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show/hide this revision's text 3 some $p$ --> some prime $p$

Not in the slightest! The answer is not even known for quadratic imaginary number fields. In fact, the only known way to show that the Hilbert class field tower of a number field is infinite is to invoke one of a variety of different forms of Golod-Shafarevich, and I don't think it's even seriously conjectured (more like "wondered") that every infinite Hilbert class field tower arises by applying Golod-Shafarevich to some step in the tower (or to some cleverly chosen subfield).

Incidentally, the "sufficiently many primes ramified" business is a bit of a red herring, in my opinion. The real condition is that the $p$-rank of the class group is large for some prime $p$. When $K$ is cyclic of degree $p$, it is only the fact that genus theory relates the $p$-rank of the class group to the number of ramified primes that brings ramified primes into the picture. (For example, the standard Golod-Sharevich examples come from showing the 2-class field tower is infinite by using Gauss' result that many primes ramifying in a quadratic extension imply a large 2-rank). For non-cyclic extensions, the link is more tenuous, and it becomes much more natural to talk strictly in terms of the class group.

show/hide this revision's text 2 added 728 characters in body

Not in the slightest! The answer is not even known for quadratic imaginary number fields. In fact, the only known way to show that the Hilbert class field tower of a number field is infinite is to invoke one of a variety of different forms of Golod-Shafarevich, and I don't think it's even seriously conjectured (more like "wondered") that every infinite Hilbert class field tower arises by applying Golod-Shafarevich to some step in the tower (or to some cleverly chosen subfield).

Incidentally, the "sufficiently many primes ramified" business is a bit of a red herring, in my opinion. The real condition is that the $p$-rank of the class group is large for some $p$. When $K$ is cyclic of degree $p$, it is only the fact that genus theory relates the $p$-rank of the class group to the number of ramified primes that brings ramified primes into the picture. (For example, the standard Golod-Sharevich examples come from showing the 2-class field tower is infinite by using Gauss' result that many primes ramifying in a quadratic extension imply a large 2-rank). For non-cyclic extensions, the link is more tenuous, and it becomes much more natural to talk strictly in terms of the class group.

show/hide this revision's text 1

Not in the slightest! The answer is not even known for quadratic imaginary number fields. In fact, the only known way to show that the Hilbert class field tower of a number field is infinite is to invoke one of a variety of different forms of Golod-Shafarevich, and I don't think it's even seriously conjectured (more like "wondered") that every infinite Hilbert class field tower arises by applying Golod-Shafarevich to some step in the tower (or to some cleverly chosen subfield).