Economist Gregory Clark, author of A Farewell to Alms, has a new draft paper (via Marginal Revolution) called Surnames and the Laws of Social Mobility, with lots of of fun facts about surnames in England, America, Sweden, India, and China.
For example, in the U.S., surnames that are at least 90% black include Washington, Smalls, Merriweather, and Stepney. Using Jewish and black surnames and their frequency on the American Medical Association roster relative to their frequency in the overall population, we can see that blacks are becoming less under-represented as doctors and Jew less over-represented.
Decade Jewish Black
1970-9 5.72 0.19
1980-9 4.96 0.22
1990-9 3.59 0.26
2000-9 3.30 0.28
Unfortunately, Clark doesn't cite in his references either of the pathbreaking books of surname analysis by Nathaniel Weyl (1910-2005). His initial studies, which he published in 1963 in a book co-written by Jerry Pournelle's mentor Stefan Possony called The Geography of Intellect, were published in Mankind Quarterly in the early 1960s. You can find them at Unz.org here.
Weyl then updated and extended his work in 1990's The Geography of American Achievement.
Weyl was a swashbuckling figure, who was a Communist in the 1930s until the Hitler-Stalin pact, and provided corroboration for Whitaker Chambers' testimony against Alger Hiss. His name occasionally comes up in JFK conspiracy theories.
Weyl worked through many of the issues that Clark is stumbling upon, such as the need for more than one measure of social mobility. For example, more black surnames becoming doctors is a good sign of upward social mobility, but it's not clear that fewer Jewish names becoming doctors is a sign of downward mobility among Jews, because you can also exit upward or sideways.
For example, Matthew Weiner, creator of Mad Men, is the non-M.D. son of an M.D. (a highly distinguished one, too). Is he an example of downward or upward mobility?
Weyl's solution to this kind of puzzle was to present multiple data sources to allow the reader to make up his own mind, which is something that Clark should study.
P.S. Dr. Clark emails to assure that Weyl will be cited in the final draft.
P.S. Dr. Clark emails to assure that Weyl will be cited in the final draft.
Posts
93 comments:
Wait... Washington was 90% black? Just like Jesus, I suppose.
Medicine is definitely a prole occupation for smart people. True, you get to take Wed off to play golf with your pharma pals, but the day-to-day business of treating patients is icky. It's also increasingly contentious with the rise of payday lawsuits, which have become a form of wealth redistribution from the health profession to the legal professions and their poor clientele. Older doctors probably start to regard all patients as jerks who will happily lie and slander on the witness stand to get money for unavoidable complications or fictional pain and suffering.
My guess is that the gradual erosion of WASP dominance in finance jobs correlates with a rise in the number of Jewish investment bankers and venture capitalists and the decline in the number of Jewish doctors. Also, academe which opened up to Jews in the 60's is attractive for those who want to make a somewhat comfortable living but don't want to work particularly hard past the age of 35 (Larry Summers and Robert Reich come to mind).
Interracial marriage has increased over the years. Someone named "Wong" has some Chinese ancestry, but you don't know how much. Obama is half white. I would not be surprised if many of the doctors classified as black have some non-black ancestry.
A surname-based observation on achievement ... eight high school students here on Long Island have been named regional finalists in the highly prestigious Siemens science contest.
Their names:
Shweta and Shilpa Iyer (twin sisters)
Evan Chernack
Aneri Kinariwalla
Jeremy Applebaum
William Gil
Allen Shin
Ranjeev Chabra
Sounds like four South Asian, two Jewish, and one East Asian.
Individuals differ on which markers they take to be indicative of success or worthy of high status. I am a Reform Jew, and among non-Orthodox and secular Jews, achievements of intellect, creativity, wealth, and doing good, all count, with a combination being most potent. As Golda Meir said, "A Jew is like anyone else--only more so." Some Jews focus primarily on wealth as an achievement and some focus on intellect/creativity, and often the two can and are inextricably intertwined.
To what extent is the recent increase in black upward mobility a function of AA?
At Kaiser Oakland most of the patients are black. The lobbies have pictures of the staff. There are lots of pictures of blacks, some are physicians but most of the pictured blacks are those who perform some technical function, like X-Ray technician.
On the other hand on the wall plagues outside the individual clinics almost all of the doctors names are those of East Asians - Chinese, japanese and Koreans. There are no Jewish names and certainly no Jewsish pictures.
Its rather like the transformation seen in Los Angeles grocery stores before the Rodney King riots. For years those stores and delis were all owned by Jews. But the Jews left. They sold out to the Koreans. So it was Koreans on the roofs with rifles when the riots began.
It looks very much like Jews abandonned medicine in favor of the Koreans. This may be only for general practictioner medical positions in ghetto areas. I dodn't know about the Mayo clinic and the top teaching hospitals.
Certainly Kaiser would like a couple more black MDs if only to put their pictures on the wall.
Albertosaurus
'For example, more black surnames becoming doctors is a good sign of upward social mobility, "
Or it might be a sign that the medical profession is losing prestige. This always happens when women reach a certain percentage of a profession.
Yeah, correlation is only correlation.
Also - they are becoming doctors in an entire society that has lost prestige. It's one thing to be a black doctor in 1955 America, even one that got his MD from an HBC, quite another to get an MD from an accredited US med school in 2012, because the entire society has been dumbed down and its citizenship stock is degraded.
