1) The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution prevents the government from enforcing a national or state religion and making laws that prioritize one religion over another. The clause also allows citizens to lawfully practice or not practice a religion if they choose to. The Lemon Test was developed because of the case Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971) and it can be used to decide if government legislation is giving favor to a specific religion and if it should be allowed. The test consists of three questions: whether the law has a secular purpose, if it promotes or hinders religion, and if it prevents government entanglement with religion. 

2) Burning the U.S. flag is currently a form of protected free speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution. It was not always like this, as in 1984 Gary Lee Johnson was charged with “desecration of a venerated object” for setting the U.S. flag on fire during a protest. In 1989, the Supreme Court case Texas v. Johnson decided that burning the flag was a symbolic form of free speech and was not unconstitutional. An attempt was made by Congress to change this law through the Flag Protection Act but it was deemed unconstitutional in 1990. This has stayed a controversial topic in American politics but for now, it is still legal to burn the U.S. flag.

3) To “plead the Fifth” is to use your right not to self-incriminate which is protected under the Fifth Amendment. This means that people can refuse to give evidence that admits guilt, and in a trial, their silence cannot be used against them. The ruling in the Supreme Court case Miranda v. Arizona (1966) is what pushed for law enforcement to inform suspects of their Constitutional rights. This list of rights from the Fifth and Sixth Amendment is widely known as the “Miranda Rights”. 

1) The federal system shares authority between the national and state governments. The role of citizens is to participate in elections at both levels of government and vote for political representatives. In a confederation, the citizens primarily interact with state governments, because they hold the most authority. In a unitary system, citizens engage mainly with the central government, as it has primary control over policies and decisions.

2) The system of division of power is the way authority is divided among the national and state governments. In the United States, the division of power used to be more distinct but now the government holds overlapping powers, called concurrent powers. This system is necessary to prevent one level of government from having more authority than the other and ultimately protects individual freedoms.

3) The federal government shapes the actions of state and local governments in several ways, including allocating federal funds to state governments, imposing mandates, and passing laws and regulations. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government impacted the lives of NY state residents through financial support and CDC public health guidelines. New York State received a total of $13.5 billion in federal relief, which helped maintain public health services and resources. The CDC issued guidelines and backed federal mandates for the state and local governments to follow as well.

1) The word “faction” reminds me of social classes because both refer to groups of people that have different political interests and power. In early America, the wealthy elite had control over the government and the poor majority were excluded from political decisions. We see this in the current state of U.S. politics more than ever where groups of people are constantly fighting for representation in government policies. 
2) According to Federalist Paper #10, James Madison argues that the source of wealth originates from “the diversity in the faculties of men”, meaning one’s abilities, talents, and capacities. Madison believed that some people were simply more skilled, hardworking, or capable than others, which allowed them to gain wealth and property. Because of these differences in ability, some people become rich while others remain poor. This shows that the framers of the U.S. Constitution thought economic inequality was natural and unavoidable.

3) I do not agree with this explanation of wealth and poverty as I believe it spreads the false narrative that the wealthy deserve their success and the poor are just incapable. People in poverty are less likely to have access to the same education and opportunities as the wealthy because of unfair economic systems and discrimination. Hard work and having certain skills can help an individual succeed, but to say those who are in poverty are just lazy or not smart enough is just blatant ignorance of the economic state of the country, even today. 
4) The “first object” of the U.S. government is to protect property rights. This means the government’s main job is to make sure that people who own wealth and property can keep it. This is a bit funny because today, we get told that the government’s purpose is to protect freedom or democracy while the U.S. government still works under the same framework established by the Constitution. The framers of the Constitution were quite literally afraid of democracy and were worried about wealth distribution, which makes you think about the integrity of the current government. 

5) I’m not surprised that Federalist #10 isn’t in favor of democracy. Madison and the other framers believed that if ordinary people (like the poor) had too much power, they would pass laws that took wealth away from the elite. He preferred a republican form of government because it would allow the wealthy and educated to stay in control while preventing the common people from making radical changes. This connects to the earlier discussion about social classes because the government was designed to serve the interests of the property-owning class, not the working poor.

