In recent decades, the U.S. has been globalizing its economy, by cutting tariffs and shipping manufacturing jobs to China, and has been globalizing its population by importing tens of millions of poorly-educated Hispanics with IQs around the global average of 90.
Notice the problem?
People with an average IQ of 90 and a decent work ethic make okay assembly line workers. They don't do well, however, in a knowledge-based post-industrial economy.
If we had wanted to have tens of millions more Hispanics, with their blue-collar capabilities, then we should have kept up the tariffs so there would be decent-paying factory jobs for them.
Or
If we had wanted to have a post-industrial "symbolic manipulation" economy, then we should have kept out the flood of people whose children grow up to have low NAEP scores. (A recent study by sociologists with the UCLA Chicano Studies Center found that only 6% of fourth-generation Mexican-Americans -- i.e., people whose grandparents were born in America -- had college degrees.)
You can successfully globalize your economy or your population, but not both.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
That's it in a nutshell.
ReplyDeleteThe USA has a corporate and government elite that is making decisions without any sense of long-term cause and effect. That's why the smart money is getting out of Dodge.
Well said, Steve. I've been making this argument for years. It invariably falls on deaf ears. I'm in Southern California now, but have recently contacted a real estate agent in Chile to look for properties there. America is finished.
ReplyDeleteI think its a good time to get out of real estate funds in your 401K plan (if your plan still allows you to pick what stocks to own anymore and doesn't have "professional" managers choose for you).
ReplyDeleteThe thing with the Mexicans is that they are OK for slapping up houses, but you need a constant supply of new buyers for those houses. The only way to have that is to open up immigration to the whole planet. We are running out of factory work. What are these people going to do for a living now that we have a HOUSING SURPLUS already?
People who lend money for a living get paid when loans are made--therefore they want people taking out loans for all sorts of things to increase their own income. If the economy is slow and people aren't taking out loans, they want to import new people to take out loans. If people are doing relatively well and dont need to put things on credit, they dont want people to be doing so well so that they need to use credit to buy mundane things like TV's and furniture. Lending money is a business and that business is always looking to make conditions condusive to its activity. In a nation of savers, the money lenders have to drum up reasons for people to need to borrow like living above their means or importing new borrowers. If you think about the Mexican angle it is perfect, you get both new borrowers and borrowers who will get existing home owners to move out into suburbia (more building) because they want to "get away" from those same newbies. Lenders have a field day. They pushed for this mess, and we are bailing them out.
We kid around a great deal here, but this nation's future doesn't look so pretty. The middle class is actually having to bail out the people hell bent on wrecking the middle class. Something is really amiss.
La Griffe du Lion wrote that "Cognitive Decline was the irreducible legacy of open borders"- I'm sure Steve's read it...
ReplyDelete"Sic Transit Glorea Munde"...
I couldn’t agree with Steve’s point here more if I’d made it myself. I’ve seen the same talking heads on TV make the argument on one channel that we don’t need the low education jobs anymore so outsourcing them is great. And on another channel they make the argument that we need to import cheap labor to do all the low education jobs (the ones that they are busy outsourcing).
ReplyDeleteBut let’s not convince ourselves that logic or the good of America will do anything to convince the Elite to stop the program of replacing the historic America nation, that is people, with aliens. It doesn’t matter if the race replacement program is a complete disaster, and by now the writing is on the wall and then some. The Elite are going full speed ahead.
What with the blogosphere meme (true or not) of the current crisis being the diversity meltdown, at least we won't get the 'mortgage crisis blacks hardest hit' stories from major media and attendant calls for easier credit and special minority homeowner bailout programs. It would just play into the biocon narrative.
ReplyDeleteSecond anon, I was reading John(?)Baker's book 'Race' a while back. He says that in the 17th century or so, East African groups were classified as Caucasians. I think it was because of craniofacial features and Ethiopian civilization. They certainly had more complicated social structures than West Africans. If female genital mutilation is any indication, the men cared more about paternal confidence. That implies some level of male investment in children, so it seems reasonable that some East African men were at least a bit more selected for doing productive work. That all applies more to the Ethiopians than to the Somali Bantus of course.
