Posted on 07/11/2012 5:00:46 AM PDT by Sir Napsalot
Now the eminent Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam and his team are coming out with research that’s more horrifying.
While most studies look at inequality of outcomes among adults and help us understand how America is coming apart, Putnam’s group looked at inequality of opportunities among children. They help us understand what the country will look like in the decades ahead. The quick answer? More divided than ever.
Putnam’s data verifies what many of us have seen anecdotally, that the children of the more affluent and less affluent are raised in starkly different ways and have different opportunities. Decades ago, college-graduate parents and high-school-graduate parents invested similarly in their children. Recently, more affluent parents have invested much more in their children’s futures while less affluent parents have not....
(Read the rest)
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Traditionally, “a place in society” meant that people filled a productive niche that helped keep society functioning. Even those of very low intelligence had work available for them that they could handle. In fact, in the past there was more work available for those of low intelligence, so much so that much of it was done by those of higher intelligence. It was the jobs specifically requiring high intelligence that were limited in number.
The “hewers of wood and drawers of water” another poster mentioned, if you will. How much demand is there for these people in today’s economy? And it’s dropping all the time.
Even jobs these lower intelligence people could perform are being moved out of their reach. For instance, 100 years ago such a person could start and run a reasonably successful small business, perhaps a small candy store. Today the requirements for running any small business keep him out. Even for something as simple as lawn care, the government requires compliance with massive amounts of regulation that complicate the process so much that a lower-intelligence person can’t do it.
So we can have make-work jobs, and we can pay people to sit around. But we will know, and they will know, that they aren’t really providing anything to society economically. And I think that is demoralizing. It has been described as a modern version of the Indian reservation, where people with no value to society are warehoused.
I’m not saying this well. Highly recommend reading The Bell Curve, where they state it very nicely.
BTW, I hope you realize I’m saying these people and others will often view them as being of no value. I disagree, because I think the value of a human life is based on much more important factors than economics and relative status. But in our society I think anyone must admit that the primary factor in most people’s judgment of others is economic factors.
The Times....thumping the class warfare drums for the fall elections.....
“One of the flies in this ointment is the differential birth rate. High income, and presumably more competent people, have a much lower birth rate than low income people. If this is indeed correlated with intelligence and intelligence is party hereditary, after a few generations our population will be significantly less intelligent on average.”
Welcome to “Idiocracy.”
Watching "Through the Worm Hole" I was suprised that they seriously discussed genetic influences on IQ. Races are advantaged in different ways and dis-advantaged in others. However I don't believe that two people of the same genetic background with high IQs tend to give birth to high IQ children. In fact, statistically there should be a regression to the norm meaning the child is more likely to be less intelligent than either parent.
“I get your point, but that is kind of a statist approach.”
No question about it. Actually Sphynx approach to it regarding vouchering is probably the best thing for our kids.
Both of your posts were very informative.
You are quite correct.
However, the group of children born to two high-intelligence parents will be considerably more intelligent than the group of children born to two low-intelligence parents. Which is the statistical point here.
If you breed the two fastest horses in the world, their offspring is likely to not be as fast as either parent. But the colt is still likely to be much faster than the average horse.
I want to expand my #18 and your #21 post. Re: jobs for persons with low capabilities.
The aetheists and Dogooders took away the religion and family values, replaced with the ever powerful State (i.e. government).
In the past, there is no shame of being poor, family members or the church take care of the needy.
Now the plitical class created the belief in the Gimme Gimme population that there is no shame in getting ever more “Freebies”, because you are ‘such-and-such’ victim groups, Society in general owes it to you.
Persons with low capabilities have absolutely no incentive (other than their own initiative) to ‘add economic values to society’. Most of them do not have ‘low intelligence’, below average is not low. They are paid to be (or act) a certain way, like I said earlier, the Dogooder Class needs a permanent plantation to champion their own ‘good virtue’.
A good point. Let's take 90 to 110 as average or normal or whatever you want to call it.
Those from say 110 to 130 would be "bright," those from 70 to 90 "dull."
