(12-19-2016, 07:29 AM)FireIceTalon Wrote: Your number is a bit inflated (I wouldn't expect anything less from a capitalist apologist), it was more like 25-30% if we are talking from 1959-61, the so-called 3 year period. But moreover, this makes it out like I hold the position that there were no hard times and difficulties with the GLF, which is untrue.
Of what do you think these "hard times and difficulties" consisted? Lack of food. What do you call it when a lack of food increases the death rate? A famine.
I'm sure it's super hard to "build socialism". It'll cause a lot of "difficulties". Or, we can dispense with the disturbing euphemisms, and call it was it was: A policy disaster that caused tens of millions of excess deaths (and missing births) from famine.
Quote:That was actually a chart not a graph, but the larger point remains. You were saying what now, about a severe famine?
I was saying that a severe famine caused tens of millions of excess deaths, and missing births. If you can't see that from even *your* data, then you're blind. Your own source shows a drop from a birth rate of approximately 36/1000 in the mid-1950s to 18/1000 in the worst year, a 50% decrease. The death rate spikes from 12 to 18 - a 50% increase. You're telling me that deaths increased by 50%, and births dropped by 50%, because of unnamed "difficulties"? This is a famine, of enormous scale.
Denying the famine is is not only ahistorical and irrational in the face of the overwhelming evidence, it is also deeply disturbing.
-Jester