Context matters.
Which is more important when it comes to appreciation, depth or breadth?
An Opthamologist who restores vision for thousands (and one who teaches others to do the same) is worth much more to a society than a entertainer who amuses millions.
Which is more important when it comes to appreciation, depth or breadth?
An Opthamologist who restores vision for thousands (and one who teaches others to do the same) is worth much more to a society than a entertainer who amuses millions.
Weiner NOT being an MD is downward mobility from his MD father's level.
Mad Men is a great show. Weiner has probably made much more money than his father. But the fact is that entertainment is a parasitic industry. It is the "glittering scum atop the deep river of production." We will always have some kind of entertainment because we like it. But we don't strictly need professionals to do it for us.
Also, those in the entertainment industry are famous for their many serious character flaws. Being an entertainer is like having a huge alarm going off over your head at all times warning people away. Increasingly people are able to ignore this alarm, but back when most people understood that entertainers were immoral, silly people they were essentially in touch with reality. It's no accident the evil Left has used entertainment as it's propaganda organ.
Wiener's father may have been a distinguished physician, but that link doesn't tell us that. That USC medical program might have been named after him because Wiener endowed it in memory or in honor of his father.
fun facts
Even 'funner' would be a treatise on 'Given Names and Social Mobility'. Of course members of the black underclass are the ones you'd want to read a paper like that. But you know...
Steve, perhaps you should consider going back to a "real" job. Writing has certain risks.
"As long as there is nothing peculiar about the path of descent of surnames, the surnames link the status of groups of families many generations in the past with their descendants in the present." (Emphasis added)
Over the past 100+ years, many Jews changed their names, particularly those Jews with an active interest in social mobility. I'm not sure how assiduous Mr. Clark may have been about following these changes. His conclusions about Jewish social mobility are suspect for this reason.
The prestige and intelligence of doctors has been on a downward trend at least for the past 3 decades. Ask any doctor over 50 about their opinion of the current crop of candidates out of medical school.
This shift was caused by a relative increase of high earning business executives relative to doctors. In 1975 the top 1% of income earners was probably 2/3 doctors. Today it's about 1/7.
Wall Street, Silicon Valley and management consultants are sucking up the smartest kids coming out of undergrad. A 22 year old faced with 4 years of being a poor student, or going to Goldman or Amazon and immediately making six figures is going to be pretty tempted.
This shift is probably even more pronounced among Jews than high IQ gentiles because of their geographic distribution. I'd imagine smart kids in Iowa are still probably going to medical school a lot.
Kids in the Northeast and California have much more of a regional draw into finance and technology.
For example, Matthew Weiner, creator of Mad Men, is the non-M.D. son of an M.D. (a highly distinguished one, too). Is he an example of downward or upward mobility?
Upward obviously. He probably makes ten times what his father did.
Not all practicing physicians choose to join the AMA. Physicians in some smaller specialties perceive that the AMA does not represent their interests. But a lot of physicians just don't want endless junk mail (AMA is always trying to sell insurance). If you really want to track ethnicity among the pool of physicians, state licensure data would be better.
The fastest way to improve one's socio-economic status is through marriage. Measuring surnames means that you are only measuring how men's lives change but not women's. One reproductive strategy is to have lots of attractive daughters and hope they marry well. It is low risk. Having sons is trickier because their fortunes can vary. As a parent you might hit the genetic jackpot or you might draw lemons.
Wow, that drop among Jews in the medical profession is pretty eye-opening.
The question is, where did they go instead that might be of equal prestige? Most of the obvious alternatives were probably pretty heavily Jewish already, including academe, journalism, and certainly Hollywood.
So what professions are getting a bump in Jews to make up for the fall-off in Jews in medicine? Finance, maybe? Certainly finance as a whole has swelled in size greatly over the decades.
I came across one HBDer a while back who actively looked for doctors with jewish names in an effort to avoid AA doctors. If I were smart and minority, I might try to avoid becoming a doctor. Don't law schools jave some sort of blind grading that makes AA harder to implement.
Affirmative Action: anti-doctor, pro-lawyer...
What I want to know is, where have all the quants gone? Out to lunch?
Battle Ground Watch
It looks to me like the polls are full of shit (that's not the only source I'm drawing on BTW), and if the election were held today (or on Nov 6 extrapolating from current trends) Romney would trounce Obama. In other words, Romney's going to win unless he puts his crank in the butter tray, or some earthshaking narrative goes 0bama's way.
What I don't get is why there haven't been any quants here talking about oversampling of minorities, implausible 0bama-friendly assumptions baked into the poll cakes, etc. Romney looks pretty close to 308 electoral votes at the moment.
http://www.forbes.com/top-colleges/list/
Best election comment I've read to date:
If this utterly useless skell would've actually performed his duties, there would not be a need to cram for the final debate. He should already know the answers. But, that's a plus for America. The empty suit with the empty head sitting in the empty chair while making more empty promises will be sitting in the passenger seat of the moving van as it drives away from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. at 12:01 P.M. EST on Jan. 20, 2013.
OK, so Romney has a lock on every state RCP lists as Solid, Likely, or Lean Republican. That's 206 EV, total.
