The Supreme Court dismissed the Wal Mart class action case because the plaintiffs did not prove commonality, as alleged discrimination varied by store managers rather than resulting from a single company wide policy.

In the essay, P. Williams states that the war on terror is new because it is a war against people within the United States, rather than a war between two or more countries like the USA and Russia. Her point in the essay is that you may never know who a terrorist or a suspect in a crowd is because they dress like ordinary people.

The “Roving Wiretaps” of the Patriot Act seem to violate the Bill of Rights by allowing authorities to enter a suspect’s property or go through personal belongings without a warrant. This violates the Fourth Amendment.

The “sneak and peek” warrants allow law enforcement to observe a suspect’s property without letting them know they are being watched. If anything, suspicious is discovered during the observation, then further action can be taken.

1. According Michale Parenti reading on capital and labor, distinction that makes between owners and employees, “they’re very rich families and individual who compose the owning class live mostly of investments, which includes stocks bonds, rents, mineral royalties, and other property incomes. Their employees live mostly of wages, salaries, and fees”. In other words, the owning class are mostly of wealthy people who gain their wealth from investments such as stocks and rental properties, for example, buying multiple real estate properties and earning income by renting them out. On the other hand, their employees are people who work for them earn money through wages per hour and salaries.

2. Adam Smith, one of the founding theorists of capitalism, noted in 1776 that “labor … is alone the ultimate and real standard by which the value of all commodities can at all times and places be estimated and compared. It is their real price; money is their nominal price only.” Adam Smith pointed out that labor is the primary and real reason why wealth exists, because workers, the working clas, is an essential part of the economy and is the main reason most owners are successful.

3. 3. My thoughts after reading the main argument of Reading 4.4 that class is NOT an identity, I agree with the idea that class is not an identity. Class should not define you based on your race or sexuality. I believe that everyone, regardless of race or sexuality, deserves equal opportunities. If class is considered an identity, then it should only reflect a person’s connection to the economy and their hard work, not their personal background or culture.

4. 4. I understand that “class structures are built around a close form of dependency” because each class depends on the other to work. For example, the owning class depends on the working class to labor for them so that they could maintain and gain wealth, while the working class depends on their jobs provided by the owning class since that is their main way to earn a living.

4.1
1) The data on social working classes shown on the charts may or may not be correct, but it helps me to understand how social classes are measured. One of the similarities I noticed between the 4.1 and 4.2 is that both use house income data to measure and rank social classes from the lowest to the highest. A difference I noticed is that 4.2 measures and rank social classes by locations, such as the subway, where the F represents a part in Jamaica and the median income for this location is $49, and is ranked as a middle class.

2) The closet station to me is Laurelton station LIRR. I am unable to compare the data on social classes in this location, because the projectsuwibway website is currently down. I will be back to update it once the site is back up. However, based on my research, the median income for this location is $110,120, which is significantly higher than the median for New York and Queens County. This location is ranked as the upper-middle class.

3) Based on the reading in 4.2 , I notice a different pattern where the center is higher, which means its median is higher than other locations. Therefore, that location is ranked the highest wealth of all.

Based on the arguments in Readings 6.1 and 6.2, the wealthy class such as the owning classes, investors, property owners wrote the Constitution since they held the most power, while the working class had no part in the process and was excluded from participating because they’re just the people who works for the owning class. The wealthy class consisted of the owning classes those who were born into or came from wealth while the working class comprised the laborers who worked for the owning class.

After reading the arguments in Readings 6.1 and 6.2, I would say that the social class structure of early United States society is still the same as ours today because political and economic power has almost always been in the hands of the wealthy. Just like in the past, a small group of wealthy individuals continues to hold most political influence and economic control. The working class remains largely the same, with no power or opportunity to participate in major political and economic decision making.

The people who wrote the Constitution, such as the wealthy owning class, were afraid of democracy because they feared losing control to the majority,the working classes who labored for them and helped grow their wealth. They were also afraid that members of the working class were capable and ambitious enough to rise to power, which could threaten them