What is the distinction that Reading 4.3 makes between owners and employees? Give an example of each.

1. The distinction that the reading 4.3 makes between owners and employees is such: owners are the very rich families; they live off investments such as stocks, bonds, rents, mineral royalties, and other property income. An example of owners can come from owners of giant corporations such as Target or even those who own small businesses such as diners. Another example would be corporate real estate, where owners own their wealth by making money from their workers running their business. As surplus money and extra money for income owners wealth are preserved, over time it increases. Owners can start a business, buy a business, and own a business they own their wealth. Employees, on the other hand, live off wages, salaries, and fees. They are the workers of these large corporations and small businesses and play no part in ownership. Fast food workers, baristas, cashiers, or even factory workers are a good example of this. Another example would be labor for money, meaning workers don’t really own anything, have payment plans to pay off valuables, and survive. Unfortunately, workers have no wealth and suffer from the storage of money, as how they make money is different from owners.

How do you understand the quote by Adam Smith on pg. 28? What is it saying about labor?

2. In my understanding of Adam Smith’s quote, the price of an item does not matter; what matters is the effort it takes to make the item. As a good example of this, he states that turning a tree into a profitable commodity such as furniture and paper is only possible through the labor it takes to create it, that the labor coming from timber harvesting, manufacturing, and advertising to sell the finished product is what makes their real price. It is the human laborers that make living possible, which is why the laborers are the most important, as they are the ones who produce the goods. Price of an item, the type of quality, and the cost of labor that went into making it. The more expensive the material, the more it cost for the skills it took to make the item. The value of a good quality and expense of making it is what creates value; it is the labor of work by the people who made the item.

What are your thoughts on the main argument of Reading 4.4 that class is NOT an identity?

3) I agree with the concept that class is not an identity but that it is used in politics and current society as a form of identity. It has become a tool to target and oppress specified genders and races deemed lesser. Class used to be a simple terminology defining your financial standing, which, as the reading suggests, tends to be an ideology still used by capitalists.

How do you understand the argument Reading 4.4. makes when stating that “class structures are built around a close form of dependency”? What is this close form of dependency, and can you think of an example?

4) In the argument “Class structures are built around a close form of dependency,” my understanding of this statement is that there is a balance that exists within class structures. One cannot exist without the other; a good example of this comes from this statement in the reading: “A worker is to always and everywhere be in a position of having your interests at least threatened by the capitalist that employs you.”. Capitalists do not exist without workers and vice versa; that is their balance.

1. What is the distinction that Reading 4.3 makes between owners and employees? Give an example of each.
   
   The distinction that reading 4.3 makes between owners and employees is that owners are the ones who have many assets (stocks, bonds, shares, real-estate facilities, production factories, etc.) and who make their money by letting others work for them, meaning that the owners are the ones who has control over big firms and company which employee many other employees under them. The employees are the ones who are ‘selling’ their labor in return to a wage or salary (most of the time for just a fraction of the profit that the owners make). The employees, unlike the owners, do not get their income from their assets or holdings, and the money they make come from the labor that they ‘sell’ to the owner.
   
2. How do you understand the quote by Adam Smith on pg. 28? What is it saying about labor?
   
   Adam Smit’s quote: “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”.
   
   In my understanding, what Smith is trying to say that the physical hard labor of the employees is the real price for a products and it holds the real value of any commodity. The employees put their heart and soul into the making of each product, and put their time into each product. The amount of time that each link in this vast chain of hands (virtual or physical) put into each product – this is the real value of each commodity, rather than the nominal value. I think what he is trying to say that is that money is one thing, but time (which a person can never get back) that was put into the making of a product is the real price; suffering (physical pain sometimes) in the making of a product is the real price.
   So when we want to understand the real value of a product we should look at the labor that was put into the making of it rather than the price-tag that was put on it. For example, a loaf of bread is priced at around $5-$7 for a loaf, but what about all the hard work and labor that was out into it? What about the time that the farmer spent in the wheat field? The time that was put into making the irrigation systems that water the field? What about the labor that was put to making the wheat into flour? What about the truck driver that brought it from the bakery to the store? And there are many more steps along the way; this is the real labor and real cost of the bread, not just the $5-$7 price-tag.
3. What are your thoughts on the main argument of Reading 4.4 that class is NOT an identity?
   
   I think that class is not an identity. A social class is something that a person get born into, but it is rather a ‘fluid’ definition. Most of the time, an identity is something that you are born with, and cannot change it easily; maybe you have a very strong feelings about a certain topic, which makes it a part of how you define yourself, an idea that you identify with. These are much more harder to change than your class. I have heard many stories about how people started at a very low social class, and by luck or by skill, managed to ‘climb’ up the ladder of social classes. There are also the opposite cases, where people started at a very high social class and then made some bad decision which brought them to the lower social classes.
   Whatever the case is, their identity did not change; They still had their name, religion, world view, skin color, etc. The way they defined themselves did not change along with their social class. This is why I believe that social class is not an identity.
   