Then there are the toss-ups. First are the toss-ups that favor Romney, or favor 0 by less than 2 points. I predict Romney will take all of them because the polls are at least 2 points biased against him (all averages from RCP): Colorado (R+0.2; 9 EV), Florida (R+1; 29 EV), New Hampshire (R+1; 4 EV), Ohio (0+1.6; 18 EV), Virginia (Tie; 13 EV).
That's 73 more EVs for Romney, for a total of 279. He's already got enough to win, and that's just the easy pickins. Iowa (0+2.4; 6 EVs), Nevada (0+3; 6 EVs), and Wisconsin (0+2.8; 10 EVs) are in play, too. That's another 22 EVs.
Then there are the states that are supposedly 0bama territory, but have got to have Dems sweating bullets: Michigan (0+5)(16),
Pennsylvania (0+5)(20), Minnesota (0+8)(10), Oregon (0+7.5)(7). A five point lead given this? If they have any brains at all, 0's strategists are crapping their pants. Or shopping the resumes around.
To sum up, Romney has the 279 he needs to win the election right now, and could easily wind up with another 22 EVs.
I really had no clue the electorate was this tired of 0bama; apparently all they needed was a viable candidate to replace him.
Response to other comments:
About 80% of law school grades are completely blind, and 100% for first year classes. The typical class 100% of the grade is a final exam you do only write a code on. As a result most NAMs end up in the bottom 20% of their class. The exception to blind grading are classes with speaking presentations and small seminars.
Re: malpractice suits, it is easy to attack them until you lose your arm because of malpractice then learn the most you can get is 250,000 because of "malpractice reform." Or maybe your wife gets a mascectemy and then is told "whoops turns out you never had cancer after all!" Then you don't even get to go to court with a jury, but rather go to a private arbitration where there are no appeals and the arbitrator is a former hospital lawyer who knows he will lose business if he rules for patients too much.
Doctors like to complain about malpractice because they often have god complexes and cannot admit error, especially surgeons. What we have now, however, is nearly eliminated malpractice suits for many types of errors and people. I have been a lawyer for 11 years and have never even seen a malpractice case, not even once. What I mainly see going to federal court are patent and copyright disputes and banks evicting people they've foreclosed on. In state court, car accidents and credit card companies garnishing people's wages are the main type of civil case.
There are a ton of random interesting articles in the Mankind Quarterly archive. Someone should fix their Wikipedia page, it is nothing but nasty attacks on it.
Do you suppose some Jews feel a bit nervous about Obama in the second term? Though Obama played to Jews, he's essentially a black guy with no great personal feelings for Jews. He played Jews like they played him. In his first term, he played close to Jewish demands since he needed Jewish support to win second term. But in his second term, he can do as he wishes since he's never going to have to run again. And he might act more independently of Jewish interests.
So, maybe some Jews are too keen on Obama's second term.
Try finding ANY Jewish name at the AAPLOG [American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists]:
AAPLOG Physician Directory
I never saw any in my state, and God knows we have a metric sh*t-ton of Jewish doctors at all the university hospitals.
Correction: at 279, Romney already has the 270 EVs needed yada yada yada.
Blacks going from 0.19% to 0.29% might be a statistical aberration.
The level of "prestige" of being a doctor depends on your location. If you are making $400 K as an orthopod in Porterville, CA -despite having an M.D. form PapaDoc Medical School of Southern Haiti, and not being board-certified - then you are hot stuff locally.
(I exaggerate a little, but a large number of physicians in the Central Valley of CA, and in the less posh areas of LA are grads from Iranian, Indian, and Mexican schools.)
On the other hand, in Marin County, being a doctor doesn't mean much, since your 30 year-old neighbor prob. makes more than you do.
@Peter
Shweta and Shilpa Iyer = Tamil Brahmin
Aneri Kinariwalla = Gujurati Merchant
Ranjeev Chabra = Punjabi Arora ( Merchant )
"Medicine is definitely a prole occupation for smart people. True, you get to take Wed off to play golf with your pharma pals, but the day-to-day business of treating patients is icky....."
No full-time doctor takes time off during workdays to play golf... if they ever did so.
Now dentists.... For the past couple of decades, it is almost universal that dentists take every Friday off. How did this become the standard?
The acceptance rates for dental schools are now about the same as medical schools (40%); I can remember when practically anyone with a pulse got accepted into school. Smart proles figured it out.
I am a Reform Jew, and among non-Orthodox and secular Jews, achievements of intellect, creativity, wealth, and doing good, all count, with a combination being most potent.
An implicit admission that a high level of Jewish ethnocentrism exists among non-Orthodox Jews. Many non-Orthodox Jews fail to recognize this and apparently don't realize that this kind of communalism is rare among non-Jewish whites in the US.
"Or it might be a sign that the medical profession is losing prestige. This always happens when women reach a certain percentage of a profession."
Maybe so Mr. aging hag, but what really makes a good doctor is doing well in medical school and then doing well on the job. Women by and large, as has been pointed out here before, do not need affirmative action to get into medical school, or to get doctor jobs. I've heard of many outstanding ones, and a surprisingly large number who have pioneered different treatments and methods, though I don't know of many Nobel Prizes. The whistle blowers on the bad polio vaccine were women doctors, who were ostracized by the AMA back in the 50s and 60s for their pains. So if women make people think less of the medical profession, I'd say that's misguided. If you think so, well, who says superficial status counting is only a female occupation.
