My Wednesday Taki's Magazine column on the TV serial "Mad Men" is up.My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
October 28, 2009
October 27, 2009
Jews v. Episcopalians on IQ
A reader writes:
According to the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1997, the average IQ of Jewish youngsters is 111.3, and Episcopalians 110.3.Along those lines, here's a 2002 article I wrote on the demographic breakdown of the U.S. armed services personnel based on what religion they choose to have stamped on their dog tags.
Other groups include.
Catholic 101.5
Mormons 103.0
Atheist 105.4
Jews are less than half as likely as the average to join the military, whereas Episcopalians are only slightly below average in enlistments.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
Episcopalians v. Jews on IQ
One commenter makes the point that on some tests of intelligence measures, Episcopalians outscore Jews.
The evidence is mixed.
Inductivist looked at the average scores on the ten word vocabulary test included in the General Social Survey and found:
Mean IQ for whites
Episcopalian 109.9
Jews 109.0
Lutheran 107.4
Mormon 105.7
Presbyterian 102.3
United Methodists 101.8
Southern Baptists 98.0
Assembly of God 94.5
Pentecostal 92.2
In the post-Civil War period, it was common for ambitious young men flocking to New York to make it big in business to convert to Episcopalianism. That way older business leaders who were Episcopalians could see you were in church every Sunday. A lot of the converts were coming from post-Puritan religions such as Congregationalism, or from Methodism. So, Episcopalianism became very upper class. That's why some upper crust boarding schools have Catholic-sounding names like "St. Paul's" -- Episcopalianism is Anglicanism (i.e., Church of England) which, due to Henry VIII, was Catholicism minus the pope and plus divorce.
Arthur Hu has the 1990 average SAT scores by religion and by race. Note that scores averaged about 100 points lower than today before "recentering" in mid-1995. The two letter prefixes refer to race (Wh = white, AS = Asian, Al = All, etc.). In this, white Episcopalians barely outscored black Unitarians, and were 60 points behind Jews.
And here's a 2002 report on high SAT scoring groups from Gene Expression:
As one reader pointed out, Midwestern-centered faiths get a boost from the ACT effect -- the closer you are to Iowa, home of the ACT, the less likely you are to take the SAT unless you are an ambitious sort who is thinking of going to college on the coasts. So, Iowa has just about the highest average SAT scores in the country because only top students in Iowa take the SAT.
And, no, I don't know where Catholics are in the 1990 list. Another one of Hu's Rules is that Catholics are usually average in everything.
The evidence is mixed.
Inductivist looked at the average scores on the ten word vocabulary test included in the General Social Survey and found:
Mean IQ for whites
Episcopalian 109.9
Jews 109.0
Lutheran 107.4
Mormon 105.7
Presbyterian 102.3
United Methodists 101.8
Southern Baptists 98.0
Assembly of God 94.5
Pentecostal 92.2
In the post-Civil War period, it was common for ambitious young men flocking to New York to make it big in business to convert to Episcopalianism. That way older business leaders who were Episcopalians could see you were in church every Sunday. A lot of the converts were coming from post-Puritan religions such as Congregationalism, or from Methodism. So, Episcopalianism became very upper class. That's why some upper crust boarding schools have Catholic-sounding names like "St. Paul's" -- Episcopalianism is Anglicanism (i.e., Church of England) which, due to Henry VIII, was Catholicism minus the pope and plus divorce.
Arthur Hu has the 1990 average SAT scores by religion and by race. Note that scores averaged about 100 points lower than today before "recentering" in mid-1995. The two letter prefixes refer to race (Wh = white, AS = Asian, Al = All, etc.). In this, white Episcopalians barely outscored black Unitarians, and were 60 points behind Jews.
Race Religion Number Math + Verbal SATI presume this isn't the complete list. It's probably missing about the bottom half of the scores if the 1990 White Average was 934 and the list peters out at merely 923.
