okay so the first thing we're going to do in this class is defined politics and politics is how we decide who gets what when and how let's just talk about a couple of attributes of that definition politics is how we decide so there there are alternative ways to decide who gets what when in hell you could have a king distribute to some people and not others that can you distribute two wards or aristocracy that is loyal to the king but not to other families you could have a dictator distribute to some clans and not others so Saddam Hussein in Iraq famous we gave a lot of goods to Tikrit and let parts of the countryside store you can have as an America you can have a process where we say we're gonna elect people and they're gonna go you know hash it out in DC there's no perfect system but there are different ways we can choose to distribute resources I mean politics is the approach we take to that right and the other thing we note about this definition is politics is how we decide who gets what win in Hell so the very essence of the problem here is that we're distributing scarce resources there is no country that can give everybody everything they want right there are richer countries and poor countries and so in poorer countries distributing scarce resources means he's going to starve this week right and in richer countries it might mean who's going to get an education and be able to provide a comfortable life for their family but there's no country that can give everybody everything rightly so far we haven't achieved that star Trak existence where you can go to the replicator and replicate anything you need so we're discrete the essence of the problem is the resources are scarce there's a finite amount of resources and we have to figure out how to distribute them as a country right as a society we have to find an approach to decide who's going to get something and every time we decide somebody gets something somebody else doesn't right because the resources are scarce because the resources are finite any distribution here prevents a distribution there so the essence of the problem is this is a and inherently conflictual issues because we can't give everybody everything there's going to be conflict as soon as you give one group something you have denied another group something else and so politics is really picking winners and losers and so societies have to decide how are we going to do that do we want to do that in such a way that we're always at war with each other and you know some countries do some countries the politics is best described as warlords fighting it out or do we want to just realize it's going to be imperfect and we'll try to do the best we can knowing that every decision we make produces winners and losers right and so who gets what winning how who gets tax breaks and sometimes we've seen governments give the middle class and the poor tax breaks Bush famously did that during the Great Recession sometimes we've seen the the richest in the country get tax breaks Trump just recently well I should say the Republican Congress and under Trump just recently pushed through some of these large tax breaks for the wealthy right tax breaks are in fact giving some people something and by necessity taking something away from others whether you think about that taking away from others well we're not going to have that much in taxes now to spend on education or whether you think about taking away from others the idea that your generation will have to pay for the deficit that's going to be created by these huge tax breaks right either way tax breaks are creating winners and losers right we're giving some people something and other people are therefore not going to get things and you have of course two political parties that view those tax breaks very differently there are those who argue if you give tax breaks to the the core and the middle class they will spend more money and therefore generate demand and economy in the economy that's generally the the the Democratic Party's approach and there are those in a society that argue if you give the tax breaks to the richest they will create jobs in society that's generally the approach of the Republicans one of the sort of fundamental differences you have between the parties is what type of tax breaks are more likely to benefit everybody right but we're constantly making decisions and when we make those decisions they are choosing we're choosing between whether we're going to put money in education or roads or defense or a new baseball stadium right we have a pretty nice baseball stadium in Arlington Texas they're going to build a new one so they can have a roof so they can compete well that's money going there instead of elsewhere right and so whether we get an improved water situation in Flint Michigan or an improved education you know whether you have paper in the Xerox machine at your local high schools all of that it was as a result of granted different layers of politics but of politics of deciding who gets what went in hell so the very nature of politics is competitive it's going to lead to conflict whether that conflict is fought with guns or hopefully whether that conflict is fought with people sometimes yelling at each other in in Congress or a parliament that's that's sort of the nature of the system we've chosen okay so that's politics how we decide who gets what women help