"But let’s not convince ourselves that logic or the good of America will do anything to convince the Elite to stop the program of replacing the historic America nation, that is people, with aliens."
ReplyDeleteThe plan only works if you boil the Great White Frog slowly. Leftism works best in America by moving gradually, not by creating huge, noticeable problems that can be directly traced to "diversity".
If the country falls apart *too* quickly, and Caesar runs out of money to buy bread and circuses, the establishment will be at risk of exposure.
It is easy distract people from the consequences of diversity so long as the economy is strong enough to both create a big welfare net for low IQ minorities, while at the same time GDP grows fast enough to keep the white middle class satisfied.
But the lean years are nearing. There is not enough money to fund the entitlement boom, the minority supporting welfare state, and the needs of the middle class.
You guys treat IQ as if it accounts for 90-something% of the story.
ReplyDeleteBUT
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_Global_Inequality
Ireland (93/92) is one of the richest countries in Europe. Supposedly they are 1/2 sd dumber than the rest of Western Europe.
Uruguay is one of the whitest countries but it's economy is middling like its other white neighbors. They are all poorer than Mexico. (Notice how people don't generally consider that part of the world white?)
And finally Arab IQ is reported as around 85. HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN FIVE CENTURIES OF ISLAMIC HYPER-CONTRIBUTIONS? How were so many polymaths born from that stock? (Goes for Persian accomplishment too.)
Really, I challenge the IQ obsessed.
It's always satisfying when a point I made on an earlier thread Steve picks up as the theme for a new one. That way I can delude myself into thinking I made a contribution! The point which I made earlier being that the construction boom was fueled by easy money and cheap labor. Forget whether or not minorities caused the problem by defaulting on lots of loans. The construction boom (in both commercial and residential properties) could not have happened without hundreds of thousands of illegal workers here to make it possible. Labor and money would've both been bottlenecks, but both bottlenecks were removed by Clinton/Bush.
ReplyDeleteIn the home price equation, I have to guess that the three biggest costs are 1) land 2) material and 3) labor. Illegal aliens made the last one cheaper, but much of the savings were lost to #1, land, which became more expensive as demand rose. Costs of materials rose, too, as China was on a building boom of its own.
So at a time when we could've been selling our abundant natural resources to the Chinese (and reducing our trade deficit with them), instead we were using them here on homes people couldn't even afford, and building those homes with illegal laborers who were in turn remitting much of their paychecks back to their home countries, making the balance of payments even worse.
Oh yeah: and we also had to use many of those natural resources to build new roads to accomodate - who? - the immigrants who came here. Immigration has driven the increase in our trade deficit rather than reduced it.
I’ve seen the same talking heads on TV make the argument on one channel that we don’t need the low education jobs anymore so outsourcing them is great. And on another channel they make the argument that we need to import cheap labor to do all the low education jobs (the ones that they are busy outsourcing).
Ben, you bring up a good point - the multiple contradictory arguments of the Wall Street Journal/Open Boders crowd.
We should make a list to keep track:
1) On the one hand: Justifying lower taxes for the rich, they argue that the rich pay more than their share of taxes, while even the lower middle class is a drain. On the other: Import lots of low skilled Mexicans, who are helping to grow the economy and keeping social security afloat!
2) On the one hand: Our booming economy is generating trillions and jillions of jobs, with not enough Americans to do them! On the other: Don't raise the minimum wage or you'll slow job growth (for jobs no Americans are available to do)!
And, the one you mentioned:
3) On the one hand: We need free trade so we can ship low value jobs overseas. On the other: bring lots of low-skilled people here just as those jobs are getting shipped away.
Feel free to add to the list at your leisure. I have a hunch it's a long one.
Good hardware can be made useless by bad software.
Indeed. DNA matters, but environment/upbringing does, too.
Ireland (93/92) is one of the richest countries in Europe. Supposedly they are 1/2 sd dumber than the rest of Western Europe.
ReplyDeleteIreland does not have a low IQ. The only evidence for this is that Lynn and Vanhanen say so. Every economic and social indicator suggests that the Irish are not the retards of Europe.