Wh Unitarian 1,745 1073
Wh Quaker 894 1037
Wh Judaism 25,600 1030 * Jewish Avg
Al Quaker 1,009 1029
As Hindu 4138 1029
Al Judaism 27,374 1026
As Presbyterian 3195 1022
As Angelican 197 1019
Al Hindu 4,741 1012
Wh Hindu 82 1004
As No Pref 17987 1001
As U Methodist 662 998
Wh Mennonite 952 990
As Unitarian 49 986
As Episcopal 444 983
Wh Chistian Sci 830 979
Wh No Pref 99,076 979
Al Mennonite 1,063 974
As Methodist 1108 973
As Quaker 25 973
Wh Mormon 6,400 972
Wh Episcopal 19,555 970
As S Baptist Conv 332 966
Af Unitarian 64 966 *Top Black
Al No Pref 137,305 963
Wh Luth Missouri 8,038 963
Wh Un Church of Christ 7,066 962
As Wesleyan 32 960
Al Luth Missouri 8,624 959
Al Episcopal 22,109 957* Episcopal
Wh Presbyterian 32,019 956
Wh Angelican 1,765 956
Al Chistian Sci 989 955
Al Presbyterian 37,353 955* Presbyterian
Al Un Church of Christ 7826 951
Wh U Methodist 23,470 949
Al Mormon 7,594 948
Wh Other 20,125 947
Wh Lutheran in Am 23,380 943
As Christn Reformed 298 943
Wh No Answer 44,397 942
Al U Methodist 26,037 939
Wh Afr Methodist 144 939
As Total 70739 938* Asian Avg
Wh S Baptist Conv 14,165 938
Al Lutheran in Am 25,020 937
Wh Total 688,933 934* White Avg
As Lutheran in Am 471 931
As Un Church of Christ 253 930
Al S Baptist Conv 15,729 929
As Judaism 218 925
Wh Christn Reformed 2,235 924
As Baptist 3003 924
As Islam 2184 923
And here's a 2002 report on high SAT scoring groups from Gene Expression:
| Average SAT score by religion for 2002, average ~1000, about 40% of each students take it | |
| Unitarian-Universalists | 1209 |
| Judaism | 1161 |
| Quakers | 1153 |
| Hinduism | 1110 |
| Mennonite | 1097 |
| Reformed Church of America | 1097 |
| Episcopal | 1096 |
| Evangelical Lutheran Church | 1094 |
| Presbyterian Church (USA) | 1092 |
| Baha'i | 1073 |
As one reader pointed out, Midwestern-centered faiths get a boost from the ACT effect -- the closer you are to Iowa, home of the ACT, the less likely you are to take the SAT unless you are an ambitious sort who is thinking of going to college on the coasts. So, Iowa has just about the highest average SAT scores in the country because only top students in Iowa take the SAT.
And, no, I don't know where Catholics are in the 1990 list. Another one of Hu's Rules is that Catholics are usually average in everything.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
Just because you're a hypochondriac ...
... doesn't mean people aren't trying to sneeze on you (to adapt Henry Kissinger's observation on his paranoia). Mickey Kaus writes:
Shouldn't doctors give patients waiting to see them little hand-held beepers or vibrating devices like those some crowded restaurants give you when you're waiting for a table? That way you could wander around nearby instead of staying in the unventilated waiting room filled with coughing, sneezing people.
Mickey has been one of the few voices in the health care debate bluntly expressing how a lot of us feel deep down: Why, yes, I do want vast amounts of money spent on my personal health care.
Also, everytime I go for a walk, I end up debating with myself another one of Mickey's health/safety views:
Just realized that pedestrians should always go around intersections counterclockwise. Otherwise left-turners get you. You're welcome.
What do you think?
Absolute Value
From one of the many Anonymice in the comments:
If the financial collapse of September 2008 taught us anything, it's that there isn't a whole lot of difference between having a very large positive net worth and having a very large negative net worth - it's the absolute value of the thing which determines whether you have access to the corridors of power.
P.S. Glaivester points out that people who have a billion in assets and a billion in debts have a net worth of zero, but are still a lot more influential than people with neither. So, maybe the formula should be to add the square of the assets to the square of the debts?
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
October 26, 2009
Obama's played 24 rounds of golf in office
You hear all the time about Obama playing basketball, but he's also enjoyed a sizable amount of time indulging in a less cool sport. From Mark Knoller of CBS's Twitter:
- And by my count it's Obama's 24th round of golf since taking office. Today he's at Ft. Belvoir in Va.
- Today - Obama ties Pres. Bush in the number of rounds of golf played in office: 24. Took Bush 2 yrs & 10 months.
(Bush decided to give up playing golf in 2003 as a symbolic sacrifice for being a wartime President.)
I've managed to squeeze in two rounds of golf so far this year, but I guess the President has more time on his hands.
This is by no means a record for a President. Bill Clinton's goal for his last year in office was to break Dwight Eisenhower's Presidential record of a little over 100 rounds in a year in his final year. But since a round of golf and all the ancillary activities takes about six hours, this seems like rather a lot for a first year President.
From Don Van Natta Jr.'s February 2009 article in Golf Digest:
I've managed to squeeze in two rounds of golf so far this year, but I guess the President has more time on his hands.
