Maybe we get a completely different Federal Reserve, maybe one not so Federal.