As one can see there are many striking parallels between the Gilded Age or the era from the eighteen eighties to the eighteen nineties compared to the Silicon Age of the nineteen eighties to the nineteen nineties.
             The preconditions for these two massive economic booms share similar birth paths laid in laissez faire policy, no regulation or deregulation and innovative booms.
             Before the 1880's there was no real conflict between the welfare of the American people and that of its business units. That happy relationship lasted only until the 1880s.
             Big business or Trusts, appeared in the United States during that decade. Once they were established, it grew faster and to a larger size than it did elsewhere. One reason was the absence of any countervailing force in America. A new country made up almost entirely of immigrants, who needed jobs, big business was welcomed and a favorable economic policy provided a catalyst for there birth. These economic conditions gave rise to innovators, monopolists, and most importantly, rugged individuals who changed the landscape of the worlds economy forever. Their huge personalities went hand in hand with the vast size of their empires.
             The problems big business raised provoked a powerful public response that immediately moved into the realm of the political economy and provided for a change in the leniency of laissez faire. In the closing years of the nineteenth century, the United States became the only major industrial power to enact legislation explicitly designed to curb the power of large corporations. Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act in 1887, the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890, and the Federal Trade Commission and Clayton acts in 1914. The Sherman Antitrust Act remains the most stringent in the world.
             The nineteen eighty's and more importantly Ronald Reagan's election victory was the catalyst for the Silicon Age. Reagan and his re- clothed trickle down economics or "Reaga...