Public Participation in Politics and the Strength of the Middle Class

Hey all. Today i would like to discuss the correlation between public participation in politics and the strength of the middle class. I'm going to compare the early 1900's to today. I believe that the WWII generation to stronger and more active stances on national and local politics due to being raised during the depression and learning the lessons of the depression. I think with the boom in manufacturing, the industrial and agricultural revolutions caused the middle class to unionize and demand higher wages which in turn brought them together to create stronger voting blocks.

If you've noticed there's been a gradual decline in active participation from the next few generations. I've noticed that with manufacturing moving out of the country that the union has successfully been destroyed and some of it is due to the unions themselves and some of it is due to the active approach companies have taken to destroy them by moving overseas.

I think the next generation is going to be like the WWII generation. I think the generation after the millennials is going to be the generation that really comes onto hard times in the lower income brackets and their going to be the ones to restore the middle class back to the western economies.

Source

At the link above you can see that when our economy had the fastest growing middle class was also around the time you see the highest % of voter turnout.

a reply to: onequestion
Correlation does not equal causation.

There's a lot of reasons that could be responsible. The entertainment industry, degradation of school systems, and a general feeling of apathy to effect any changes.

I think the causation/correlation demand is perhaps a bit misplaced here.

Clearly there can be a multitude of factors behind declines in voting, and it's kinda ridiculous to think we could control for enough variables to make any headway on a real answer to that question.

I think there's certainly something to be said for a feeling of powerlessness, or the idea that political action makes little difference in the face of monied interests.

Reminds me of a study conducted earlier this year by a professor at Princeton and a professor at Northwestern that showed the U.S. is better characterized as an oligarchy: www.bbc.com...