Affirmative Action, otoh, whether extended to women (if it is), or to "minorities" (which it almost always is), does degrade the profession. I would not go to a black doctor unless very highly recommended by someone I trusted. I avoid them entirely for the most part, and it's due to AA. But blacks want to avoid whites doctors, often, and they do need doctors of their own race.
Bostonian:"Interracial marriage has increased over the years. Someone named "Wong" has some Chinese ancestry, but you don't know how much. Obama is half white. I would not be surprised if many of the doctors classified as black have some non-black ancestry."
The mean percentage of White ancestry for a Black American is around 20%. Hence, it's pretty safe to assume that most Black people that you encounter have some White ancestry.
"Sounds like four South Asian, two Jewish, and one East Asian."
You counted William Gil as East Asian. Gil can be a Spanish surname, pronounced similarly to "hill".
"Do you suppose some Jews feel a bit nervous about Obama in the second term? Though Obama played to Jews, he's essentially a black guy with no great personal feelings for Jews"
Obama is an ingrate. America and American Jews (his Chicago real estate friends) gave him opportunities he didn't merit.
Matthew Weiner's dad:
http://www.usc.edu/uscnews/stories/8674.html
Not a Nobel level neurologist, but a big deal at the Southern California regional level: head of the USC Medical School's Department of Neurology for decades.
Which is more important when it comes to appreciation, depth or breadth?
An Opthamologist who restores vision for thousands (and one who teaches others to do the same) is worth much more to a society than a entertainer who amuses millions.
Based on income, the entertainer is worth far more. The doctor is providing a far more valuable service, but the entertainer is servicing far more people.
".. but the day-to-day business of treating patients is icky..."
Yep. The working conditions of doctors are prob. worse than most people making $200K +/year. Shabby offices, miniscule change rooms, aged hospitals in dangerous areas of town.
For hospital docs, the worst part is the smell. People defecating around you, sometimes on you; the vomit,; the incomparable odor of fresh blood mixed with gastric juices.
My first time delivering a baby as a medical student: I see the mother's blood from the episiotomy I just did, her urine running out, her pooping while pushing, amniotic fluid, the baby's head, and baby poop (meconium). Kind of a perfect storm of body fluids.
All the while the OB resident was standing behind me screaming instructions in heavily-accented English. Or maybe it was all in Korean. I forgot.
I was 23 years old.
I did not go into OB.
Do you suppose some Jews feel a bit nervous about Obama in the second term? Though Obama played to Jews, he's essentially a black guy with no great personal feelings for Jews
Well Sheldon adelson is spending $70 million to defeat Obama so yeah, I would guess some of them are nervous
This is total speculation but to paraphrase whiskey, Obama hates, hates, HATES Jews. A lot of the high IQ African Americans are anti Semitic and Obama had close ties with rev wright, Palestinian activists, leftist black professors, Valerie jarret and other suspected anti-Semites.
Add to that his Muslim heritage, opposition to wars with israel's enemies (Iraq, Iran) hostility towards israel's friends (Mubarak, gadaffi ), tumultuous relationship with Netanyahu, hatred of billionaires especially from the financial sector, and his throwing major Jewish donors like David geffen & George soros under the bus, snubbing of Hollywood celebs, and his reluctance to set foot in Israel, and I think it's quite likely he's a closet anti -Semite.
But it's a testimony to obama's considerable political skill (or Jewish naïveté) that despite all this, he still enjoys considerable Jewish support.
Maybe Jews just figure they have so much power, even an antisemetic president is no real threat and having a black muslimish president is useful because it gives the bigots someone other than Jews to be paranoid about.
I wonder if Jews are getting driven out of the medical profession because of competition from Asians (including Indians).
But blacks want to avoid whites doctors, often, and they do need doctors of their own race
You might be surprised on that. I'd be willing to bet that more blacks seek out white doctors than black doctors, although some afrocentrics undoubtedly do so.
A lot of black have superstitious beliefs that whites some got and continue to get all the good stuff. You do know it is a common practice among blacks to buy their lottery tickets in white neighborhoods because they figure that, naturally, the white power structure just funnels these to white neighborhoods and people.
Along with the superstitions, what they are also doing in this is projecting what they would do were they in power - corruptly funnel stuff to their own tribe on race. And black power structures around the world generally bear this out.
The acceptance rates for dental schools are now about the same as medical schools (40%)
Dentistry offers several lifestyle advantages over medicine. One can practice right out of school without a residency or fellowships, although residencies are available if one wants to specialize. Also, much of dentistry is cash business, so it is less affected by health care reform, and there aren't life-or-death emergencies that require work at all hours.
A declining number of Jews in medicine doesn't surprise me. In the U.S., it is an immigrant striver profession. In the 1970's, a significant proportion of Jewish doctors still would have been children or grandchildren of poor immigrants. Young American Jews today are more removed from the poverty of their Ashkenazi immigrant ancestors and more integrated into American society. Medical training takes a minimum of seven years after college (many more for some specialists). Young Jews with other options may not want to give up their twenties and early thirties for a profession that doesn't offer the opportunity to make big money.
