Fooling People Is Easy To Do, If You Have A PR Firm

At the end of the 19th century, the Americans of the Past were getting sick of the wealth inequality and vicious exploitation of labor by their ruling overlords, and they engaged in widespread strikes and protests to say so.

Congress pretended to respond by instituting the income tax in 1913, in which the top 3% of the population had part of their wealth taken by the state.

The Plutocrats of the Past promptly paid the congress critters to provide a loophole, in the form of foundations. Foundations allowed the Robber Barons to put their wealth, tax free, into institutions in which they could direct money to their pet projects, instead of handing it over to the public to be used as the public wanted.

Part of the loot went to the newly formed practice of public relations. Rockefeller, for instance, widely hated by the Americans of the Past for his thieving and murdering ways, including burning workers and their families to death at Ludlow, was told to drive around and hand out dimes to street urchins.

So he did and it was publicized and Americans went 'Wow! What a swell guy!"

It turned out to be pretty easy to fool the People of the Past.