There are some other countries that are not right either: Israel 94, I know they have some Arabs but that seems too low. The US 98, with 30% of the population being NAMs I don't see how it can be so high.
You can successfully globalize your economy or your population, but not both.
ReplyDeleteAnother excellent Sailerism.
challenge wrote: "You guys treat IQ as if it accounts for 90-something% of the story."
ReplyDeleteThis is one of those things that you really have to do your own homework to figure it out. If you don't have the math skills to understand the science, then you can never know the truth for yourself. Don't rely on other people to tell you what is true.
Steve´s narrative of the current financial crisis can be interpreted as the USA adapting to its new Mexican immigrant population. Mexican economy, well adapted to the character of the local population, has no financial crisis. It appears as Clinton and Bush, in a well meaning effort, wanted to accelerate their integration through easy credit. With Chinese it works wonderfully, with Mexicans it does not. Basically, the tragedy seems to be that they refused to accept and institutionalize human differences. They tried to live by an ideal, not by reality.
ReplyDelete"
ReplyDeleteThis is one of those things that you really have to do your own homework to figure it out."
I'm aware there's a lot I don't know. And I wouldn't expect one answer to explain everything I'm missing. But your answer shows a bloated ego. Why don't you at least point the direction where I'm wrong? By responding with nothing to say other than to declare you are not one of the knowledgeable people, you seem to be an empty minded pseudo-intellectual.
I'm afraid Steve is closer to the truth than many would like to believe.
ReplyDeleteLet's hope that someone invents IQ-pills (or something like it) fast.
I was waiting for that fourth generation Mexican-American study to come up again. Is this something like the structure in Mexico itself described in the three part article? Twenty generations after the Spanish conquest, whites still rule Mexico because successful men marry up into the white elite. Similarly are the more successful Mexican immmigrants and their children marrying members of other groups in the US, while those who are still purely Mexican four generations on the less successful ones?
ReplyDeleteAlso let's not forget Greece is listed at 92! Considering it's heritage and solid economy, how do you explain that?
ReplyDelete"The bottom line: Because of globalization, it no longer matters to Wall Street whether Americans are educated, healthy, or employable. Wall Street is never constrained to act in our interest. On the other hand, because of the Fed the public is recruited to act in Wall Street's interest, whether we want to or not. So the bulk of the country progressively slides into Third-World status while Wall Street either thrives or gets bailed out.
ReplyDeleteThe essential problem is that Wall Street now dominates Washington behind the scenes. Wall Street is joined at the hip with the Fed, whereas the Fed was wisely "insulated" from political control at the outset. Hence there is no impediment to its being controlled by Wall Street. This control is not overt. Rather, it is understood that the welfare of Wall Street underpins the welfare of the country. Unfortunately, Wall Street is now globalized in its vision. Its welfare, in turn, is only loosely coupled to the welfare of the country."
- A comment from one Siegfried Othmer, posted at http://www.latimes.com/news/columnists/la-oe-brooks18-2008sep18,0,2481300
3) "On the one hand: We need free trade so we can ship low value jobs overseas. On the other: bring lots of low-skilled people here just as those jobs are getting shipped away."
ReplyDeleteOf course the companies promising these jobs in sunset industries don't have to pay the welfare costs for these third world workers they are bringing in.
Perhaps they should be made to pay the welfare bills and court expenses of those immigrant workers who they lay off. That might install a bit of longer-term thinking.
ReplyDeleteAlso let's not forget Greece is listed at 92! Considering it's heritage and solid economy, how do you explain that?
Yes, let's not forget Greece, after all, it is up there with Singapore and Hong Kong as one of the world's power economies!
An economy we should all emulate.
"Ireland does not have a low IQ. The only evidence for this is that Lynn and Vanhanen say so. Every economic and social indicator suggests that the Irish are not the retards of Europe.
ReplyDeleteThere are some other countries that are not right either...lso let's not forget Greece is listed at 92!"
So IQ numbers are legitimate when you agree with them and illegitimate when you dont?