Has anyone found out where Weyl got his surname data? My PDF reader is not cooperating, but it sounds as if he collated them by hand.
I'm working on a lookup table of the most distinctively Jewish surnames, based on their frequencies in the Jewish community vs. the host community. To do that, I need lists of surnames of known Jews from a known area. I have some already, but if there are more in Weyl's references they're always welcome.
I may have missed it, but is there some reason why I can't give money via Paypal? Their recent changes to screw their customers really suck, but unfortunately they are still the default medium of exchange on the Internet.
How can I easily give $50? (Mail? Puhlleeeze, Negro.)
This is really stupid. This site has the worst possible options for donating. I want to give money, but I can't, at least not in any feasible way. I am not going to *mail* in a check, for example.
Steve, hire some 12-year old kid to give you IT advice.
I just don't get it about donating here. Practically every teen-ager posting an Android hack has figured it out, but Steve can't receive donations by the methods used by the vast majority of Internet users.
Is he secretly backed by the Koch brothers and therefore doesn't really want individual donations?
Weiner NOT being an MD is downward mobility from his MD father's level.
No, Enoch, that's not right. In terms of social status Matthew has stands higher than his father. It probably says something very negative about our society that entertainers, lawyers and financiers are more valued than research doctors, scientists and engineers, but it is also the truth.
You counted William Gil as East Asian. Gil can be a Spanish surname, pronounced similarly to "hill".
Allen Shin was the East Asian. I wasn't sure what William Gil was.
"You might be surprised on that. I'd be willing to bet that more blacks seek out white doctors than black doctors, although some afrocentrics undoubtedly do so."
Yeah, look at what Michael Jackson's Afrocentric health care preferences did for him.
For example, in the U.S., surnames that are at least 90% black include Washington, Smalls, Merriweather, and Stepney.
Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln... see a pattern?
Merriweather? Let's not confuse Lee Meriwether with Eartha Kitt.
Obama doesn't hate Jews; he's indifferent to them and their issues. As well as him being black, don't forget that Obama is of a younger generation than past presidents. To be anti-Israel and anti-Zionism yet pro-Jewish* is a hallmark of such a generation.
* To be more accurate, pro-1930s-Jewish, imagining the Jews nobly living, and fighting fascism, in Shtetls in hostile foreign lands - rather than in a country of their own.
Svigor, the bookmakers still have Obama as a nearly 2:1 favorite to win. He's -190, with Romney at +170 (bookmaker.eu) or +165 (5Dimes.eu).
"Try finding ANY Jewish name at the AAPLOG [American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists]:"
Dr. Bernard Nathanson, became a Catholic convert, born Jewish:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/feb/27/former-abortion-doctor-who-became-pro-life-dies/?page=all
"Try finding ANY Jewish name at the AAPLOG [American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists]:"
Dr. Bernard Nathanson, became a Catholic convert, born Jewish:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/feb/27/former-abortion-doctor-who-became-pro-life-dies/?page=all
@night nurse, I think women make terrific doctors and in some fields, it is understandable that they predominate. Pediatrics, for example. Most people want their naked tiny tykes examined by a smart, caring woman. (Although they would probably want their pediatric surgeon to be male.) Same goes for OB-GYN. Basic stuff is handled better by a woman doc. And of course brilliant women have made great contributions to genetics and other life sciences since WWII (not to mention the great seismologist Inga Lehmann, google her...)
I am only stating facts. When a profession becomes significantly female, it loses prestige. This may not be right, it just is.
Your basic Steven Goldberg, the Jewish sociologist who gave every online anti-Semitic HBD boy the only intellectually respectable framework for patriarchy out there. (Yes, Svigor, I am speaking to you. Read him, he's good.)
In my favorite soap opera, Mad Men, Dr. Greg Harris, is an incompetent surgeon, and kinda rapist, and suffering from a little arrested development. I wonder if this portrayal was colored by a subconscious bias Weiner has about Goys intruding in the Jewish trade. Or is it a projection of his own inadequacies?
I don't see medicine as a trade for striving new immigrants, unless Jews have been striving new immigrants for thousands of years. I will concede that it does fit the traditional "bag trade" classification, along with tailor, tinker, painter, paperhanger, jeweler - trades that allowed you to carry all of your tools on your back and to make a run for it if things got hot.
Anonymous said...
"Steve, perhaps you should consider going back to a 'real' job. Writing has certain risks."
Too bad posting lame, snarky comments anonymously doesn't carry the same risks.
I find it ironic that so many readers here denigrate the medical profession, for Pete's sake, Darwin went to medical school (he couldn't cut it) and his father was a doctor.
Even people with the intellectual ability shy away from medicine because of squimishnes, lack of tenacity, inability to multitask, fear of failure, lack of manual/artistic skills, and the list goes on.
How many doctors keep working beyond normal retirement age because they find the job so rewarding and intellectually stimulating?
I would like to read about Indian surnames. I work in the tech industry in Seattle and I work with lots of Indians and for the most part they aren't all that forthcoming about caste background. But, I know that if I meet an Iyer, that this person is likely a southern Brahmin. Interestingly enough, Iyers always seem to be in positions of authority, at least minor ones. They do well, in other words. I've often thought that it would be interesting to "crack the code" on what some of the other surnames imply about background and relative status in Indian society and then see if I can see aspects of that playing out in the corporate setting in the US.
