Look. Much as we all enjoy Downton Abbey and the Great Gatsby,

[closeupready]

and enjoy fantasizing about how much fun life would be if we were ultra-rich (and I enjoy it as much as anyone else), we are NOT going to go back to another Gilded Age era in which old people died in poverty and hunger, and even starved to death, while the super-rich have neo-Roman birthday parties and fly off to Stockholm for lunch at the hot new oyster bar.

Yes, that will mean the richest will not be as rich.

They will still be rich, and richer than most everyone else. Just not as much.

[cali]

1. ack. comparing Downton Abbey and The Great Gatsby? Sorry, I can't

get beyond that. Gatsby is not a story about how much fun it is to be rich.

And we already live in a 2nd Gilded Age.

[Bluenorthwest]

4. Nor is Downton Abbey about 'how fun it is to be rich'.

I'd not compare the two works as literature, but a great deal of Downton's subject matter actually is about the end of such estates as they existed and the many good reasons for that end. Like Gatsby, sure one can say 'how cool to have all that house and staff' but that's not really what the work intends to convey.

[cali]

9. It's froth. I love it, it's well done froth

but it's just as much about the clothes and the grandeur and glorification of a period as anything else. I disagree with you about what it aims to portray.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. “The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.” ― Voltaire

[Egalitarian Thug]

6. +1 and once again, we need a like/recommend option for comments. n/t

[haele]

18. But not too abundant.

Enough to fight each other for sufficient employment to stay alive, but not so much that they give up fighting and collect together to focus their remaining energy on taking down the few in running the status quo.
That's why rich have to ensure enough get removed from society or die off before the poor get too hungry and start to cause trouble.

Haele

[TeamPooka]

3. Downton Abbey is escapist fantasy about being rich? Is Breaking Bad your entrepreneurial primer..

for business success?

[closeupready]

7. The premise of the story is unquestionably that aristocracy rocks,

and poverty sucks.

[TeamPooka]

13. You don't know what the word "premise" means then.

[closeupready]

14. Oh, whatever, drama queen.

Ignoring.

[TeamPooka]

16. back at you

[cali]

10. How is it not escapist fantasy? You want to read something gritty about rich people of the

period? Try some Ford Maddox Ford.

[Egalitarian Thug]

5. I don't think it is possible to compare a TV show with a great novel.

Nevertheless, while you were watching your comfort screen it probably escaped your notice that we already live in a new-and-improved gilded age. Now, people die in poverty and hunger and/or of readily treatable illness and maladies while the super-rich enjoy lifestyles and birthday parties those previous parasites couldn't even imagine. And as a bonus, it is all hidden from view, or excused/downplayed when it is noticed.

[MadHound]

8. Look around you, we're already there,

The wealth gap between the rich and the rest of us widened to a record breaking chasm that far surpassed the Gilded Age starting in the late nineties and continuing until today. Meanwhile, the middle class has decreased, while the poor have increased. The benefits of our "economic recovery" have accrued mostly to the wealthy, while the rest of us are left struggling to find jobs that pay far less than the ones we were laid off from.

Homelessness is increasing, people, including children, are sliding into homelessness at an alarming rate. Yes, people are starving, dying from poverty and hunger, as disease and other factors take their toll.

Look around you, we have surpassed the Gilded Age.

[closeupready]

11. But at least we have food stamps and disability and such,

even though they are under continuous attack from Republicans and "centrist" Democrats.

[deutsey]

12. I've never seen Downton Abbey, so I can't comment on it

But I've read Gatsby a few times. As others have said, it's far from exalting how fun being ultra-rich is.

And based on the direction we have been going in since around Reagan (with no sign of significant change in direction), the themes of the book are increasingly relevant.

[Warren DeMontague]

15. I don't think that's why people like Downton Abbey.

It's the Chicken Lady, that's why.

http://tv.yahoo.com/news/the-8-best--downton-abbey--spoofs--video--182335645.html?page=all

[Marr]

17. I've got some bad new for you. We're already there. /nt

[JI7]

19. i never thought Gatsby was about how great it would be to be wealthy

it's been a long time since i read the book but that was never something i thought of.