Do you guys really imagine the country's current wealth has no impact on IQ? Obviously IQ also affects wealth, so it's some kind of a feedback loop, but I could definitely seeing greece having a 92 if they stagnated during the ottoman rule. Also, it wasn't the average Hellene who made all the cultural accomplishments of Athens, but the elite. They may have had a larger smart fraction, or just one that happened to be emulated by Rome and hence had their accomplishments diffuse throughout Europe. A lot of it's luck.
ReplyDeleteDoes the nerd cliff above 130 or so where success actually goes down factor into this at all?
You can successfully globalize your economy or your population, but not both.
ReplyDeleteBut this kind of misses the point - the entire point of globalizing the economy is that you don't have to globalize your population. Move low skill jobs to countries with low skill populations and high skill jobs to countries with educated populations and you don't have to move the people around.
The argument by many of the open borders kooks that "you can't have free trade without mass immigration" is entirely backwards. Trade allows you to move the work to where the people are, and let the people stay put.
So, to change the subject, a few ways minorities/mass immigration contributed to the mortgage meltdown:
1) Encouraged the government to debase lending standards (for everyone).
2) Overrepresented among defaulters.
3) Supplied the labor that fueled the overbuilding boom.
4) Created the perception that, via population growth, homes would keep getting more and more expensive, especially in the Four States (CA, FL, AZ, NV).
5) Black congressmen defended Franklin Raines while he let Fannie Mae burn.
6) Minorities moved into European neighborhoods, causing Europeans to want to move up and out.
It's not enough for the folks who hang around here to excuse the whole problem by saying that most defaulters are white. They have to refute all these points. Some will refute the last one by suggesting it's simply racist. I don't think Americans have to explain why we don't want to live in neighborhoods which look and, more importantly, act like foreign countries.
In the 1960s, it was a cliche that California was where America's future was being test-driven.
ReplyDeleteIn the 1890's and 1860's America's future was being test driven in NY, PA, MI and IL. During that time large numbers of Catholic and Jewish immigrants flowed in and new high tech industries were established. American Protestants saw the future being made for them and finally got the Federal Government to close of immigration. 100 years later we still get treated to such immigration related movies such as the Godfather, Goodfellas and the Sopranos describing what our government imported.
Nowadays in CA the state is importing a large number of immigrants using the Brown Wave as cover. And the Catholic hierarchy, brought in during the first great wave, is actively working to make sure that the descendants of the last great wave (Ted) work to keep the flood going. The immigrants in the last wave may not have been devout, but they use the word Catholic as a kind of common ethnic designation, providing rhetorical cover for the hierarchy whenever you point out its' behaviour.
This isn't to say American Jews don't cause problems too, but the church does have a vested role in all of this, no matter what a few anti immigration Catholics say.
To the poster who named himself "challenge":
ReplyDeleteIt is true that for many, many centuries Ireland lagged behind the rest of Western Europe economically and in other respects. Its per capita GDP caught up to that of Britain only in the last decade or two. This parity is not representative of the larger historical picture and may turn out to be a blip. Ireland did not industrailize with the rest of Europe. Its economy remained largely agrarian for a couple of centuries after the start of the Industrial Revolution. An Irish nationalist will blame that on English oppression. But, other things being equal, the strong WILL tend to dominate the weak, and average IQ clearly affects a country's strength. Obviously other things, like Ireland's size in comparison with England, played a role in said domination, but there are many examples of smaller countries surviving in Europe for centuries. Take the Netherlands as an example.
Popular attitudes are important when thinking about such things. Until the plague of modern political corectness got to them, the English tended to look down on the Irish. They looked down on them for centuries. I agree with the politically correct that rehashing stereotypes isn't nice, but I disagree with them when they say that it's useless. The truth is rarely nice.
Germany globalised its population. There was also bleeding of manufacture but les so than in the US. I guess the small-time German niche manufacturers liked living next door to their assembly lines so they can walk through them at night feeling proud about them.
