Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Republicans want to cut Medicaid, Social Security, Medicare, educational programs and other programs that give Americans the opportunity to have a better life. Basically the Republican Party wants to close the door to opportunity for the middle class and poor Americans.
Wow, I learn something new every day! If I understand what you're saying, the only way "The Middle Class" and "The Poor" can get ahead is with aid from the federal government.
I have always been under the (apparently mistaken) belief that hard work, education, hard work, persistance, hard work, a little luck and hard work were the keys to success.
I want to express my appreciation. Please let me know to which public-union-government-bureaucrat (or group of them) I should address my thank you card?
Wow, I learn something new every day! If I understand what you're saying, the only way "The Middle Class" and "The Poor" can get ahead is with aid from the federal government.
I have always been under the (apparently mistaken) belief that hard work, education, hard work, persistance, hard work, a little luck and hard work were the keys to success.
I want to express my appreciation. Please let me know to which public-union-government-bureaucrat (or group of them) I should address my thank you card?
Ok your family is poor, they have been poor your entire life. You go public school, and get straight A's. You have a decent SAT score and you have been accepted to at a number of colleges both private and public. You are offered a limited number of scholarships but since you catch a football or throw a basketball you can't afford the tuition at any of these colleges. If you were lucky enough to get a job, you still couldn't afford it. You go to different banks and apply for loans to help pay for school, but since credit is so scarce, you have no employment history, etc. you can't get a loan. So what do you do? You can't get any federal aid or loans, because according to you this person is "depending on the federal government" even though this person worked hard, got good grades but just can't afford the tuition which increases every year.
Once upon a time kids like that joined the Military and eventually received some tuition aid.
IMHO the very upper classes have changed the focus of their political activity from making as much money as possible to using taxation and reduction in government sponsored insurances to protect their exclusivity. After all what good is wealth is some lucky redneck can go to the same schools as your daughters?
•There are basically two schools of thought when it comes to the number who died at Stalin's hands. There's the "Why doesn't anyone realize that communism is the absolutely worst thing ever to hit the human race, without exception, even worse than both world wars, the slave trade and bubonic plague all put together?" school, and there's the "Come on, stop exaggerating. The truth is horrifying enough without you pulling numbers out of thin air" school. The two schools are generally associated with the right and left wings of the political spectrum, and they often accuse each other of being blinded by prejudice, stubbornly refusing to admit the truth, and maybe even having a hidden agenda. Also, both sides claim that recent access to former Soviet archives has proven that their side is right.
•Here are a few illustrative estimates from the Big Numbers school:
◦Adler, N., Victims of Soviet Terror, 1993 cites these:
■Chistyakovoy, V. (Neva, no.10): 20 million killed during the 1930s.
■Dyadkin, I.G. (Demograficheskaya statistika neyestestvennoy smertnosti v SSSR 1918-1956 ): 56 to 62 million "unnatural deaths" for the USSR overall, with 34 to 49 million under Stalin.
■Gold, John.: 50-60 million.
◦Davies, Norman (Europe A History, 1998): c. 50 million killed 1924-53, excluding WW2 war losses. This would divide (more or less) into 33M pre-war and 17M after 1939.
◦Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago,
■Intro to Perennial Classics Edition by Edward Ericson: Solzhenitsyn publicized an estimate of 60 million. Aleksandr Yakovlev estimates perhaps 35 million.
■Page 178: citing Kurganov, 66 million lives lost between 1917 and 1959
◦Rummel, 1990: 61,911,000 democides in the USSR 1917-87, of which 51,755,000 occurred during the Stalin years. This divides up into:
■1923-29: 2,200,000 (plus 1M non-democidal famine deaths)
■1929-39: 15,785,000 (plus 2M non-democidal famine)
■1939-45: 18,157,000
■1946-54: 15,613,000 (plus 333,000 non-democidal famine)
■TOTAL: 51,755,000 democides and 3,333,000 non-demo. famine
◦William Cockerham, Health and Social Change in Russia and Eastern Europe: 50M+
◦Wallechinsky: 13M (1930-32) + 7M (1934-38)
■Cited by Wallechinsky:
■Medvedev, Roy (Let History Judge): 40 million.
■Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr: 60 million.
◦MEDIAN: 51 million for the entire Stalin Era; 20M during the 1930s.