4. How do you understand the argument Reading 4.4. makes when stating that “class structures are built around a close form of dependency”? What is this close form of dependency, and can you think of an example?
   
   In my understanding, reading 4.4 argue that “class structures are built around a close form of dependency” because the workers (or employees) are much dependent on the income that the owners are providing them. They cannot get by without it, no matter how small it is. On the other hand, the owners cannot make their profit without the employees who work for them and ‘selling’ their labor in the making of the products which the owners in turn sell for a profit.
   The employees are ready to suffer and endure the exploitation by the owners because the owners give them the means to survive and thrive, while the owners are ready to pay whatever it takes (in the bounders of their profitable margins) in order to not lose their employees and their profitability with them.
   This is a very close dependency because one side cannot exist (not for the long-term at least) without the other. The owners cannot make their gains and profits without the employees, and the employees cannot make their income and salary without the owners.
   
   One example I can think about is in the air-traveling industry. The air attendants are the employees/workers who sell their labor for the wages/salary from the owners. The owners of the airlines need the air attendants in order to have someone taking care of costumers, their source of income. The owners will do everything in their power in order to pay the air attendants the minimum that they are ready to get paid – that’s in order to have the most profitability off of their labor. The air attendants can form a union and demand better terms and conditions for them because they know that without them, the owner cannot operate the flights and they will lose their gains/profits, although they will do it carefully because they know that they need the job in order to sustain an income.

1. Owners and employees, as differentiated in Reading 4.3, refer to the persons whose business roles are considered to making money.

Owners are the persons who own the business. They did not have to work in the business themselves but made money from the work of others. They own the factories, shops, or companies and profit from the labor of their employees. 

Example of the owner: Picture someone who owns a clothing store. He sells the clothes but hires people to help sell and organize the store. Decisions as to what to sell, how to run the store, and profit-sharing are left to the owner.

Employees are, by contrast, the people who are working for the owners. They do not own the business and get paid for the amount of work they perform.

Example of an employee: The cashier in the clothing store. The cashier does not own the store and is paid on an hourly basis or salary for helping customers and making sales. 

In brief, owners make a profit from the business and exercise control over it while employees operate the business for a wage.

2. The labor being discussed is the work people do to create value in everything that they use or buy. Without people working, whether they are building houses, making food, or building technologies, there wouldn’t be products and services at all. The worth of something is determined by the amount of work a person puts into its production. 

For instance, any labor put into making the car would have given value; the car has value not only because of the materials that went into it but also because of the labor people put into assembling it.

And so, Adam Smith says labor is value-giving; absent of any work by people, there would be no wealth and no products.

3. Coming back to Reading 4.4, class is said to be more than an identity. By this, the inference is that how one views him- or herself or what label one uses to define him- or herself (such as, “I’m middle class”) should not define one’s class position in society. Instead, class constitutes a position in the economy.

Why class isn’t an identity: Class isn’t just something you decide to be or consider yourself to be. It’s a function of how you relate to work and wealth. For instance, all the claims to be “middle class” may have indeed been made under decent circumstances (having a decent job or home), but one may be economically in a lower class if one does not own a business, or does not have a great deal of money. 

The author says, Therefore, that class is about (lack of) power and control over resources such as money businesses, and land. It is not about the way you see yourself, but about what you control within the gasping arms of society.

4. In Reading 4.4, the theory of class structures goes beyond mutual interdependence between worker and owner; rather, there is an economy of interdependence that serves the best interest of one over another. Jointly reliant on the functioning of the system, the owners maintain more power.

Interdependency: Workers depend on the owners to provide them with jobs and wages. Owners, on the other hand, depend on workers to do the labor that brings profit to their business. Only the owners are empowered to set wages and working conditions. 

Example: Consider our factory worker and their factory owner. The factory worker needs that paycheck to live, so he is dependent on the owner for employment. The owner needs the factory worker to do the work that enables the factory to manufacture products and amass profits. The workers cannot manufacture goods unless the factory is in operation and also the owner cannot generate profits in the absence of workers’ labor. 

Thus establishes an interdependent relationship between workers and owners which is close yet uneven. Workers depend on owners for income, owners for their income depend on workers, but owners are in power.