ReplyDeleteBut the influx of Turks and other Islamic folk has been just as devastating as what the US is going through. At least you guys now have more Catholics in addition to the gangs. We have gangs and Islam. That’s really depressing. So even if you only commit only one of the mistakes the end result is the same.
challenge sed:
ReplyDelete"Ireland (93/92) is one of the richest countries in Europe. Supposedly they are 1/2 sd dumber than the rest of Western Europe. "
Ireland has had all fours in the EU cookie jar for the last 20 years. That's why the EU elites did not bother smothering the referendum on the EU constitution there. They made damn sure nobody else would vote, especially the donor nations such as Germany, France and the Netherlands. But due to their largesse in Ireland they assumed they had that crowd in the packet. When the Irish, in spite of being lavished with EU money, voted the constitution down, there was much anger and hand-wringing in Brussels. Many said the Irish should be punished for having been showered with money and ignoring the will of the Eurocrats instead. So its pretty obvious Ireland was a super-AA candidate propped up to serve as a Trojan horse for the EU dictates. For having tricked those ridiculously arrogant EU elites I am prepared to let the Irish have it all. I would say the Irish are intelligent enough to actually convert largesse into permanent economic success, unlike most of Africa or the AA-recipients in the US.
Challenge,
ReplyDeleteStupid economic and social policies can cancel out an IQ advantage, and good policies can partially correct for an IQ disadvantage. For example;
-Ireland has recently adopted "supply-side" type economic policies, and has a much more flexible economy than many in Europe. It has also benefitted greatly from E.U. wealth transfer policies.
-In the 1960's, India's growth in living standards outpaced China's, even though China has a higher IQ, because India's semi-capitalist "Permit Raj" was freer and more efficient than Maoism.
-The Islamic contributions in the Middle Ages came mostly from non-Arabic peoples, such as Persians, Jews, and Europeans. Most of the great Islamic thinkers were not Arabs. There is also the possibility that Islam allowed for more freedom of though than did Medieval Christianity, although I don't know enough about this to really say. In addition, the contributions of an intellectual elite is no indication of the average intellect of the people.
-Uruguay tied itself in knots with an immense welfare state in the 1920's, which broke the country, and led directly to the Montanero Terrorist campaign and the so-called "Dirty War" there, from which Uruguay has still not recovered.
So no, IQ doesn't trump everything in the lives of nations, any more than it does in the lives of people; but all other things being equal, smart people (and nations) tend to do better than dumb ones.
"Every economic and social indicator suggests that the Irish are not the retards of Europe." That's a daft argument because it implies that earlier generations of the Irish were the "retards" of, at least, Western Europe. I'll bet that economic success bounces up and down much faster than IQ does, so that current riches, or lack of them, needn't imply much at all about IQ. It wasn't all that long ago that small children were told to eat up with "Think about all the starving children in China" and no-one has ever thought the Chinese were "retards".
ReplyDeleteVery well put, Steve.
ReplyDeleteDo we know, or can we calculate, what the cost would have been to globalize the economy only? Some things are a lot cheaper because we have low-paid immigrants to do the work. It would be an interesting exercise to calculate what the cost would have been if those services had been provided by native-born Americans and, further, what services might have been reduced or omitted.
For example, where I live, the exurbs are full of spacious office parks with vast, beautifully landscaped grounds. It goes without saying that the landscaping is done by Hispanic immigrants, even here in (relatively) low-immigration Philadelphia. If that labor pool was not available, I suspect these office parks would be a lot smaller and less lushly green. (Not to say that would a tragedy - in fact it would probably be better in many ways, although it would be much less pretty.) I'm just wondering if there has ever been a wide-scale effort to look at how things would be different in economic terms if immigration had stayed at pre-1965 levels.
I do think advocates for reduced immigration need to acknowledge that the effects would not an unmixed blessing - that there would some costs associated with the disappearance of a large pool of cheap labor - even if the overall result would be positive from their POV.
challenge, are you familiar with the concept of a noisy measurement and with scatterplots?
ReplyDeleteSteve, I have been hearing about people moving to Europe or elsewhere in the Anglosphere in the same way that white South Africans talk about moving there.
ReplyDeleteThere seems to be a cultural convergence as peace-loving white folks are backed up against the wall and have to scoot.
As an example, some new neighbors just moved from Las Vegas to our Midwestern town. A man who moved from Bakersfield to Memphis was the same way.
Getting to know both families was a bit like cultivating a friendship with some white Zimbabweans and South Africans I know here in the Midwest.
In all four cases they have this hesitance to actually talk about how nasty it was, how ugly things got before they left.
