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Problem. Not everybody is capable of doing what you say.

200 years ago, a guy could make a reasonably decent living using only his musculature. There was an economic demand for just the ability to move things around physically. Perhaps most importantly, there was a need for his services, giving him purpose and something resembling personal self-respect.

As the industrial and technological revolutions have advanced, more and more skill and intelligence has been required, as opposed to just strength. Historically this has been wonderful for society. Most people have been able to use their brains rather than bodies to do stuff.

We have now reached the point where an increasing percentage of the jobs for which there is significant demand are beyond the ability of those who are being displaced. I suspect the present displacement is something around one IQ point per year.

Let's say the present IQ for which the supply greatly exceeds the demand is presently 90, and assume that the one IQ point per year "falling out the bottom" remains constant.

What this means is that we are starting to get into the central range of the population, and every year the number displaced that year will greatly increase, and in 10 years we'll be at IQ 100 and 50% of the population will have no meaningful economic role in society.

After that, the number displaced each year will drop off because we're going down the other slope of the bell curve.

Unfortunately, I suspect the IQ displaced each year is not a simple straight line, it's some sort of exponential curve. Things may get worse a great deal faster than my projections.

BTW, this is the major reason for the increasing economic inequality in the world. Increasing demand and limited supply in the upper reaches, and decreasing demand relative to supply in the lower end.

#22-

IQ displacement

problem: Public schools, Media

200 years ago, a guy could make a reasonably decent living using only his musculature. There was an economic demand for just the ability to move things around physically. Perhaps most importantly, there was a need for his services, giving him purpose and something resembling personal self-respect.

I think he can still do that today. Of course, he'd have to accept the fact that he'd have a standard of living that was commonplace 200 years ago, too.

There is also the Flynn Effect:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

overall societal IQ increases over time, about 3 points per decade.