- Do you notice any similarities in the way social class is discussed in readings 4.1 and 4.2? Do you notice any differences in the way these two readings DIFFERENTIATE between social classes? I think both readings deconstruct the notion that we have different classes in our society. The idea of how the system divides us is pretty much an imagination rather than a reality. We tend to see the city as lower, working, middle and upper class. When the reality according to both readings -in my opinion- is that a capitalist society only has two classes, you either own a means of production or you either sell your labor to that capitalist. I believe the reading Wealth and Want in the United States, goes into classifications of that working class, while the other just puts us all in one big pile. With this, I mean that Parenti, deconstructs a little bit more the relationship there is between the executives (who are still workers, not owners) and the regular employee. While the other reading works on make the precision that we are all workers and cannot be capitalist unless you own a means of production with workers that generates wealth for you. Both would agree on the reality of owner-worker dependency and as the only two classes, however, Parenti acknowledges the different tiers that exist within the working class and how the owners have always used these “professional”-ranking workers to basically extract more value-producing performance from other employees. It makes just sense to me that the system then has created this imagination of different social classes because it will give the sense to workers they are going up, getting close to being the owner, and creates a segregating idea that we are not in the same boat, all enslaved people owned by the same slave master.
- Pick the station closest to where you live. Using the concepts from Reading 4.1, what social class tends to live in your neighborhood? Are you surprised (or not) by the answer? Do you feel it is an accurate representation of the people living in your neighborhood?
I live in StuyTown in 14 and first, using the concepts of the reading and looking the income around the L train station in 14th and 1st Ave, it looks like the social class living around this neighborhood is workers, but professional workers. This does not surprise me to a point. In the one hand, this is numbers from nine years, and I believe this neighborhood has been changing a lot in the last years alone. Gentrification here is still an ongoing process here. If you walk down Ave A, you will find what used to be a Puerto Rican neighborhood that still has members of the Latinx community living around. Also StuyTown, which happens to be a very expensive rent property, used to be a massive project, that became this private living area, that now is super expensive to live in. However, there are still people living in this complex that have their apartments since 1960s and have managed to fight against or assimilate to the gentrification process. It surprised me because knowing the prices of rent around this area, you would think the income would’ve been greater than what it shows in the graphic. It does not surprise me that it also shows that the people living around this area are what the reading calls professionals and managers: teachers, doctors, nurses, executives, etc.
- Based on Reading 4.2, do you notice a general pattern about social classes in NYC? I would agree there is a general pattern that increases as gentrification keeps moving and pushing people out. It seems that the professional or manager working class, and the owners tend to live in the city or closest to the city. All while they keep pushing the rest of the workers outside of the city because their salaries would never allow them to afford to live in Soho for example. This is just another way -in my opinion- to feed the imagination that there are different classes other than workers and capitalist, giving a sense of power, exclusivity, realization, and success to those responsible to extra more value-producing performance from other employees, to secure the capitalist keep making profit out of all them.