Until I got a few drinks into them and made it clear I sympathized, that I understood the hellholes they were escaping, they wouldn't open up.
But when I did -- Boy ! -- the horror stories started pouring out. Whether coming from California, Las Vegas, Zimbabwe or South Africa, complete cultural displacement and ethnic degradation was the common thread. All of them left for the survival of their families. as will we all if the foreign invasion continues.
challenge said...
ReplyDeleteAlso let's not forget Greece is listed at 92! Considering it's heritage and solid economy, how do you explain that?
Greece ranked 26 out of 27 OECD countries on the Basis of the Mean Achievement PISA Scores in Reading, Science and Mathematical Literacy, 2003.5 (Table 4.1, page 42) Greece placed just ahead of number 27, Turkey.
"The table also illustrates the existence of a group of four relatively low performing countries – Turkey, Greece, Portugal, and Italy – with mean achievement scores across domains substantially below the overall average. As regards reading, this means for example that whereas the average achievement scores of the students in all the other countries are at PISA level 3, the average achievement score of the students from these countries are at level 2. The same
goes for mathematics, where the average achievement scores of the students from these countries are also one level below the average of the students from the other countries, and even two levels below the two top performing countries: Japan and HK China."
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/5/45/35920726.pdf
Of course, if you are a Greek-American how capable and motivated your ancestors were depended upon when in the past they left and the distance traveled. The less recent they came to the US the more capable and motivated they were.
"The Islamic contributions in the Middle Ages came mostly from non-Arabic peoples, such as Persians, Jews, and Europeans. Most of the great Islamic thinkers were not Arabs."
ReplyDeleteAlthough it looks like Persians were the backbone of the Golden Age ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath ) how do you explain Iran at 84?
Also who are the notable Jewish scholars?
Thanks to you all who responded to me. As a half Greek-American I have come to accept that southern Europeans in general and southeastern Europeans in particular are probably behind the average in terms of genetic intelligence. I'm not much into playing the IQ pecking order game. However I don't believe 92 for Greece and 89 for Serbia are very good measurements of the genetic potential; that would mean Serbians are marginally above blacks.
ReplyDeleteI know that African-Americans score better than Africans in Africa now, but I don't think that we can use that to conclude that they would do better with equal opportunities. African Americans are living in the nation in the world which tries harder than any other to get them to succeed academically, and they still perform below the world average on IQ, below billions of nations of people who are too poor to get an education.
I suspect there are a lot of bad measurements in IQ and the Wealth of Nations. The 85 score for blacks in the USA is the result of testing millions of them; the sample sizes for some African countries are no more than a few dozen. Lynn and Vanhanen never claimed that they were good measurements anyway; I think people are assuming things that aren't in the book.
To Anonymous: Yes, I dread that you might be right about "attitude". I truly hope that the new African immigrants in my area do not turn into habitually unemployed welfare abusers in a generation. I think that they might be heading that way, through no fault of their own, just because almost every white person around here seems to believe with the faith of a religion that white people are racist and everyone else isn't; and that it's OK for minorities to fail because white people are to blame, but a poor white family can only be lazy or criminal.
Why all the deference to Lynn and Vanhanen? Can anyone explain their US estimate?
ReplyDeleteThe US is 70% white or asian and 30% NAM. How does that get you an IQ of 98?
And why is Canada's IQ the same despite a different demographic profile: 80% white, 4% Chinese, 4% Native, 3% South Asian, 2.5% black. NAMs make up a much smaller proportion of the population, yet the IQs are the same. How is this possible?
Challenge,
ReplyDeleteHere's a few Jews who were famous scholars under Islam;
Abu al-Fadl ibn Hasda, Abu Ruiz ibn Dahri, Amram ben Isaac ibn Shalbib,Bahya ibn Paquda, Dunash ben Labrat, Isaac ibn Albalia,
Jekuthiel ibn Hasan,Joseph ibn Hasdai, Joseph ibn Migash, Solomon Ibn Gabirol, Abraham ibn Ezra,
Moses ibn Ezra, Benjamin of Tudela
Samuel Ha-Nagid ibn Nagrela, Hasdai ibn Shaprut.