This is by no means a record for a President. Bill Clinton's goal for his last year in office was to break Dwight Eisenhower's Presidential record of a little over 100 rounds in a year in his final year. But since a round of golf and all the ancillary activities takes about six hours, this seems like rather a lot for a first year President.
From Don Van Natta Jr.'s February 2009 article in Golf Digest:
For Obama, golf was appealing because he believed the game would help him connect with his colleagues in the state Senate as well as his constituents in far-flung places like downstate Illinois. Much to his surprise, he soon fell hard for the game's charms. Friends say he became as devoted to golf as he is to his beloved basketball. "Basketball and golf are his one-two," Marvin Nicholson says. "Now, he wants to play all the best courses: St. Andrews, Pebble Beach, Bethpage Black.
"He usually shoots in the mid-90s, sometimes the low 90s," Nicholson says. "He'd be better if he could play more. . . . He's pretty long off the tee . . . very good around the greens, a real good short game. The clubs that give him the most trouble are his long irons . . . or he'd shoot around 90 pretty consistently."My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
Changes in Forbes 400 from 1987 to 2009
The Forbes 400 is the most fun of the many rankings published by magazines these days, because individuals rapidly ascend and descend due to changes in fortune. In contrast, most of the other lists are forced to generate some excitement by arbitrarily changing their standards. For example, the US News and World Report list of top universities would be wholly stagnant if they didn't constantly shuffle their rules. For example, one year Cal Tech suddenly vaulted to #1, because the editors had changed the rules to benefit Cal Tech. The next year, Cal Tech had dropped considerably because the rules were changed again. Similarly, Golf Digest's Top 100 Golf Courses list has always featured Pine Valley as #1, except for brief periods when they fiddle with the methodology.
But the Forbes 400 is fun each year, because people really do rise and fall while the methodology stays the same. For example, casino king Sheldon Adelson came out of nowhere to peak at #3 in 2007, but is now down to 26.
But that turnover makes comparisons of two separate years a little tricky because different sectors come in and out of fashion. Nonetheless, comparing Nathaniel Weyl's ethnic breakdown of the 1987 Forbes 400 to one based on Jakob Berkman's work on the 2009 Forbes 400 seems reasonable. Race / History / Evolution Notes has the 1987 and 2009 figures here.
For example, Italians are up and Armenians are down. (Keep in mind that these are just estimates, and there are lots of complications in the way of coming up with perfect counts.)
But the Forbes 400 is fun each year, because people really do rise and fall while the methodology stays the same. For example, casino king Sheldon Adelson came out of nowhere to peak at #3 in 2007, but is now down to 26.
But that turnover makes comparisons of two separate years a little tricky because different sectors come in and out of fashion. Nonetheless, comparing Nathaniel Weyl's ethnic breakdown of the 1987 Forbes 400 to one based on Jakob Berkman's work on the 2009 Forbes 400 seems reasonable. Race / History / Evolution Notes has the 1987 and 2009 figures here.
For example, Italians are up and Armenians are down. (Keep in mind that these are just estimates, and there are lots of complications in the way of coming up with perfect counts.)
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
October 25, 2009
British government elects a new people
From the Daily Mail:
Huge increases in immigration over the past decade were a deliberate attempt to engineer a more multicultural Britain, a former Government adviser said yesterday.
Andrew Neather, a speechwriter who worked in Downing Street for Tony Blair and in the Home Office for Jack Straw and David Blunkett, said Labour's relaxation of controls was a plan to 'open up the UK to mass migration'.
As well as bringing in hundreds of thousands to plug labour market gaps, there was also a 'driving political purpose' behind immigration policy, he claimed.
Ministers hoped to change the country radically and 'rub the Right's nose in diversity'. But Mr Neather said senior Labour figures were reluctant to discuss the policy, fearing it would alienate its 'core working-class vote'.
On Question Time, Mr Straw was repeatedly quizzed about whether Labour's immigration policies had left the door open for the BNP.
Writing in the Evening Standard, Mr Neather revealed the 'major shift' in immigration policy came after the publication of a policy paper from the Performance and Innovation Unit, a Downing Street think tank based in the Cabinet Office.
The published version promoted the labour-market case for immigration but Mr Neather said unpublished versions contained additional reasons.
'Earlier drafts I saw also included a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural.
'I remember coming away from some discussions with the clear sense that the policy was intended - even if this wasn't its main purpose - to rub the Right's nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date.' The 'deliberate policy', from late 2000 until 'at least February last year', when the new points-based system was introduced, was to open up the UK to mass migration, he said.
Mr Neather defended the policy, saying mass immigration has 'enriched' Britain and made London a more attractive and cosmopolitan place.