1) The Constitution was written by the wealthy elite, for the wealthy elite. Merchants, bankers, creditors, and some landowners were among this group. According to Class Power in Early America, the writers of the Constitution were wealthy men who believed a strong central government would cater to their financial interests and keep them in the wealthy class. Charles Beard argued that framers were in the property-owning class, such as creditors, who benefitted from a centralized government because it would allow public debt to exist. On the other hand, the class excluded from writing the Constitution consisted of poor farmers, indentured servants, slaves, artisans, and those who didn’t own property. People of African descent, Native Americans, and Women were also among these people. The poor and working class had no representation during the writing of the Constitution. 

2) While there are similarities regarding economic inequality, early America was way more strict on who could vote and be represented by the government. In early America, a very small percentage of the population was able to vote or participate in the government: the wealthy elite. Although in current times a larger demographic of people are allowed to vote, there are still clear signs of wealthy individuals and corporations having the upper hand in politics because of things like lobbying. 
3) The writers of the Constitution were afraid of democracy because they wanted to keep political control in the hands of the wealthy elite, not the common people. They believed if they allowed farmers, laborers, and debtors to have a say about their rights they would be met by more uprisings like Shays’ Rebellion or policy changes that would not favor property owners. They were afraid that through their struggles the poor and working would demand wealth distribution as well. Because of this, the U.S. Constitution was written in favor of a small group of wealthy white men rather than the majority of the population. 

1) The statistic of the bottom 90 percent of the population owning less of the country’s total wealth than the top 1 percent is very grim. The statistics in this reading are quite depressing, as it seems like in America corporate greed overrules human needs. There are capitalists in this country who are sitting on billions of dollars while the working class can barely afford to live. Forced to live paycheck to paycheck, drowning in debt, having to eat bio-engineered “slop” for food, being pushed some sort of fantasy that the people exploiting you are doing it for the greater good. The ideology is so deeply ingrained into our society that any socialist movement is immediately seen as a threat.
2) Living in a society with such huge wealth inequalities limits people’s social mobility and access to basic needs. When capitalists are so focused on only growing their own wealth, it leaves people in poor financial situations with way less accessibility to better job opportunities, private education, quality healthcare, or even something as simple as nutritious food. Many of these basic needs are what allow a person to have normal living conditions where their day-to-day doesn’t have to be a constant struggle. Why is it that so many employers of well paying jobs seek out employees that went to private institutions for school? Usually, the only way to even graduate from these schools is to be extremely wealthy or go into debt for the rest of your life. If quality education was available to everyone would that not benefit more people? Public education, especially in low-income communities, is extremely underfunded. That same top 1 percent benefits greatly from keeping people uneducated, another great way to keep people docile and not start questioning the system that keeps them where they are.

1) The diagram M-C-M’ can be broken down as Money (M) -> Commodities (C) -> Money + surplus value (M’). This represents the position of capitalists in society and how they maintain that social class. In order to make profits (surplus value) capitalists use their capital (M) to buy the means of production (C) and labor power so that they can have workers produce goods & services which are commodities for the working class. The capitalists take these finished products and sell them for more than what they initially paid for them. Considering the transfer value of the means of production and the value of labor, the capitalist builds wealth by paying a fraction of what the labor is worth to the workers. The difference is pocketed by the capitalist allowing them to buy even more means of production through capital accumulation, this difference is the “surplus value” (M’). While the capitalist exploits the working class the workers are paid just enough to scrape by so that all their necessities to continue being a worker are met but never be paid enough to accumulate enough wealth to join the capitalist class. An important point to consider for this diagram is that capitalists do not buy their commodities for personal use, but rather to stretch the market value of it to sell it back to the working class as a necessity. Capitalism creates a system where the working class has no choice but to depend on capitalists for their livelihood. 

