{"id":12675,"date":"2026-02-21T14:49:40","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T19:49:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0505-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/?p=12675"},"modified":"2026-02-21T14:49:40","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T19:49:40","slug":"discussion-board-5-1-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0505-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/2026\/02\/21\/discussion-board-5-1-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Discussion Board 5.1"},"content":{"rendered":"
    \n
  1. The means of production, to me, are just the tools and resources needed to make stuff or run a business. It\u2019s the factory, the machines, the building, the land, the equipment, the money behind it \u2014 all of that. It\u2019s not the workers themselves, it\u2019s what they use to produce things. Labor is the actual work people do. It\u2019s the physical or mental effort someone puts in to create something or provide a service. For example, if we\u2019re talking about a sneaker company like Nike<\/a>, the factories and machines that make the shoes are the means of production. The workers in the factory putting the shoes together, or even the designers coming up with the ideas, that\u2019s labor. One is the setup and materials. The other is the human effort.<\/li>\n
  2. Value, based on the video, is basically how much something is worth in a social and economic sense. It\u2019s not just about price, it\u2019s about the worth that comes from labor and demand. Something has value because people want it and because work went into making it. If nobody wants it, it doesn\u2019t really matter how much work went into it. But also, if no labor went into it, it usually wouldn\u2019t exist in the first place. What gives value to something is a mix of how useful it is and how much labor it took to produce it. For example, a plain white T-shirt and a designer T-shirt might be made from similar material, but branding, marketing, and labor time change the value. Value isn\u2019t random. It comes from human work and what society decides is worth paying for.<\/li>\n
  3. Labor and value are directly connected because labor is what creates value in the first place. Without labor, raw materials would just sit there. Someone has to actually do something with them. When a worker spends time and energy making a product, that effort adds value to it. The more labor that goes into something, especially skilled labor, the more value it can have. At the same time, companies make money off the value workers create. So labor produces value, but workers don\u2019t always get paid the full value of what they create. That\u2019s where the whole social class issue starts to show up, because the people doing the work aren\u2019t the same people owning the means of production.<\/li>\n
  4. The difference between labor and labor power is simple once you think about it. Labor is the actual work being done. Labor power is the worker\u2019s ability to work. It\u2019s their time, skills, and energy that they sell to an employer. When you get hired at a job, you\u2019re not selling a finished product. You\u2019re selling your labor power for a certain number of hours. The company then uses that labor power to create value. So labor power is like the potential to work, and labor is the action of working. That difference matters because in capitalism, what\u2019s really being bought and sold is labor power, not the actual final product the worker creates.<\/li>\n
  5. Surplus value is the extra value a worker creates that they don\u2019t get paid for. It\u2019s the profit the company keeps after paying wages. For example, if someone works an 8-hour shift and in 4 hours they\u2019ve already created enough value to cover their daily wage, the other 4 hours are basically creating surplus value for the employer. That extra value goes to the owner as profit. This is important when studying social classes because it explains how the owning class makes money off the working class. The workers create more value than they receive in pay, and that gap is where profit and wealth build up. That\u2019s why surplus value is a big deal when talking about inequality and class differences.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The means of production, to me, are just the tools and resources needed to make stuff or run a business. It\u2019s the factory, the machines, the building, the land, the equipment, the money behind it \u2014 all of that. It\u2019s not the workers themselves, it\u2019s what they use to produce things. Labor is the actual…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11324,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discussion-board-5-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0505-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0505-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0505-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0505-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11324"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0505-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12675"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0505-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12676,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0505-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12675\/revisions\/12676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0505-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0505-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0505-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}