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of the Migrationwatch think tank, said: 'Now at least the truth is out, and it's dynamite. Many have long suspected that mass immigration under Labour was not just a cock-up but a conspiracy. They were right.
'This Government has admitted three million immigrants for cynical political reasons concealed by dodgy economic camouflage.'
The chairmen of the cross-party Group for Balanced Migration, MPs Frank Field and Nicholas Soames, said: 'We welcome this statement which the whole country knows to be true.
'It is the first beam of truth that has officially been shone on the immigration issue in Britain.'
Who knew?
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
Arnold Palmers
My kid has started insisting on stopping at the Arco station to buy an "Arnold Palmer." That's a half lemonade and half iced tea beverage that, back in the 1960s, Arnie "invented" -- i.e., he requested a bartender in Palm Springs mix it up for him, and onlookers started asking for the "Arnold Palmer drink."
This product comes in a big can slathered in pictures of Palmer.
Man, is there any kind of pro sport where growing old is kindlier than golf? Arnie is 80 years old. He hasn't won a major championship since 1964. Yet, he still rakes in millions in endorsements.
This product comes in a big can slathered in pictures of Palmer.
Man, is there any kind of pro sport where growing old is kindlier than golf? Arnie is 80 years old. He hasn't won a major championship since 1964. Yet, he still rakes in millions in endorsements.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
October 23, 2009
UPDATED: Ricci II: New Haven sued by black fireman
In Slate, Stanford law professor Richard Thompson Ford is trumpeting:
UPDATED: Fortunately, the test scores were posted by Adversity.net, and we can figure out who Briscoe is pretty easily.
Actually, Briscoe did very badly on the written test in any sense. Although he scored a 92.08 on the oral test, he only scored a 59 on the blind-graded written test, putting him 66th out of the 77 test-takers on that test. He scored 13th out of 19 blacks on the written-exam. Overall, counting both the oral and written exams, Briscoe finished 24th, with five blacks ahead of him. Why is Briscoe more deserving than the five blacks who did better under the rules?
Briscoe had the largest divergence in scores between the two tests of any of the 77 test-takers, implying his high score on the oral part could well be a fluke. Oral tests are more likely to produce unreliable scores because the sample size of questions per hour of testing is smaller due to the lower bandwidth of oral vs. written communication.
Or, perhaps Briscoe is a smooth talker who can impress outsiders in the short run, but lacks the job knowledge to maintain the confidence of underlings in even the medium run.
This is a classic example of why Disparate Impact is worse than plain old racial quotas. There are five black guys who are better under the rules than Briscoe, but now we're supposed to rip up the rules and use a different system that will promote Briscoe ahead of the five more competent blacks, as well as push a lot of less qualified whites and Hispanics ahead of more qualified whites and Hispanics.
Moreover, if you changed the weighting on the Lieutenant's test to favor the Oral component over the Written component, that would have Disparate Impact on Hispanics!
Damn white fire geeks always studying how to save people's lives!
Kind of like how Slate's other Ricci expert, Emily Bazelon got her job writing about the law by being the second cousin of Betty Friedan and the granddaughter of the most powerful non-Supreme Court judge in America, David Bazelon. Except she didn't have to pass a written exam to get the cushy Truman Capote Fellowship in Creative Writing and the Law at New Haven's Yale Law School.
Yes, it is affirmative action. The reason Professor Ford wants more weight given to the oral test is because the oral test is inherently flawed.
The key difference between the oral and written test is that the written test was blind-graded while the grading of the oral test was racially rigged from the outset by making almost two-thirds of the judges minorities, which is highly unrepresentative of the distribution of senior firefighting leadership expertise.
The whole point of civil service examinations is to eliminate favoritism, which is why the union insisted on a 60% weighting in favor of the blind-graded test over the easily-rigged oral test.
I would strongly recommend that the Supreme Court fast-track Briscoe's case. I'd look forward to reading Justice Alito's opinion.
Sure enough, last week, just as New Haven prepared to promote a group consisting almost entirely of white fire captains and lieutenants based on the exam results, a black New Haven firefighter, Michael Briscoe, filed a disparate-impact lawsuit against the city. Like Frank Ricci, Briscoe is a sympathetic plaintiff. He received the highest score of any candidate on the oral portion of the lieutenant's promotion exam. But he isn't eligible for promotion because the city based 60 percent of each candidate's score on the written exam. On this part of the test, Briscoe—like most black candidates for promotion—did comparatively badly. ...
UPDATED: Fortunately, the test scores were posted by Adversity.net, and we can figure out who Briscoe is pretty easily.