"Too bad posting lame, snarky comments anonymously doesn't carry the same risks."
I'm sorry. It was pretty lame. I love this blog.
online anti-Semitic HBD boy the only intellectually respectable framework for patriarchy out there. (Yes, Svigor, I am speaking to you. Read him, he's good.)
Who's scruffy-lookin'? Besides that, I can divine a recommendation in that paragraph, but outside the parentheses, no sentence.
Along with the superstitions, what [blacks] are also doing in this is projecting what they would do were they in power - corruptly funnel stuff to their own tribe on race. And black power structures around the world generally bear this out.
Most whites are not like this, but WASPs certainly are, and very sneaky about it too.
Haha, would it were so. It is true of this ANGLO-SAXON, but absent in most. Sounds like Jewish projection to me.
Obama doesn't hate Jews; he's indifferent to them and their issues.
That's "ANTI-SEMITISM!!!"
Svigor, the bookmakers still have Obama as a nearly 2:1 favorite to win. He's -190, with Romney at +170 (bookmaker.eu) or +165 (5Dimes.eu).
If I was a gambler I'd put a chunk on Romney to win, but I've always been averse to that pasttime.
anonymous:"In my favorite soap opera, Mad Men, Dr. Greg Harris, is an incompetent surgeon, and kinda rapist, and suffering from a little arrested development. I wonder if this portrayal was colored by a subconscious bias Weiner has about Goys intruding in the Jewish trade. Or is it a projection of his own inadequacies?"
Interestingly, Roger Sterling made a crack about Harris not being his real name (i.e., that he was a Jewish guy who had changed his name).
"...Darwin went to medical school..."
Chekhov was a practicing doctor.
"How many doctors keep working beyond normal retirement age because they find the job so rewarding and intellectually stimulating?"
Probably very few. I'm not a doctor, but when I see 75 year old MDs still working, I always assume that they've squandered all their retirement money NBA-style or through drug abuse or have do-nothing kids that they're supporting. I can imagine medical research being intellectually stimulating, but not medical practice. And I've never seen any of them approach their practice as a fun activity.
Dr. Bernard Nathanson, became a Catholic convert, born Jewish
Right - while you posted that, I was working on NY State as an example.
Initially you get 30 names, but for some reason, "Lynn Pisaniello" was listed twice, so throw one of them out, and you're left with 29 unique individuals, which I categorized thusly:
Almost Certainly Jewish
• Robert Lobel, M.D.
• Bernard N. Nathanson, M.D.
Maybe Jewish
• Dennis P. Heimback, M.D.
[there are a tiny number of Jewish "Heimbachs", but almost all Heimbachs and Heimbacks seem to be Christians or Roman Catholics]
• Anne Mielnik, MD
["Mielnik" seems to be a Baltic Roman Catholic name]
• Paul S. Kruger, M.D.
["Kruger" can be Jewish, but "Paul" ought to be "Saul"]
• Robert Scanlon, M.D.
[there do seem to be a handful of Jewish "Scanlons", but most genealogy websites think that the name is WASP-ish or Irish Catholic, from the British Isles]
• Richard Waldman, M.D.
[maybe 50/50 here - there are certainly plenty of non-Jewish "wild-men".]
So by the numbers, I'm guessing between
2/29ths = 6.9%
and
7/29ths = 24.1%
in heavily Jewish New York.
[And probably a lot closer to 6.9% than to 24.1%.]
But like I said before, I live in a "flyover" state, with tons of USN&WR very highly-rated medical facilities, and we have ZERO Jewish pro-life obstetricians.
PS: Ron Paul is listed in Texas.
Richard Waldman, M.D.
[maybe 50/50 here - there are certainly plenty of non-Jewish "wild-men".]
You mean woodsman (as in forest-man or forester) or more literally "wood-man".
More African American doctors over the last few decades- has anyone looked at how this correlates with the rate of malpractice?
I don't see medicine as a trade for striving new immigrants, unless Jews have been striving new immigrants for thousands of years. I will concede that it does fit the traditional "bag trade" classification, along with tailor, tinker, painter, paperhanger, jeweler - trades that allowed you to carry all of your tools on your back and to make a run for it if things got hot.
You might as well add criminal to the list of Jewish Bag Trades. Organized crime was popular for Jewish immigrants in the 1920s, more so than for other ethnic groups. (Southern Italians were a special case, having a strong crime network in the old country.)
I suspect that part of the striver / stingy mentality of the Old Jews was to keep their kids out of crime (and into more constructive respectable Bag Trades) and thus reduce goyish wrath.
"I am only stating facts. When a profession becomes significantly female, it loses prestige. This may not be right, it just is."
I get it. I got it. I just think it's foolish, and one of those human quirks that can adjust to changing circumstances. Men (and women) being physical (or spiritual beings having a physical experience as one of my friends claims) will always need something peculiar to their gender that gives them meaning and identity, but it doesn't have to be profession. That may be a cultural meme.
Personally I am more futuristic than some around here, more inclined to see a larger picture. You see, evolution (which most here espouse) does not mean 6000 bc-2100 ad frozen in time. It means constant change.