Please note, I am not saying that IQ explains everything, or that Arabs, or Persians, or Greeks, or anyone else, have not accomplished great things in this world. My only point is that IQ does play a role, an obvious role, and you get nowhere by denying this.
To Stopped Clock and Challenge:
ReplyDeleteYou're spot on about IQ and the wealth of nations. For some of the countries the data are old and samples are small. The sample is large enough that I think the portion of the data that is bad tends to cancel out, so that its general conclusions are fairly accurate.
Re the Iranian data in IQ and the Wealth of Nations, it was from one village in the 1950s. I wouldn't call it one of their better data sets.
Also, if Cochran and Harpending are correct, talking about the accomplishments of peoples (e.g., Greeks, Persians, etc.) in centuries and millenia past may not be very relevant when talking about their modern ancestors. (See "A Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence.) Differential birthrates among various segments of the population over a period of many generations can significantly shift gene frequencies. This has C and H's explanation for the elevated intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews (as opposed to the rather pedestrian IQ scores for Sephardim and Mizrahim, who in Israel average about 14 IQ points lower than the Ashkenazim). This was also one of the points of Gregory Clark's "A Farewell to Alms," in which he presented fairly compelling data showing that most modern Europeans are descended from the higher, non-noble, socio-economic strata in the Medieval and early Modern periods (e.g., larger landholders, merchants, skilled tradesmen, etc.), with the poor (and presumably less intelligent) dying out. Volkmar Weiss, in his book, "Die IQ Falle," showed a similar process for much of German, Slavic, and Magyar speaking C and E Europe. One can also see other physical changes in populations in historical periods. For instance, today, 90%+ of Germans are lactose tolerant, but DNA extracted from German skeletons from 5-8kya shows that none of them at that time were. Obviously cattle rearing selected for genetic changes in the European population.
Re sub-saharan africans, even Lynn thinks that their IQs would be significantly higher if they had better environmental conditions. Whether or not various sub-saharan african populations have a higher or lower genetic potential for g than African Americans doesn't really matter because a majority black country is not going to have the infrastructure, economic, health, nutritional, and educational development that a majority white or Asian nation could provide to allow children to reach their full potential. Therefore, they will never have the advantages that AAs have.
For challenge, while I agree with you to some extent that international comparisons of intelligence are fraught with problems (though I don't think they are totally useless when done well), here's a reading list that will help you understand why many here think IQ is important:
http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/index.html
(the articles here are a gold mine of information)
"The Bell Curve" by Herrnstein and Murray
The g Factor" by Arthur R. Jensen
"Looking Down on Human Intelligence" by Ian Deary
"The Origin of Mind" by David Geary
Also check out gnxp.com (you can learn a lot there - and check out the links to the source articles and not just accept the posters conclusions)
Although it looks like Persians were the backbone of the Golden Age ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath ) how do you explain Iran at 84?
ReplyDeleteProbably from breeding with the dumber darker people from the region over the centuries, much the same way the Greeks of today are not exactly the same as the Greeks of 500BC.
I'm not a Irishman, but I am annoyed with posters here claiming that the Irish are of low intelligence.
ReplyDeleteI can only suppose that the people writing these claims have had very litle interaction with irish people.
Granted the Irish tendency to wildness,, bombast,bullying and thuggery - and the distinct lack of cleanliness that did so much to upset the prissy little New England Puritans - the Irish, as can be seen by any list of Irish or Irish descended scholars, scientists, mathematicians, engineers and of course poets, writers and musicians aregifted people.
"African Americans are living in the nation in the world which tries harder than any other to get them to succeed academically, and they still perform below the world average on IQ, below billions of nations of people who are too poor to get an education.
ReplyDelete"
Bingo. I've always thought the American black IQ was seriously inflated.
People underestimate the extent to which this country has poured resources into helping black people. See this article
http://www.amren.com/ar/1995/12/#cover
The American black IQ is about equal to the Persian one. The difference is that all Persian enviornmental improvements are due to their own efforts. Does anybody actually think that if American blacks were left to their own devices they could have a functioning state and be able to develop a nuclear program?
