1. The difference between owners and employees is that owners live off of the work done by employees. Parenti stated in Reading 4.3, “That an owner is considered the ‘owning class‘ that live off investments, that includes stocks, bonds, rents, mineral royalties, and other property income”. This example shows that the ‘owning class’ is considered the wealthy class and is anything that is considered valuable in America material-wise; like owning those expensive condos in Hudson parkway in NYC Downtown you are considered wealthy because that’s a very big investment especially since it’s a private gated community in Nyc Downtown. An example of an employee is people forced to find jobs because they need money to provide them stability since they lack wealth status. They live off of wages, salaries, and fees. Everyone needs money because everything we need needs to be bought with money. If you are working and earning at least $40,000 you aren’t wealthy, you are considered an employee, and employees depend on money to help hey have stability, whereas if you are an owner just because you own 5 stores and 3 don’t pay their rent on them you still will have food to put on your table because the other 2 stores paid their rent on time.
  2. I understood the quote by Adam Smith that stated, “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.” My understanding of this quote is that what is saying about labor is that human labor is like the act of working for example if you are selling gelatin to a customer. Human labor is important. After all, it works for us to use it because it goes into what we need or what we find useful that is made by other people. Another example of human labor is when we don’t feel like making food at home so you order take out and you get it on uber eats that’s double the human labor because someone’s already making the food and packing it for you and someone is bringing it to you also. We depend on so many commodities such as health care, electricity, phones, the internet, etc. If people didn’t work it wouldn’t be beneficial to our daily lives, because like I said we depend on people when we want fast food, go to the hospital, etc. Things are valued more when more human labor was put into them and it makes our survival possible as a society.
  3. My thoughts on the main arguments of reading 4.4 are that class is NOT an identity because I believe that class is different from identity. I think this is because of the dependency you have because of your social class position which is much more potent than your gender identity.
  4. I understood that in reading 4.4, “classes are built around a close form of dependency” by being a capitalist. To be a capitalist is to engage in the ongoing exploitation of taking advantage of a particular worker to maintain her wealth status. You don’t become wealthy by saving up, no you become wealthy by owning building properties, and having low-class working people (non-wealthy) help build your status because you become rich off of the work of others.

One thought on “Discussion Board 4.2”

Leave a Reply