Follow up history-nerd question - what’s the best way to learn about communism? Read Engels and Marx? You said last time to go back to the start of things.
Adjusted for inflation, that $5200 property tax bill in 2006, would be equal to a $8200 tax bill today. So, the $7000 tax bill that was received this year would “cost less” than would be expected… obviously the 20 yr depreciation of the house plays into that too.
Inflation increases taxes, because the things that our taxes pay for increase in cost… because of inflation.
I agree that commies want to destroy the upper and middle classes. I dont like communism. I like policies to bolster the middle class like middle class tax cuts supplemented by higher taxes on the very wealthy, down payment help for middle class first time home buyers, expanding/strengthening Obamacare to mitigate medical debt, etc.
Paying for things we don’t need and/or don’t work, increase taxes. Higher crime increases taxes.
I would suggest finding a good book written by someone explaining Marx before reading Marx.
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It depends on what you mean by “communism” and what you want to learn about it. I think The Gulag Archipelago is an outstanding book to understand what the policies actually meant when you move past the lofty rhetoric and appeals to common good.
Engels and Marx are also a perfectly good starting point, but it’s worthwhile to point out (as your aunt’s buddy Russel Means did) that even Marx lifted a bunch of ideas from other people.
Rousseau in particular is rarely mentioned by Marx but was obviously very influential in his thinking. Rosseau really fleshed out the idea that man is fundamentally a victim of society and the idea that private property as a concept was fundamentally bad.
Hegel, Kant, many Greeks, and virtually all of political thought in western civilization can be connected to Marx.
Another fun historical fact is that Lenin was dispatched by the Imperial Germans to Imperial Russia as an ideological weapon to destabilize their geopolitical rival. Some would say that it worked, depending on the timescale you’re examining.
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Now a days people in the US talk about communism as an economic theory. If that appeals to you, for sure check out Marx and Ingles.
In the past, people in the US were concerned about the violent and murderous reality of communism. Like radicals overthrowing established governments and killing millions of people who resisted. If you’re more into that check out the Russian and Chinese Revolutions and Pol Pot.
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Haha! My old man made me read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, when I was a kid. JFC that was depressing. He was a big fan of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
Biden resigned as POTUS? Huge if true.
Wasn’t it a Biden/Harris ticket before Dementia Joe decided to not run again? Or is being a candidate for POTUS a government office one holds? Never heard this from Kanye in 2020.
Honestly, I don’t know why you’re bitching about the inner workings of the Commu…Democratic Party. After all, these fragrant (or imagined, depending on one’s point of view) violations of sacred norms and practices will surely ensure a Trump landslide this fall? Isn’t that a reason to celebrate?
Link unrelated:
Yes, yes…so the super wealthy can accumulate more wealth when the middle class spends.
Yes, yes…so the middle class can buy homes they can’t afford.
Yes, yes…so the government can determine what medical care is needed.
Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore for day-to-day horrors.
Although written by a self-proclaimed rabid Marxist, Hobsbawm’s trilogy about the “long 19th century” is useful because he positions Marx in a historical context of mind-boggling urbanization as well as overnight social and economic changes that explain his intellectual framework.
Don’t bother reading Marx’s turgid works.
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Gee, maybe you’re right. Nobody had any idea Joe Biden wasn’t up to the job until the debate. How could anyone have known? The Democrats were obviously blindsided by this development and did the right thing by making Joe Biden relinquish the nomination when he didn’t want to.
It’s a political tradition as American as Apple Pie or teaching children about the importance of vibrant gender expression and unusual sexual proclivities of adults.
Crazy old twojar is at it again, making stuff up that isn’t real.
At least they’ve shown they don’t worship a God-Emperor. One rapidly declining geriatric dropped out, is it too much too ask for the other one to step down in light of his recent mental decline or is that topic a taboo among the faithful?
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All of the projection from leftists is getting old. Just because you guys look at politicians like they’re the second coming doesn’t mean everyone else does.
Republicans nominate someone who isn’t a lifetime politician and people like you let your minds run wild and project all of your misguided ideas about government onto other people.
It can’t be that his policies are sensible and his leadership effective compared to other candidates. It must be an irrational cult of personality, says the party of Barak Obama.
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The geriatric democrat dropped out. Are you bold enough to even entertain the possibility of the republican one dropping out due to his advanced age and speech problems or is that strictly haram in your holy book?