1) To produce anything in a capitalist society you need both the means of production and labor. The means of production are the resources (which are usually privately owned) that a product is made from. In order to produce something, you need other people’s labor (time) to get your finished product. For instance, a privately owned factory that makes laptops needs machinery and certain materials like aluminum, copper, plastics, and minerals. These materials are bought as a business expense and are the capitalist’s means of production. To make something of these materials, the capitalist has to hire laborers that build the final product or manage machinery. The only factor that separates the value of materials from the value of the laptop being sold is the amount of labor put in by the factory workers. This does not mean that the laptop’s market value is equivalent to its true value. 

2) The labor theory of value is that the real value of a product is how much labor was required to produce it under normal conditions. Labor is what creates value, the time put in by laborers to make something. Something is more valuable when it takes more time to produce, while the means of production transfer value, labor creates it. 
3) The direct relationship between the two is that value is created through labor, more specifically human labor. In a capitalist society, value comes from labor but is changed through market dynamics, putting profit over human needs. 

4) Labor is a worker’s production of goods and services. Labor power is the worker’s ability to work, meaning their wages are reflective of what is needed to maintain their basic needs and level of skills, not the value their labor created. The capitalists own the workers’ labor power, and find the most effective way to manipulate it through working conditions and intensity so that their profits grow. 
5) Surplus value is the profits workers create through their labor for capitalists. A worker’s wage is usually determined by the capitalist as the bare minimum pay that will cover their basic needs and ability to keep working in order to keep the working class in the working class. The value of the labor created by the worker is more than their wages, but the difference is instead pocketed by the capitalist as “profit.” This is important in the study of social classes because we can see how it is that people stay in the working class vs. the capitalist class. An example of surplus value is when a worker produces a product their labor is worth $20 per item, the capitalist pays the worker $5 per item produced, and the $15 difference is taken by the capitalist as profit. 

1) The major distinction between the owning and working class is how they earn their livelihood. To be a part of the owning class, your income has to be dependent on other people’s labor. Even if the majority of your income comes from investments, that money is not made from thin air. Buying shares of a company means you own a small piece of that corporation, and its value is influenced by the performance of production and market rivalry. These are all reliant on the working class’s labor and consumption. Meanwhile, the working class barely survives off wages paid to them by the capitalists. These wages are not equivalent to the labor they contributed to the company, it is only a small fraction of the value they created, and the rest of it is paid out to the business owner as “profits”. For example, imagine you work in a factory that produces a product sold for x amount of dollars, and you help produce 100 items per shift. You are not going to be paid 100x dollars per shift, you will be paid what the business owner decides is the least amount they can pay you while still covering business expenses and creating maximum profits for themselves. Essentially, the exploitation of the working class is what earns capitalists their livelihood while the working class cannot survive without giving away “free” labor. 
2) Adam Smith’s quote discusses the true value of goods, which is not determined by the monetary value, but the real value equating to the amount of labor and time put into producing said goods. In other words, the price of something is meaningless if it is not equal to the work put in to create that item or service. The cost of producing something depends on the costs workers take on to create it. 
3) I agree with the reading’s stance on class not being an identity because class is an objective position you hold in society. Individuals should not be able to self-interpret their economic status as they can with social identities. Race, religion, and gender, for instance, are deeply ingrained in an individual’s identity and should not be on the same level as one’s class. The way a capitalist economy is structured leaves you with only two options, you’re either in the working class or you are a capitalist. The terms “upper, lower, and middle” are only there to keep people thinking they are on their way up and that there is more economic potential waiting for them. Sort of like when you get a corporate job and you have to “climb the corporate ladder”, making your goal in life to be a more productive laborer so that your employers can see that you add surplus value. Yes, you may get paid more, but still not worth anything close to what you’re making for the CEO. If you focus hard enough on moving up the “social class” scale, you fail to notice that you are still being exploited for your work, and that is what helps capitalists sleep at night.

