American Democracy:
The Importance of Political Participation “Elites” have a great effect on political socialization and participation in America. There are three factors that affect socialization and political participation that stand taller than the rest. First is the limited growth in worker wages. While the wealthy businessmen continue to get richer and the lower class workers continue to get lower wages, the median of the incomes between the two is rising. (Dye) This allows for the minimum wages of lower class workers to keep decreasing and go unnoticed because statistics look at the median wages for Americans when in actuality, it is a combination of average and median values that give more accuracy in the perception of the state of worker wages. Regretfully, this truth is disregarded as many large businesses display those statistics and continue to mask this growing dilemma in our economy. Second, most electorates are completely oblivious about anything going on that does not directly affect them, and often they still don’t know anything about what is greatly affecting them. Because they are uninformed, they do not know of any problems and thus do not particularly care. This is demonstrated by the fact that many support certain institutions in which they do not support the people who run the institutions. (Dye) This is not necessarily due to elitists, but it does continue to drive a wedge further between the elites and the lower class, which is how the elites would prefer to make the decisions, being that they are the educated that should run the country. Lastly, the public tends to turn more to the government in times of terror or danger to defend and control them, at the cost of their own freedoms. (Dye) This drives the power even further into the hands of the “elites” who already control many positions of power within the government. But that is