The American Revolution caused a division between the British government and the colonies. The American colonists claimed that t
hey were not represented in Parliament, so Parliament had no right to tax them. This issue was the source of the well-known phrase “taxation without representation.” Many of the colonists wanted their rights represented in the government. Today, there is concern that many people don’t vote, and only people who vote are represented by the government. In the last presidential election only 55 percent of eligible citizens voted. Why do you think voter participation is so low in the United States today? Do you think Americans still believe that it is important to be represented in government? Why or why not?
In short, many colonists believed that as they were not represented in the distant British parliament, any taxes it imposed on the colonists (such as the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts) were unconstitutional, and were a denial of the colonists' rights as Englishmen.
One cause of the unparalleled material abundance of the United States in the 1950s is the population where in the population likely increase for about thirty million-- contributing to the unparalleled material abundance in the United States during the 1950s.
