In Conscious of a Liberal, Krugman describes a long Gilded Age as lasting from the 1870s to the Great Depression around 1930. He writes that it was a time of "vast inequality in wealth and power, in which a nominally democratic political system failed to represent the economic interests of the majority." He describes with some detail a "wealthy elite" dominating the political life of the country. The power of the state was used to protect property interests, and there had been an "uncritical acceptance of a conservative ideology that warned that any attempt to help the less fortunate would lead to economic disaster.