4) Class structures are built on dependency because the working class depends on the capitalist class and vice versa. For capitalists to create “profits” they first need somebody else’s labor to exploit, aka the working class. The working class depends on the wages paid to them by capitalists to survive. The issue arises when we realize how much more power and control the capitalist class holds over the working class. It is true that without laborers there is no profit to be made, but the working class does not get much of a choice when they need to sell their labor to be able to afford housing, food, healthcare, education, and transportation. Unfortunately, many working-class people don’t get to achieve self-fulfillment because they spend most of their day already stressing over their physiological needs being met (Maslow’s hierarchy of needs). The sad reality of capitalism is that there will always be wealth inequality and suffering as long as it exists as it cannot exist without exploitation. Landlords and tenants are a great example of close-form dependency in capitalism. The landlord depends on the tenants paying their rent to generate passive income, the tenant relies on the landlord to have a place to live. There is still an unequal distribution of power since the landlord has total control over rent prices and housing availability. This directly affects the lives and physiological needs of tenants. 

1) Article 4.1 demonstrates how Americans treat class identity subjectively, with cultural factors, lifestyle, and individual perspectives all influencing how they define their social class. People seem to associate themselves with the social class that seems most fitting, disregarding education levels and household income. Article 4.2 shows a series of graphs that indicate the median household income (2011) scattered across neighborhoods surrounding New York City subway stations. The graphs visualize the steepness of economic inequity across the five boroughs. Both articles show how class identity is not objective to most individuals, as people with varying levels of income will still group themselves and others using their own thought processes. Article 4.1 builds on this idea with people’s tendency to self-identify social class while the second article has concrete data that shows the objective reality of income levels in NYC, highlighting how people may not recognize these gaps if they are busy creating their own sets of criteria.

2) The closest station to where I live is Sheepshead Bay station (B/Q). The 2022 median household income for Sheepshead Bay was $63,370. According to Article 4.1, the neighborhood falls under the working and middle social classes. I believe this is an accurate representation since South Brooklyn has not experienced nearly the amount of gentrification as the rest of Brooklyn, leaving decently priced housing for the people living here. (Source: https://furmancenter.org/neighborhoods/view/sheepshead-bay#demographics)

3) The general pattern around social classes in the city is that wealth is concentrated in Manhattan and Brooklyn. In Manhattan, areas like UES, SoHo, and Midtown are expensive, while LES and East Harlem are more affordable. In Brooklyn, areas like Williamsburg, DUMBO, and Brooklyn Heights are much wealthier than the rest of the borough. These parts of Brooklyn are close to Manhattan and share expensive waterfront views which are seen as a luxury. Some of these neighborhoods were once affordable, but due to gentrification, many low-income residents were pushed out of their homes because of rent prices skyrocketing and new luxury housing developments being built. 

1. A Repressive State Apparatus is a form of behavioral reinforcement in society where the common public is controlled by the threat of violence. This includes policing, judicial court systems, and imprisonment. Althusser’s choice of the word “repressive” demonstrates a sort of paradox, where no matter if you obey or rebel against society, you are still going to obey societal structures. The repressive apparatus will prosecute and then ostracize you if you decide to rebel, it is still maintaining social obedience. The U.S. prison system is a perfect example, as it disproportionately targets marginalized communities and punishes people directly instead of addressing the root causes of crimes. Crime is often tied to poverty, but instead of offering support for social mobility, these communities are incarcerated and left without an opportunity for rehabilitation.
2. Ideological State Apparatus is what there is before society resorts to Repressive State Apparatuses. It is the social practice of being an “accepted” member of society by complying with the structure of it, sometimes unknowingly. There is a feeling of being a part of something that people crave, it could be religion, political ideologies, social groups, sports, etc. This comes with the process of socialization, the key factor being the school system. From a young age we are continuously taught how we are supposed to behave, but the way the reinforcement is structured lines up with the behavior that is expected from employers when you are old enough to finally work.
3. The Repressive State Apparatus and Ideological State Apparatus are both methods used to keep society under control. The main difference is that RSA works directly to keep individuals under control through violent consequences, and ISA works indirectly by having implemented societal norms that individuals are less likely to question and are naturally “forced” to follow.
4. This artwork made by a former prisoner is an example of Repressive State Apparatus. “Silence…Repent,” 2005. Vincent Nardone