That said, there are so many professions that have been formerly all-male, that are now mixed, that status seekers may have fewer and fewer places to run. I mean plumbing and astro-physics require very special aptitudes as well as desire for status.
Yeah, look at what Michael Jackson's Afrocentric health care preferences did for him.
actually Michael Jackson was a Eurocentric extremist as evidenced by all his skin bleaching, cosmetic changes to his nose, lips, eyes, cheeks, choice of wigs, choice of high level employees, and the fact that he left his half-billion dollar fortune to 3 white kids. However Jackson was skilled at pretending to be afrocentric when he needed the black community to rally around him during child molestation accusations.
I believe the family alleged in a wrongful death lawsuit that it was AEG who chose the black doctor; if Jackson chose him, it was probably only because he was desperate for a doctor willing to hook him up with propofol.
Svigor,
Read Goldberg, he's good. That's as simple as I'm gonna make it for ya.
Nurse,
No one can predict the future. Some things never change. Some things do.
Just looking at things as they are, and have been since the beginning of written history. This is not the first time women have poured into professions, only to see them lose prestige. They win a Pyrrhic victory - while improving services in many ways. I think pediatrics is much improved with women dominating the profession. Think of all the traumatized tykes of yesteryear!!
On a somewhat related note: the U.S. Census Bureau provides data from Census 2000 showing every surname in the USA that was reported at least 100 times, along with the racial distribution of those claiming each name:
http://www.census.gov/genealogy/www/data/2000surnames/index.html
@GLS
99% of Iyers have dropped the Iyer surname about 50 years ago, due to assaults from dravidianists
If you go to google and type in the surname AND caste, you can decode about half the names
In some areas, the middle name shows the caste, in some areas the first name shows the caste.
Each caste has a series of names that they use about 80% of the time
There is some over-lap
Indians can decode caste often from name alone, it takes several years of immersion in the culture to decode
Here are some famous Indian
Lalu YADAV = Backward caste North Indian shepherd YADAV caste
Ram Vilas PASWAN = Untouchable North Indian PASWAN caste
Jaswant SINGH = North Indian Rajput upper caste
Kalyan SINGH = Backward caste North Indian from Lodh caste
Ajit SINGH = Jat Landlord
All 3 are Singhs and from a distance both look like upper caste Rajput names
Devi Lal = Jat Landlord
Mamata BANNERJI = Bengali brahmin
Buddhadev BHATTACHARYA = Bengali Brahmin
Deve GOWDA = Karnataka Landlord
YS.REDDY = Andhra Landlord of REDDY caste
CB.NAIDU = Andhra Landlord of NAIDU caste
Jagjit Singh ARORA = Sikh of Arora Merchant Caste
KPS.GILL = Jat Sikh Landlord
Manohar PARRIKAR = Goa Brahmin
D'Souza = Goa Brahmin converted to Catholicism during Portuguese rule
Keshubhai PATEL = Gujurat Landlord
Surendra JAIN = Jain Merchant
Arjun MUNDA = Forest tribal of Munda tribe
Babulal MARANDI = Forest Tribal of Marandi tribe
Lambodhar KHAND = Forest tribal of KHAND tribe
Purno SANGMA = Mongoloid Tribal from Meghalaya
Manisha KOIRALA = Nepali Brahmin
Subash GHISING = Nepali Gurkha
NARZARY = Mongoloid BODO tribal
Suresh RAINA = Kashmiri Brahmin
Pico IYER = Iyer tamil brahmin
Ajit BISHNOI = Farmer of Bishnoi sect
Rani MUKHERJI = Bengali brahmin
Atal VAJPAYEE = North Indian brahmin
V.SCINDIA = Royalty of the Maratha Scindia dynasty
A.PAWAR = Maratha Landlord
Mamata KULKARNI = Maharashtrian Brahmin
Sachin TENDULKAR = Maharashtrian Brahmin
Anonymous 10/21/12 2:08 PM wrote:
but when I see 75 year old MDs still working, I always assume that they've squandered all their retirement money NBA-style or through drug abuse or have do-nothing kids that they're supporting.
A lot of doctors devote so much time and effort to their careers that they have no lives outside of work. Why should someone retire if he has no hobbies or has a distant relationship with his wife and kids (if he even has a wife and kids)?
"I am only stating facts. When a profession becomes significantly female, it loses prestige. This may not be right, it just is."
Quite likely this is so because female-dominated professions tend to get paid less. But ascribing lower female wages to social prejudice, or some other moral failing of society's, is untenable.
They can be explained by an economic theory, the "contingent workforce theory".
In the case of women, the key factor is that most women get married and have kids. Typically, the man of the house will work full time, while the woman may want some flexibility to drop out of paid work for a few years or work part time. No such options for the man: as husband and father, he has to work full time. (The apparent exceptions are mostly men whose careers have failed.)
How does this lead to lower wages for women? Aren't women owed the same wages as men for work equal value? Shouldn't they demand them?
One explanation is that these part-time-working or work-life-balance-seeking women lack the single-minded focus needed to get ahead, the way their husbands do, so in fact their work is not of equal value. There may be something in this, but it's NOT what the contingent-workforce theory says.