Oh, come on. Sensible policies are a dogwhistle for tee-hee-hee I feel warm and fuzzy inside because the libs I dislike are mad all the time. Then after four years of this glee it’s back to playing the victim and the imaginary persecution from the Deep State.
It isn’t GDP growth, it isn’t border security. It isn’t inflation (notice the difference between pie-in-the-sky promises back in the day and actual numbers). What policies would that be?
[quote=“loppar, post:5479, topic:271740, full:true”] is that topic a taboo among the faithful?
[/quote]
As taboo as asking why an unprecedented number of his well respected, high level appointees have publicly spoken out about him getting near the white house again.
As taboo as asking what family values, the party of family values, sees in him. (Besides unbridled nepotism).
Are you serious? As if he wasn’t President for four years already?
Border policy is the most obvious to me on the day we all happened to get our city property tax increase in the mail.
It was a 23 percent increase, voted on by people who we’re told should be voting in our elections like US Citizens do, but require voting guides in several languages and transportation to and from the single polling place by the school superintendent and city council president.
This new explosion of civic engagement took place after the school budget was rejected twice and elected officials called their constituents “uneducated”. It also takes place in the context of a dramatic expansion in social programs under the school budget, including funding a non-profit, while simultaneously tanking our academic performance and stretching community resources.
Luckily for the local Democrats, educated voters have arrived and can vote in Maine. They just need voting guides in multiple languages for the one-question ballot.
I don’t wish for the immigration and social welfare policies I’ve lived through to be implemented elsewhere in the USA, which is reason enough to never vote for someone who does for President.
She’s talking about price controls, for Pete’s sake.
Exactly. It was you how referred to him as “not a lifetime politician” which is weird for a former POTUS with a failed reelection bid.
In terms of media bubble vibes maybe, in terms of data, it seems it’s a big no.
POTUS determines local property taxes? And it wasn’t a decree from the Politburo but a local vote? Are you implying illegals voted or legal immigrants? Next time maybe they’ll vote for the person who’ll promise to lower property taxes, that’s how (local) elections are supposed to work.
Illegals or not?
Didn’t sound like price controls to me. But that doesn’t matter, you’ll pay more stealth tax if Trump’s announced anti-capitalist import tariffs (google them, Maduro would be proud) come to fruition.
Thanks @zecarlo, @FlatsFarmer, @twojarslave, @loppar
I’m pretty (academically) familiar with the realities and results of communism in the Soviet Union, Cambodia, etc. Less familiar with the original thinkers’ actual philosophies. Just always interested in being more well-informed.
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Trump did not enter politics at all until his 70’s. This is unusual for any D or R Presidential candidate in the USA. When I say “lifetime politicians”, I mean people who’ve done nearly nothing else with their adult lives. Biden would be the textbook example of a lifetime politician.
Again, the data you suggest exist to support the Biden/Harris immigration policy is laughable to me, as if I wasn’t recently in line to vote with people who needed translators to fund our now dysfunctional government towards a variety of socially destructive ideological policies. As if I didn’t once live in a normal, functioning city.
In the case of my town, yes, it has a TREMENDOUS impact. I used to be astonished by your lack of understanding of American civics, but I’ll cut you some slack here. Immigration policy is the purview of the executive branch of the federal government, overseen by POTUS. Currently we are accepting virtually all comers as per the Biden policy, typically requesting some kind of court appearance several years in the future. These people end up in towns like Lewiston, Maine.
Here in Lewiston, Democrats have successfully enacted policies that they wish to see implemented elsewhere. Among other radical notions, it eliminates the notion that only US citizens should vote in US elections. They use a variety of word games and an abundance of racism accusations to attempt to shroud this goal of theirs, but that IS the goal and it has been achieved in Lewiston, Maine.
There’s no way to know, as the system we’re now operating under has steadily inched towards where we’re at right now. Simply signing an affidavit saying you live in Lewiston, with the aid of a translator if necessary, is sufficient to vote in Lewiston elections. You can vote minutes later and the election results will be counted and announced hours later.
Let’s see how well this prediction plays out compared to all of your other ones.
Kamala’s proposed price gouging ban will serve the middle class and below well.
To hell with these “economists” and their theories. Theories are not facts.