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Makumba wrote:

 Kasrkin229 wrote:
No America is Capitalist , The Tau are expressly Communist , they use a full caste system which you can't move out of , and they work for the betterment of society , we Americans do it for the betterment of the individual

wait .... you think you dont have a cast system in USA

Well, looking at the definition of "Caste System" or "A social structure where classes are determined by heredity" i'd say we don't. The rich may will their wealth to their children, and the poor may not be able to will any money to their children at all, but this doesn't really, truly determine caste and class. Steve Job's kids didn't inherit control over apple corporation, and the son of a postal worker isn't bound to become a postal worker himself.

The US is a caste system in practice, if not in name. Moving out of your caste (which we loosely define as one's social class) is extremely difficult. While the child of a postal worker is not likely to become a postal worker him/herself, he or she is likely to take a career that pays, basically, the same. This, though, is getting way outside the scope of this topic or, indeed, these forums.

If you are intelligent, talented, and hard-working, it shouldn't be hard for you to go to a good college (with the aid of scholarships and/or financial aid) get a good education, major in something useful and find yourself much better off then you parents were. It is also very easy to do the opposite. Sounds like a loose system to me.

Except today you rack up so much debt that you often end up worse off than you would have been just going straight into the workforce, with mobility through the social ladder harder for the current generations than it has been in living memory. Those who went to school in the 60's often paid nothing, those in the 70's and 80's were able to pay it off either working during school or within a couple years of graduating while still in their early/mid 20's, while today the costs have skyrocketed (and have relatively little mitigation, not even through bankruptcy) such that it's not uncommon to be nearer to 40 than 30 when those loans are finally paid off.

A degree is increasingly less and less of a guarantee of marketability as a human resource, and it's more and more expensive, with social mobility less and less possible in the current economic atmosphere, obviously not impossible, but much more difficult than it would have been 20/30/40 years ago.

As someone with two degrees in Economics and Business Administration, I have some familiarity on that subject.


That said, this is no longer really even remotely related to 40k.

This has strayed a bit from its original purpose...

Whlie I think it's mostly impossible to re-enact WWII with the factions of 40k, I also think there's a fair bit of America in the Tau. If we forget about the collectivist angle, we have a reckless newcomer to the international arena driven by an ideological urge to expand that's not too different from the "manifest destiny" rhetoric, whose naïveté means they are not burdened by the ideological constraints of the "old world" and who are quickly catching up to and even surpassing modern technological standards.

So, maybe not the USA of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but those of Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt instead

This seems like it's going to be a really great discussion, and this is coming from me.

Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:The Horus Heresy's base is that of the fall in heaven in Christianity

Horus = Lucifer (Highest of God's servant, who fell)
The Emperor = God

Hitler wasn't created and trusted by Churchill only for Hitler to cause civil war, there's no real parallels here

Yeah, that's what it's fairly obviously based on. WWII doesn't fit at all.

xSPYXEx wrote:

BlaxicanX wrote:
Tau is 'Murica.

Woah woah woah, did you just equate a bunch of damn blue space commies to the Land of the Free? Son, I think you and I need to have a talk.

BlaxicanX wrote:The Imperium is literally like, the definition of fascism.

Eldar is Isreal.

Tau is 'Murica.

The rest of the factions are either too straight up evil (Chaos) or too mindless (nids) to really approximate with any real life nation. Even the Nazi's, who are considered by many to be the most "evil" faction in history, were never as omnicidal as the Tyranids or mustache-twirlingly villainous as Chaos.

How exactly are the Eldar Israel? This sounds worse than the worst bits of Aschnas space Jews stuff before I deleted it.

I agree with your interpretation of Chaos and the Nazis. Though if someone were going to do a WWII campaign for 40k, Chaos would probably be a good stand in for them. I'm doing Tau, but that's for how they play in the tabletop more than anything to do with their background.

Kasrkin229 wrote:No America is Capitalist , The Tau are expressly Communist , they use a full caste system which you can't move out of , and they work for the betterment of society , we Americans do it for the betterment of the individual

That's basically how America works. People are born into social classes and stay there. There is almost no ability to move to a different social class.

 loota boy wrote:
If you are intelligent, talented, and hard-working, it shouldn't be hard for you to go to a good college (with the aid of scholarships and/or financial aid) get a good education, major in something useful and find yourself much better off then you parents were. It is also very easy to do the opposite. Sounds like a loose system to me.

Yeah.... no.

Let's say your parents had a combined income of $100K a year. You manage to go to college, get a degree, and get a kick-ass job paying you, individually, $75K a year (half again as much as either of your parents). Congratulations, you're still in the middle class. Your social mobility has been 0, and you're still in the low-side of the middle class. The average American, however, makes only $50K a year, which is a mathematical construct not actually reflected in reality. What we actually have is a massive, massive pool of people (estimated to be as much as ~60% of the workforce) making $35K a year (often less), managerial and supervisory positions topping out (in general) at around $75K, and then an ever-decreasing pool of people in income brackets until you get up to the uber-rich, which is a handful of just a few hundred people. Your income in the US, for doing the same job, also tends to be lower if you are non-white and/or non-male.

 Psienesis wrote:

 loota boy wrote:
If you are intelligent, talented, and hard-working, it shouldn't be hard for you to go to a good college (with the aid of scholarships and/or financial aid) get a good education, major in something useful and find yourself much better off then you parents were. It is also very easy to do the opposite. Sounds like a loose system to me.

Yeah.... no.

Let's say your parents had a combined income of $100K a year. You manage to go to college, get a degree, and get a kick-ass job paying you, individually, $75K a year (half again as much as either of your parents). Congratulations, you're still in the middle class. Your social mobility has been 0, and you're still in the low-side of the middle class. The average American, however, makes only $50K a year, which is a mathematical construct not actually reflected in reality. What we actually have is a massive, massive pool of people (estimated to be as much as ~60% of the workforce) making $35K a year (often less), managerial and supervisory positions topping out (in general) at around $75K, and then an ever-decreasing pool of people in income brackets until you get up to the uber-rich, which is a handful of just a few hundred people. Your income in the US, for doing the same job, also tends to be lower if you are non-white and/or non-male.

That may be your personal experience, but I know plenty of people who have ended better or worse off then their parents. Know a fellow who went to college on a scholarship, went to med school, worked in a remote, rural area for awhile so that his med school bills would all be (mostly) payed for, and is now pulling in about double what his folks did. It isn't that uncommon, and very far from impossible. But, of course, we live in a society where cynicism is rampant and those who practice it are viewed as more intelligent than anyone who has any feeling of hope or optimism, leading to a depressed society that has convinced itself that their is no way to advance.

Unless his parents were only pulling $15K a year each, he's still in the middle class. He might be "better off", but his actual social mobility has been 0.

Tiarna Fuilteach wrote:
Marneus Calgar was born thousands of years after the Horus Heresy and the same with Yarrick, to put it simply people can come up with any ludicrous similarities that their minds allow but this is just stupid

I'm with this guy ^

 Psienesis wrote:
Unless his parents were only pulling $15K a year each, he's still in the middle class. He might be "better off", but his actual social mobility has been 0.

Well, i don't make it a point to ask people what their salary is, but somehow i imagine that as a doctor, he's making a sight more than 30k-60k.