[In|De]creasing American Conservatism

Postulate 1: Conservatism is generally characterized by a desire to maintain the status quo - a resistance to change.

Postulate 2: The more wealth a people have amassed, the more vested they are in maintaining the status quo.

Hypothesis: As the American middle class increases its wealth, it becomes more conservative.

It has often been said that Nixon would be considered a liberal by today's standards, because the country as a whole was more liberal in the past than it is now. I believe it is not merely the money itself that contributes to this result, but the self-imposed isolation that results from it as well.

These two graphs illustrate my point:



These two charts are completely made up. Note how the chart of relative conservatism trends upward in the same direction that the US Median Household Income chart does. As anyone can see, if these two graphs actually represented real data, my hypothesis would be proven.