While the "dull" are not "low intelligence," they can in general not function effectively in a modern economy. There is no true demand for their services, or at least the demand is constantly decreasing while the supply remains constant.
Meanwhile the demand for those in the "bright" and above group constantly increases. This is probably the major driver behind the increase in "income inequality" that liberals obsess about so much. But you will note these issues are never discussed. Both liberals and conservatives don't like to discuss these things, because neither the free market nor government intervention is really capable of dealing with them effectively.
One comparison I've seen for the fate of the dulls in the future is that of a high-tech and more comfortable Indian reservation, warehousing them away with nothing to do. We all know how well that's worked out for the Indians. They aren't oppressed, really, but they have no real purpose in life, either.
In the long run, which may not be that many decades, cybertronics and automation is likely to remove the demand for services from a larger and larger part of the population. For instance, think of how many people are employed as drivers. The technology is already here for replacing 99% of them. I have no idea how quickly it will be deployed, of course.
The typical optimist and often conservative answer is that these people can retrain and take jobs that are in high demand, such as writing apps for iPhone.
But how many of those who are presently driving trucks and taxis are really capable of doing so? Not many, I suspect. Everyone recognizes the existence of the mentally handicapped and of genius, but few want to recognize that the difference between "high normal" and "low normal" very much affects the ability of a person to function economically in our society.
My post 28 is not really accurate numerically.
One standard deviation on the IQ scale is 15 points, so about 68% of the population falls into the two SDs on either side of 100, or 85 to 115.
The point I am trying to make is that while this whole range is considered “normal,” the ability of a person to function effectively in an economic sense is tremendously impacted by whether their actual IQ is 87 or 112. Still lots of demand for the things the 112 IQ guy can. Demand for what the 87 IQ guy is capable of is dropping all the time.
Very good post one of the best post I’ve read about the human condition. The main reason why off shoring is such a horrible idea is that the “dulls” are justified in their perpetual victim status and off shoring destroys the work ethic which is the ONLY thing they(dulls) have.
Yowza!!
You mean we agree on something?
>>> Both liberals and conservatives don't like to discuss these things, because neither the free market nor government intervention is really capable of dealing with them effectively.
That is true.
Eventually though, for those idled and under-demanded turned into malcontents. Then a period of bloodshed breaks out, with lots of human sufferings, it doesn't matter if you are affluent or not. Sort of like a society self-correction. And then the cycle repeats.
yes, the human condition is an absolute. It isn’t pleasant to think about but it has to be discussed. In this area there is no left or right just reality of capability vs motivation of the individual.
We don’t know if this is a cycle or not, because it hasn’t happened before. The primary driving force is automation and cybernetics, and this hasn’t been a factor before the last few decades.
A problem here is that the rate of cybernetic change is increasing at an exponential rate. Which implies that resultant changes in society will do the same.
There are four categories of people:
Right, because giving the "working class" more $$$ through government hand-outs automatically means they're going to change their moral compass and decide to invest that $$$ on their kids' future instead of spending it on a 60" HDTV or new rims.
I get the impression that you’ve viewed “Idiocracy” - maybe more than once LOL ;-)
Actually never seen it. But plan to.
What we are seeing is what has always happened throughout history. It just seems weird, because in our little window of time, we’ve never seen it before. But the idea that everyone moves forward, and advances together is just not how Darwin works.
Darwin’s ideal is that a small cohort of the less fit each generation, sees it’s reproduction diminished, as a way of keeping r-selection at bay. As the less fit are removed, this favors fitness, and that will lend advantage to fitness enhancing, K-selected traits, such as monogamy, two-parent rearing, later age at first intercourse, etc.
What has happened is we have prevented this r-selected cohort from being culled, and now they have formed almost a second subspecies within our population. One subspecies is competitive, motivated, driven, and adheres to K-traits like monogamy, two-parent rearing, later age at first intercourse, and loyalty to in-group.
The other subspecies is designed to graze off of government cheese provided by the first, while reproducing using promiscuity and single parenting. As time goes on, and this unproductive group of takers grows relative to the producers, they will eventually crash everything.
A storm is coming.
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