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. In reading 4.2 the distinction between owners and employees is clearly established. Owners are defined as individuals whose income is substantial and mainly comes from the labor of others. This means their earnings either come directly from a business they own or from investments in other companies that generate significant returns. An example is Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon. Employees, on the other hand, are defined as the individuals who generate income for the owners. This includes the factory and service workers as well as managers and executives who hold the task of “extracting more value-producing performance from other employees”. For employee, an example is, a random McDonald’s employee
2. In Adam Smith’s quote, he argues that labor basically is and should become the universal measurement for commodities, he views money as just a nominal value that fluctuates with time due to the fluctuation of the economy, whereas labor is a steady measurement that represents the true time and effort needed to create commodities.
3. When viewing class from a socialist perspective rather than the everyday liberal view it can no longer be seen as an identity as the definition has shifted and class is now “less about common status and more about interest and actions.”.The U.S population is divided into two groups, capitalists and Workers, capitalists benefit from the means they already have whereas workers are the unfortunate who have to work due to not having the means. The groups come with rules, Capitalists must compete with other capitalists to sell their products, whereas workers must compete with other workers in order to secure a job from the capitalists and remain at that job.
4. The close form of dependency between the sociological definitions of capitalists and workers lies in their skewed dependency. The economy relies heavily on capitalists, as their large financial transactions have a significant influence and a large boost in the economy. Workers depend on capitalists to provide jobs and for the retainment of jobs, while other capitalists rely on their peers for competition, ultimately keeping the economic cycle in motion. An example is an Amazon worker depending on Jeff Bezo’s company Amazon for a job, the economy depending on Jeff for his economic aid, and Jeff Bezo’s depending on Doug Mcmillon for competition.

1.what is the distinction that reading 4.3 makes between owners and employees? Give an example of each.

*The major difference between owners and employees is that the capital class or owners profit from their workers labor independently of a salary. Their assets, which include investments in stocks, bonds, real estate and land, generate profits for them. However, workers, also known as the labor class, depend on the money they make from their job to make ends meet.

2.How do you understand the quote by Adam Smith on pg 28? What is it saying about labor?

* Based on Adam Smith’s quote, “labor….  is alone the ultimate and real standard by which the value of commodities can at all times and places be estimated and compared….,” Smith points out the fact that the labor necessary to produce a good not the price paid for it determines its true value. This supports Abraham Lincoln’s assertion that “Labor is a superior of capital,” which holds that labor comes before capital. It basically implies that since money is just a medium of exchange and labor has a fundamental worth, the true source of value is the work that people do.

3.what are your thoughts on the main argument of reading 4.4 that class is not identity?

*The article in my opinion makes a crucial point that shouldn’t be seen as just another aspect of an individual’s identity. class is about Interdependence instead. The capitalist and labor classes are interdependent, in contrast to other aspects of identity such as race or gender, which are frequently viewed as separate. Most workers depend on capitalists for their wages and capitalists depend on workers to create wealth. It is more difficult to address more General issues of inequality when class is seen as just a ladder or power because it hides the deeper underlying causes of exploitation 

4. How do you understand the argument reading 4.4 makes when stating that “class structures are built around a close form of dependency, and can you think of an example? 

*Close form of dependency means the way that workers and capitalists depend on one another to keep the system functioning. Workers depend on capitalists for pay and job security, while capitalists need workers to produce goods and make money. For example, if employees in a factory go on strike, manufacturing stops and the company suffers financial losses. However if the owners of the factories fail to provide decent working conditions and fair wages, employees may leave, and the company may suffer. This shows how both groups are independent, but the resources are controlled by capitalists creating an unequal power balance.

1. What is the distinction that Reading 4.3 makes between owners and employees? Give an example of each.

The distinction that the Reading 43 makes between owners and employee is that their relationship is based off wealth and labor. Owners are individuals who own production such as businesses, stocks, real estate, or other investments. These owners income comes from rent, profits, and investments. Employees, on the other hand, are individuals who work for their wage and do not own capital. There wages are a portion of wealth, while the remaining usually goes to owners who they pay rent, mortgage, or bills to. For example, Elon musk is the owner of Tesla and lives off the wealth generated by his employees. An employee working at Tesla only receives a wage while the company and own profits from the employees labor.

2. How do you understand the quote by Adam Smith on pg. 28? What is it saying about labor?

“Labor… is alone the ultimate and real standard by which the value of all commodities can an all time and places be estimated and compared. it I their real price; money is there nominal price only.”

The quote by Smith on pg. 28 is saying that labor is the source to economic value. Without the hard work it takes to produce something, it doesn’t hold much value because the amount of worth of something is determined based on the labor that was involved.

3. What are your thoughts on the main argument of Reading 4.4 that class is NOT an identity?

My thoughts on class is not an identity based on Reading 4.4, is that class is about power and its not just a social identity. The author explains how class determines the position of an individual in the economic system and shapes their access to power and resources. I do agree with this argument because someone’s structural position in capitalism dictates their power and economic dependence. For example, capitalist have power within the economy because it depends on them for jobs and investments. This also leads to governments to prioritize the capitalists interests for the sake of the economy.

4. How do you understand the argument Reading 4.4. makes when stating that “class structures are built around a close form of dependency”? What is this close form of dependency, and can you think of an example?

The close form of dependency discusses then relationship between owners and workers For example, workers depend on capitalist for wages which are need for their basic needs such as housing, food, etc. Capitalist on the other hand, depends on workers to generate their profit. Without workers, capitalist won’t be able to make profit because there won’t be efficient production within their company.