1. In a federal government citizens have the duty of electing government officials at state and federal level. In a confederation citizens have a strong influence on their local government. In a unitary system a citizen has no real influence or power on their government. 
2. I understand that our government is divided into factions which are meant to check each other’s power. The federal government divides power between state governments and the central government. Our government is also divided into the executive, legislative, and judicial branches with checks and balances. 
3. The federal government shapes the actions of state and local governments by allocating budgets and supplies. We saw in the COVID-19 pandemic the federal government shaped the way New York City responded by allocating extra money and resources to New York.Specifically,  the American Rescue Plan which allocated 5.8 million dollars to NYC’s recovery from the pandemic and 1.45 billion from the CRF according to the  NYC OMB COVID 19 Funding Tracker.

1. The means of production are the land, machinery, and raw material needed to produce goods. Labor is the work added to a raw material to create the product. An example could be in a bakery the means of production are the land and physical building, oven and other baking equipment, and flour, eggs, sugar and other ingredients. The labor is the work needed to operate the oven and other equipment and turn the raw ingredients into bread and pastries that could be sold for a greater price.
2. Value is the socially necessary labor time needed to create a product. Human labor creates value and the more labor a product requires the more value it has. 
3. Labor is what creates value.
4. Labor is work. What a worker actually does during the work day is their labor. Labor power is the collective workforce’s mental and physical capabilities which are used whenever producing use-value. 
5. Surplus value is the difference in what a product is worth to the capitalist and what the capitalist pays the worker for. I think learning about surplus value gives way to class consciousness, making it relevant to our learning of social class. In a bakery, a worker can make a hundred cookies in an hour which will be sold for maybe 2 dollars each but will be paid much less for their hour of labor than the owner will profit from the goods produced in that hour.

M is the amount of money a capitalist starts with and invests in C, the commodity. Small scale commodity production would start with C since the worker would need to labor in order to first have something to sell in exchange for money. M’ is M+m which is the initial amount of money invested in the commodity plus the surplus value. The capitalist must sell the product for greater than the laborer sells it to them to turn a profit. This incentivizes the capitalist to maximize m for greater profit. One way this can be done by decreasing the amount of labor needed to create a product through industrial innovation. It can also be done by expecting a worker to work faster in the same time frame. This creates an inherently exploitative relationship.

1. The most shocking statistic to me was that those earning above $350,000 a year were considered a part of the top 1% and yet a very small portion of the 1% was earning up to billions of dollars a year. This stood out to me because it really highlighted just how concentrated wealth is in the country. While $350,000 is a very high income, it is nowhere near billions of dollars. Even among the 1% there is a huge discrepancy. Similar to how Parenti describes the extreme wealth and luxurious lifestyle enjoyed by CEOs but noting that even those CEOs’ salaries were 3-4% of the earnings of the company’s stockholders. It really emphasizes how unimaginably wealthy and powerful these people are. 
2. It seems like so many aspects of our lives are being influenced by ultrawealthy people who most Americans don’t even know of. The example Parenti gives of the food industry is a good example. Food industry titans have their hand in the FDA so that Americans won’t even know about the harm they are being caused. I think this speaks to the general distrust that people have toward the government and “big” industry. I think the inability to clearly see who is at the cause of our dismal quality of life and propaganda breeds tension between people, blaming each other for our issues.

1. The first article is about how people perceive their own social class and looks at the variables that might affect a person’s self identification. The main indicator was income with other factors such as education and race also making an impact, though less notable. An interesting thing to note is that Americans are less likely to identify with extremes on either end of the spectrum, preferring to identify with the working, middle, or even upper middle class.
2. I live closest to Pelham Parkway on the 2 line. My neighborhood is a majority working class neighborhood. When I looked into the wealth distribution along the 2 line, an article noted that this train line had the greatest wealth gap among all train lines. With this being said, it was not a surprise to me what social class tends to live in my neighborhood since working and going to school in neighborhoods all along this train line makes the class distinction very obvious. I think it is an accurate representation of the people living in my neighborhood.
3. After looking into other sources mapping out the wealth inequality on train lines it seems that the highest concentration of wealth is in Lower Manhattan and the further away you get the lower that concentration of wealth gets, with the exception of some suburbs along the furthest stops on the train lines. The outer boroughs tend to be home to much lower income people. It is something we can see in real life, where the demographic of commuters shift rapidly at pivotal train stops. The difference is marked in class and also race.

1. Ideology is a label we can use to describe where our political values lie. There are many political ideologies which describe different values; some examples are liberal, conservative, libertarian, socialist, anarchist, etc. The two dominating ideologies in the United States are liberal and conservative. These ideologies usually correspond to the Democratic and Republican party respectively though over the years these two parties have come to overlap in stances in some areas,
2. As broken down in the Crash Course video, conservative ideology prioritizes liberty while liberal ideology prioritizes equality. Conservative ideology denounces large government and strongly supports a free market. Often, we think of conservatives as wealthy people voting for a system which preserves the status quo and allows for them to continue enjoying their privileges, but they also tend to be poor, white, rural people seemingly voting against their own interest. Liberal ideology sees government as the remedy to the social inequalities brought about by capitalism through government regulation of businesses and social programs. Liberal ideology reckons with the fact that capitalism breeds inequality but still believes that a solution can be found within the current system.
3. Althusser describes ideology as a meaningless group we align ourselves with to distract from the fact that in this country’s current political landscape, there does not exist a political movement actually capable of improving our quality of life. He references Karl Marx when describing how the ruling class manufactures allegiance and division among the proletariat to prevent us from achieving class unity, giving the example of sports teams. We feel very strongly about our ideological affiliations when either group, conservative or liberal, maintain the capitalist system which is the true sickness in our society. Ideological allegiance is another tool for complacency. Althusser details how we are constantly being conditioned directly and indirectly to be an obedient and productive cog in the capitalist machine.

1. Repressive State Apparatuses are tools of a state to make people comply through the threat of violence. The police, prison system, and judicial system are examples of repressive state apparatus. This is because they are meant to punish people who dissent from acceptable social behavior and create a threat of violence to everyone else.
2. Ideological state apparatuses are institutions which promote favorable social behavior through socialization. School, religion, and the family unit are examples of ideological state apparatuses. Throughout history, religion was the main tool used to justify social order. Now, with school being mandatory for children starting at a very early age, school has replaced the role of the Church in indoctrinating children. It is not so much the content of what they are being taught but the way. School rewards obedience and results and punishes rebellious behavior.
3. The difference between repressive and Ideological State Apparatuses is that they address two different motivations people have for obeying. The first reason a person might obey a government that is not in their best interest is fear. If a person is made to believe their will be violent consequences for political dissent, they will most likely comply with their government. The other motivation is ideology. When people have been brainwashed into believing something by an institution of authority, they are likely to behave in a way that does not challenge what they have been thought for fear of ostracization and for the sake of social acceptance.
4. One example of ideology is the first Woodstock festival. The values promoted were cultural, and political tying the acceptance into a community with allegiance to a certain political ideology.