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.