"Does anybody actually think that if American blacks were left to their own devices they could have a functioning state and be able to develop a nuclear program?"
ReplyDeleteAfter Bush and Cheney, how well does our state function? But a country populated by American blacks would be Barbados, at best. Speaking English would allow them to participate more in the global economy and probably prevent them from descending into Haiti.
"I'm not a Irishman, but I am annoyed with posters here claiming that the Irish are of low intelligence."
ReplyDeleteNo one here is claiming that the Irish are of low intelligence, people here are arguing that the information presented in "The Bell Curve" is accurate.
There is a word for one who picks and chooses what is painless from a well-regarded scientific theorem:
Political Correctness.
Does anybody actually think that if American blacks were left to their own devices they could have a functioning state and be able to develop a nuclear program?"
The Persians would not have been able to do it without 50 years of input first from the Americans and more recently the Russians.
And the phrase 'functioning state' is highly debateable; there are, for instance, 15 black nations that have a higher GNI than oil-rich Iran.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GNI_per_capita
>>ronduck: "100 years later we still get treated to such immigration related movies such as the Godfather, Goodfellas and the Sopranos describing what our government imported."
ReplyDeleteThis point is seldom made, but it's an excellent one.
The open-borders crowd often points to the previous wave of immigration and says "Look how well they assimilated! The current immigrants will be equally successful."
Yes, in part, they assimilated, but they also *changed the character of America*, which, in a sense, overstates the extent to which they assimilated. Without the previous wave, would the Mafia be a part of American culture, would a Ted Kennedy be lobbying for Ireland?
In 50 yrs, Muslim holidays and Cinco de Mayo will be mandatory days-off in the public schools, and the open-borders crowd will say "Look how well they assimilated!"
"After Bush and Cheney, how well does our state function? But a country populated by American blacks would be Barbados, at best. Speaking English would allow them to participate more in the global economy and probably prevent them from descending into Haiti."
ReplyDeleteSpeaking English hasn't stopped Detroit from descending into the third world. Maybe if American blacks formed their own country in 1960 it could've been functioning but hip-hop "culture" changes the picture. But left to their own devices today Reverend Wright and Reverend Al Sharpton would be duking it out for the right to be Robert Mugambe.
"And the phrase 'functioning state' is highly debateable; there are, for instance, 15 black nations that have a higher GNI than oil-rich Iran."
Those 15 black "nations" all together don't even have a population that is 1/10th of Iran's.
After Bush and Cheney, how well does our state function? But a country populated by American blacks would be Barbados, at best. Speaking English would allow them to participate more in the global economy and probably prevent them from descending into Haiti.
ReplyDeleteAmerican blacks would be far better off in their own black nation. Sure, they mightn't ever go to the moon or develop nukes (which is a good thing!), but they'd be able to structure a society that better suits them than hating themselves for being unable to meet the standards that white america demands of them, which, as an act of defiance, has resulted in their abandonding almost all standards. At least in their own nation, without will-sapping welfare, they'd be motivated to build something and maintain. Law enforcement tailored to their unique needs would also help a great deal -- and be more readily accepted, without the angst it today causes, coming from blacks themselves.
Separation, an idea too practical and too morally defensible to be so damn unthinkable.
Although it looks like Persians were the backbone of the Golden Age ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath ) how do you explain Iran at 84?
ReplyDeleteProbably from breeding with the dumber darker people from the region over the centuries, much the same way the Greeks of today are not exactly the same as the Greeks of 500BC.
You mean the Arabs who brought to Persia Islam, as well as certain culinary habits such as eating lizards?
“Probably from breeding with the dumber darker people from the region over the centuries, much the same way the Greeks of today are not exactly the same as the Greeks of 500BC.”
ReplyDeleteNot all Iranians are Persians. Only about 50% of them are.
Besides Af-Americans score higher on I.Q compared to pure Bantus because there are a lot of European and Native American genes in their genepool.
Steve’s theory about Mexico’s IQ hierarchy may also explain about India’s IQ hierarchy. India’s population too was formed out of fairer invaders from the north impregnating local darker females. It too has a hierarchy with fairer Brahmins on the top with darker Shudras at the bottom.