Public spitting, defecation, urination, masturbation — shamelessness was part of Diogenes the Cynic’s philosophical strategy
Your view might describe America from the 1880s to the 1930s or 1970s or even the 1990s, but it had little to do with antebellum America and has even less to do with the United States today. The defeat of the South in the Civil War and the problems of the newly settled states made the Northeast dominant in the American economy from the end of that war until more recent times.
That wasn't the case before the Civil War. The North was gradually industrializing, but it wasn't robbing the cotton rich South of anything. If you aren't developing industry and financial institutions, or if other regions are doing it better than you are, you will have to pay somebody for the products you don't produce at home. The antebellum South had great power in American politics, and wasn't dominated by anyone else.
The development of the South and West in the last 50 years has made the Northeast less powerful in the economy. You don't have to be in NYC and pay high taxes to trade in the markets. You don't have to have factories in the Northern states or have a corporate headquarters in New York or Chicago or Detroit or Cleveland anymore. Northern Rustbelt cities have declined and the Sunbelt has risen. The same elite urban or suburban culture prevails in Atlanta or Charlotte and in NYC or LA. Our current divisions are ideological not regional.
When the laws of the nation force you to buy their products at highly inflated prices, you are putting money in their pockets. When the laws of the nation force you to hire, at excessively high rates, their shipping, banking, insurance, warehousing, etc. , you are putting money in their pockets.
When there are high taxes on everything *YOU* want to buy, but low taxes on everything *THEY* want to buy, you are putting money in their pockets.
When the government spends the tax money mostly on them, though they only produced 28% of it, you are putting money in their pockets.
You say all this is natural, but it sure seems to correspond to their control of congress, same then as it is today.
There is a reason they coined the term "Robber Barons" for the gilded era. That is how they behaved, and they had undue influence on government, same then as today.
The same elite urban or suburban culture prevails in Atlanta or Charlotte and in NYC or LA. Our current divisions are ideological not regional.
Generally divided along the lines of Urban vs Rural, same then as today.
The Cities are liberal, the countryside is conservative. There is something about densely populated cities that make people crazy. I don't know what it is, but i've seen it so often I no longer think of it as a theory.