1. What is the distinction that Reading 4.3 makes between owners and employees? Give an example of each. Owners own the wealth of society and employees earn a living through labor. Owners live off of investments and stocks for example and workers live off of wages and salaries.
  2. How do you understand the quote by Adam Smith on pg. 28? What is it saying about labor? I understand this quote as recentering the true value of the capitalist system which is in workers aka the people creating the labor that’s generating the wealth that they don’t profit off of nearly as much as the credited means of production of it via capitalist.
  3. What are your thoughts on the main argument of Reading 4.4 that class is NOT an identity? I agree with that stance, considering the points being driven in the reading. Class isn’t identity however it is lens for what position of power we withhold. It isn’t about the lower-upper class axis that as they say liberals define as class. Because the gap is so large that working class people are practically invisible by that scale. Not only that but class doesn’t specifically signal socioeconomic statuses, it signals wealth. Wealth meaning investments , stocks, bonds etc. that have been building and passed down through families that allow wealthier people to live off of alone without even considering a salary or wage. Class as an identity isn’t your label in society that is too vague and doesn’t address what it actually is. Class as an identity reflects your position of power, your wealth, your resources, and capital that you possess. As well as where you exist within a structure that dictates whether you profit off of workers, or if a will capitalist profit off of your labor.
  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? I understand that class structure is built upon the control of resources which creates a dependency on capitalism for workers to be able to buy the things they need to live & simultaneously the capitalist require laborers to work for them in order for them to gain more profit and expand productivity.

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