•And from the Lower Numbers school:
◦Nove, Alec ("Victims of Stalinism: How Many?" in J. Arch Getty (ed.) Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives, 1993): 9,500,000 "surplus deaths" during the 1930s.
◦Cited in Nove:
■Maksudov, S. (Poteri naseleniya SSSR, 1989): 9.8 million abnormal deaths between 1926 and 1937.
■Tsaplin, V.V. ("Statistika zherty naseleniya v 30e gody" 1989): 6,600,000 deaths (hunger, camps and prisons) between the 1926 and 1937 censuses.
■Dugin, A. ("Stalinizm: legendy i fakty" 1989): 642,980 counterrevolutionaries shot 1921-53.
■Muskovsky Novosti (4 March 1990): 786,098 state prisoners shot, 1931-53.
◦Gordon, A. (What Happened in That Time?, 1989, cited in Adler, N., Victims of Soviet Terror, 1993): 8-9 million during the 1930s.
◦Ponton, G. (The Soviet Era, 1994): cites an 1990 article by Milne, et al., that excess deaths 1926-39 were likely 3.5 million and at most 8 million.
◦MEDIAN: 8.5 Million during the 1930s.
•As you can see, there's no easy compromise between the two schools. The Big Numbers are so high that picking the midpoint between the two schools would still give us a Big Number. It may appear to be a rather pointless argument -- whether it's fifteen or fifty million, it's still a huge number of killings -- but keep in mind that the population of the Soviet Union was 164 million in 1937, so the upper estimates accuse Stalin of killing nearly 1 out of every 3 of his people, an extremely Polpotian level of savagery. The lower numbers, on the other hand, leave Stalin with plenty of people still alive to fight off the German invasion.
•Although it's too early to be taking sides with absolute certainty, a consensus seems to be forming around a death toll of 20 million. This would adequately account for all documented nastiness without straining credulity:
◦In The Great Terror (1969), Robert Conquest suggested that the overall death toll was 20 million at minimum -- and very likely 50% higher, or 30 million. This would divide roughly as follows: 7M in 1930-36; 3M in 1937-38; 10M in 1939-53. By the time he wrote The Great Terror: A Re-assessment (1992), Conquest was much more confident that 20 million was the likeliest death toll.
◦Britannica, "Stalinism": 20M died in camps, of famine, executions, etc., citing Medvedev
◦Brzezinski: 20-25 million, dividing roughly as follows: 7M destroying the peasantry; 12M in labor camps; 1M excuted during and after WW2.
◦Daniel Chirot:
■"Lowest credible" estimate: 20M
■"Highest": 40M
■Citing:
■Conquest: 20M
■Antonov-Ovseyenko: 30M
■Medvedev: 40M
◦Courtois, Stephane, Black Book of Communism (Le Livre Noir du Communism): 20M for the whole history of Soviet Union, 1917-91.
■Essay by Nicolas Werth: 15M
■[Ironic observation: The Black Book of Communism seems to vote for Hitler as the answer to the question of who's worse, Hitler (25M) or Stalin (20M).]
◦John Heidenrich, How to Prevent Genocide: A Guide for Policymakers, Scholars, and the Concerned Citizen (2001): 20M, incl.
■Kulaks: 7M
■Gulag: 12M
■Purge: 1.2M (minus 50,000 survivors)
◦Adam Hochschild, The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin: directly responsible for 20 million deaths.
◦Tina Rosenberg, The Haunted Land: Facing Europes Ghosts After Communism (1995): upwards of 25M
◦Time Magazine (13 April 1998): 15-20 million.
•AVERAGE: Of the 17 estimates of the total number of victims of Stalin, the median is 30 million.
•Individual Gulags etc.
◦Kolyma
◦Kuropaty
◦Vorkuta
◦Bykivnia
•Comments received: Letter #1 Letter #2 Letter #3
•Famine of 1926-38, including the Holodomor: [make link]
◦Richard Overy, Russia's War (1997): 4.2M in Ukraine + 1.7M in Kazakhstan
◦Green, Barbara ("Stalinist Terror and the Question of Genocide: the Great Famine" in Rosenbaum, Is the Holocaust Unique?) cites these sources for the number who died in the famine:
■Nove: 3.1-3.2M in Ukraine, 1933
■Maksudov: 4.4M in Ukraine, 1927-38
■Mace: 5-7M in Ukraine
■Osokin: 3.35M in USSR, 1933
■Wheatcraft: 4-5M in USSR, 1932-33
■Conquest:
■Total, USSR, 1926-37: 11M
■1932-33: 7M
■Ukraine: 5M
It's only "class warfare" when working people are upset at the table being titlted away from them. To the rich, getting wealthier through manipulating the markets is simply "free enterprise."