The CWT says they get paid less simply because they can afford to get paid less. A woman who's sharing her husband's full-time income may WANT to be paid at the same rate as the average worker, but she can AFFORD to be paid at a lower rate. Contingent (e.g., part-time, flexible) workers like these women thus bid down the price of labour in the markets they participate in. A profession with lots of such women in it will tend to have depressed wages relative to other professions requiring the same skills etc.
It's hard luck for people in those professions who don't have a partner's income to share, particularly for those who really need a full family wage, like single parents. But remember that people do not get paid what they deserve, either in an absolute sense (if there is such a thing) or relative to other workers. In general, they get paid the minimum the employer can get away with paying them. And that depends on the characteristics of a given labour market.
Cennbeorc
"Anonymous said...
What I mainly see going to federal court are patent and copyright disputes and banks evicting people they've foreclosed on."
Why would malpractice cases show up in a federal court? Why would anyone expect to see them there?
"In state court, car accidents and credit card companies garnishing people's wages are the main type of civil case."
Nobody ever said malpractice cases dominated the dockets in local courts - only that their effects are baleful.
I know of many doctors who say that people trying to win the malpractice lottery are a big problem - for doctors individually, and for the medical profession as a whole. You - a lawyer - say it isn't.
Who do you think most people are going to believe?
Interestingly, Roger Sterling made a crack about Harris not being his real name (i.e., that he was a Jewish guy who had changed his name).
As if there were something surprising about a Jew being named Harris?
David Harris is the Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee. Another David Harris is President and CEO of the National Jewish Democratic Council.
What is the correlation between a surname and the ethnicity of its bearer? Anyone have a number?
I'll help you out. It has be greater than 0 and less than 1. Seriously, someone has done a study of this, right?
Svigor,
Read Goldberg, he's good. That's as simple as I'm gonna make it for ya.
Yeah, I got that part, thanks for the recommendation. Was just trying to figure out what the sentence preceding the parentheses was supposed to mean.
"Based on income, the entertainer is worth far more. The doctor is providing a far more valuable service, but the entertainer is servicing far more people."
The real issue is that the Hollywood producer has way more utility to the tribe than a doctor because of the former's ability to influence people.
He said he was, and I paraphrase, "making is simple for you" Sviggy; I think that's a thinly-veiled insult at your IQ!
Yes, I agree with the above comment that the day-to-day practice of medicine is "icky".
I have often wondered why medicine has such high status. Given the ickiness.
Jonathan Harris, who played Dr Smith on Lost in Space, was of Russian Jewish origin. Family name was Charasuchin.
"Yes, I agree with the above comment that the day-to-day practice of medicine is "icky".
I have often wondered why medicine has such high status. Given the ickiness."
There was a man who was willing to face the ickiness of washing his follower's feet, and it only enhanced his prestige.
Doctors are the scientists who are willing to cater to the needs of their inferiors and for that we appreciate them.
Well, Anonymous, so do nurses.
Hopefully Steve none of your younger readers have been discouraged from the useful work of OBGYN by some of the foregoing comments, even my negative jackpot of bodily fluids should not deter in light of the miracle of human life - as a veteran of dozens of traumatic hospital nights I think the nadir might be the following list- - amniotic fluid (a healthy smell) plus mom's blood plus her spilling urine and liquified strained pregnantlady feces plus sweat plus caul moisture and cord moisture and mom has been crying with a runny nose for an hour and wiping her hand everywhere and the smell of pregnancy-induced linen-staining hehorrhoidal blood and gastric burps is in the mix and possibly a fungal and bacterial infection or two and when its over one (i.e.o.b.g.y.n.)gets to shake the hand of "dad" who while, as the impregnator of a female, is at least likely not in the bottom 5 percent of men, still is likely to be in the least likely fifty percent of males to successfully wash their hands after wiping emotional eyes and nose, rubbing ear, scratching scrotum, and even (much earlier in the day) massaging in sad self-pleasure the pregnancy-deprived male genital organ, complete with smegma and pelvic-congestion prostate fluid, etcetera, but, nevertheless, human life is precious as has been said a million times...
There may also be a significant % of Jews who have angliciased their surnames, or kids of anglo-jewish couples.
This reminds me a little of a study which purported to show that there was a significant surname gap between Irish supporters of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. Fine Gael supporters apparently have a higher proportion of Norman/Old English surnames, while Fianna Fáil supporters tend to have more Gaelic surnames.
It is important to note, that when using one of Clark's methods of comparing surnames in the census database to surnames in the listing of American physicians, the name Darcy only appears about 4-5 per thousand among American physicians, while above-average, is not impressive. It is miniscule when you compare it to 12.6 per thousand for Owusu (a high-status African surname), 21 for Katz (Ashkenazi Rabbis), and 112 for some Indian Surnames. (And I'd like to add, 10 per thousand for my own, lol)
It is important to note that India had some of the most stringent caste systems in history, and most high-IQ Indians have Brahmin surnames. The result seems to benefit only the elites, while India as a whole is economically and educationally lagging. This should be a lesson if people are thinking of making social policies revolving off of Clark's data.
A review of some specific high-status surnames are on this blog, and Clark's methods are highlighted in his book "The Son also Rises".
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/your-fate-thank-your-ancestors/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
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