What could possibly account for such gross distortions? Are the super-wealthy really that much smarter and productive than the rest of us? Are the organic veggies and hormone-free meat that affluent parents feed their children paying off? Or could it be something else?
The "rich" already pay for everything from which the remaining 50% benefits. Is that "fair"? Of course not. If you went out to dinner with a group of friends and one friend was always paying for the remaining seven, would that be "fair"?
Here is a novel suggestion. If there was a constitutional amendment for a balanced budget, I would not mind having my taxes raised, PROVIDED THAT EVERYONE PAID THE SAME PERCENTAGE RATE (even for capital gains, such that those who derive thier income exclusively from cap gains would pay the same rate). With that, "the rich", by virtue of their larger incomes, would pay much, much more, as they do now. However, in that model, the current 50% of the dependent population would have some shared risk and skin in the game. In that scenario, EVERYONE would be leary of spending proposals and suggestions for increased taxes.
great post. Not to mention the millions killed by Mao and Pol Pot.
Who in their right mind would embrace such a totalitarian philosophy? Do they really believe that there is not an "elite class" in these marxist regimes? Do they not read history?
Ok your family is poor, they have been poor your entire life. You go public school, and get straight A's. You have a decent SAT score and you have been accepted to at a number of colleges both private and public. You are offered a limited number of scholarships but since you catch a football or throw a basketball you can't afford the tuition at any of these colleges. If you were lucky enough to get a job, you still couldn't afford it. You go to different banks and apply for loans to help pay for school, but since credit is so scarce, you have no employment history, etc. you can't get a loan. So what do you do? You can't get any federal aid or loans, because according to you this person is "depending on the federal government" even though this person worked hard, got good grades but just can't afford the tuition which increases every year.
So..what's your solution?
Good morning,
In the past, most state schools were quite affordable for someone working their way through school. Even in today's climate there are affordable paths to a bachelor's degree in just about any state, if one simply digs for the information. If I were someone who made minimum wage and wanted to obtain a bachelor's degree, I could still do so. I've already run the numbers for friends and family.
The increase in federal subsidizing of tuition is what has contributed to college tuition inflation. If the consumer (student) isn't directly paying for it and making direct market choices (instead of tuition rate being secondary due to the use of borrowed money), it will effectively inflate the price, just as health care costs and housing prices are inflated through the use of "secondary money".
The "rich" already pay for everything from which the remaining 50% benefits. Is that "fair"? Of course not. If you went out to dinner with a group of friends and one friend was always paying for the remaining seven, would that be "fair"?
Here is a novel suggestion. If there was a constitutional amendment for a balanced budget, I would not mind having my taxes raised, PROVIDED THAT EVERYONE PAID THE SAME PERCENTAGE RATE (even for capital gains, such that those who derive thier income exclusively from cap gains would pay the same rate). With that, "the rich", by virtue of their larger incomes, would pay much, much more, as they do now. However, in that model, the current 50% of the dependent population would have some shared risk and skin in the game. In that scenario, EVERYONE would be leary of spending proposals and suggestions for increased taxes.
I agree with this 100%. I don't see how anyone could disagree with everyone paying the same tax rate for earned income and capital gains. I would be fine with my tax rate going up to achieve this and a balanced budget amendment.
The GOP wants to cut spending on Medicare/Medicaid and SS so that billionaires can keep their tax breaks.
there you have it
the perfect discription of clas warfare
the libs: oh the rich are evil
why do the liberals think we should DISCRIMINATE against the rich
why not tax EVERONE at the SAME EQUAL rate...why because liberals like to DISCRIMINATE
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
If I understand what you're saying, the only way "The Middle Class" and "The Poor" can get ahead is with aid from the federal government. 
What Class Warfare Really Looks Like