Actually, Briscoe did very badly on the written test in any sense. Although he scored a 92.08 on the oral test, he only scored a 59 on the blind-graded written test, putting him 66th out of the 77 test-takers on that test. He scored 13th out of 19 blacks on the written-exam. Overall, counting both the oral and written exams, Briscoe finished 24th, with five blacks ahead of him. Why is Briscoe more deserving than the five blacks who did better under the rules?
Briscoe had the largest divergence in scores between the two tests of any of the 77 test-takers, implying his high score on the oral part could well be a fluke. Oral tests are more likely to produce unreliable scores because the sample size of questions per hour of testing is smaller due to the lower bandwidth of oral vs. written communication.
Or, perhaps Briscoe is a smooth talker who can impress outsiders in the short run, but lacks the job knowledge to maintain the confidence of underlings in even the medium run.
This is a classic example of why Disparate Impact is worse than plain old racial quotas. There are five black guys who are better under the rules than Briscoe, but now we're supposed to rip up the rules and use a different system that will promote Briscoe ahead of the five more competent blacks, as well as push a lot of less qualified whites and Hispanics ahead of more qualified whites and Hispanics.
Moreover, if you changed the weighting on the Lieutenant's test to favor the Oral component over the Written component, that would have Disparate Impact on Hispanics!
Briscoe's claim is a perfect example. Why didn't black candidates do as well as whites on the written exam? Black firefighters argue that because whites are more likely to come from families where firefighting is a legacy (for instance, one New Haven captain's father and grandfather both served as fire chief in New Haven), they are more likely to get help from a network of friends and relatives in studying for the written exam. Few blacks have such family connections—in large part because blacks were deliberately shut out of firefighting jobs until the 1970s, when black firefighters won discrimination suits in New Haven and in many other cities nationwide. ... So heavy reliance on a written exam, if it gives an advantage to legacy candidates, could perpetuate the evils of past discrimination.
Damn white fire geeks always studying how to save people's lives!
Kind of like how Slate's other Ricci expert, Emily Bazelon got her job writing about the law by being the second cousin of Betty Friedan and the granddaughter of the most powerful non-Supreme Court judge in America, David Bazelon. Except she didn't have to pass a written exam to get the cushy Truman Capote Fellowship in Creative Writing and the Law at New Haven's Yale Law School.
That violates Title VII, unless the exam is job related and there are no less discriminatory alternatives. New Haven's written exam may be as good as any written exam could have been: The Supreme Court in its ruling in favor of the white firefighters in Ricci pointed out that the city's written test was carefully developed by a professional company to be job-related and to avoid racial disparities. But Briscoe argues that the written exam did not, in fact, test for the skills that fire captains and lieutenants need on the ground; instead, it rewarded rote memorization. As for alternatives, Briscoe says that the city could have relied more heavily on the oral exam, which required candidates to respond to real-life firefighting and training scenarios. Neither the city nor the company that designed the exam defended making it worth 60 percent of the promotion score. Briscoe also points out that New Haven could have used an assessment-center model, which tests candidates through simulations of real-life job challenges. Many other cities use assessment centers successfully.
Although Ricci was often described as a challenge to affirmative action, getting rid of a flawed exam isn't affirmative action and doesn't push diversity at the expense of merit.
Yes, it is affirmative action. The reason Professor Ford wants more weight given to the oral test is because the oral test is inherently flawed.
The key difference between the oral and written test is that the written test was blind-graded while the grading of the oral test was racially rigged from the outset by making almost two-thirds of the judges minorities, which is highly unrepresentative of the distribution of senior firefighting leadership expertise.
The whole point of civil service examinations is to eliminate favoritism, which is why the union insisted on a 60% weighting in favor of the blind-graded test over the easily-rigged oral test.
I would strongly recommend that the Supreme Court fast-track Briscoe's case. I'd look forward to reading Justice Alito's opinion.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
October 22, 2009
More on Forbes 400 by ethnicity
Race / History / Evolution Notes has taken Jacob Berkman's list from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency a step farther and broken out all the obvious ethnicities of the 2009 Forbes 400.
The black Forbesian is Oprah.
One of the Hispanics is John Arrilliga, son of Basque immigrants. (Do Basques consider themselves Hispanic? I know a 93-year-old Basque lady who arrived in America in the early 1920s, and still has her Basque accent.)
The other is billboard baron and Angels owner Arturo Moreno, a genuine Mexican-American from a family of 11 in Tucson.
In these estimates, Northwestern European serves as kind of a catch-all for people who don't obviously jump out at you as something else. So, maybe there's, say, a Bulgarian whose immigrant father changed his name to "Johnson" to fit in. He would get listed as Northwestern European at first glance. And "Northwestern European" doesn't recognize the fairly sizable ethnic divide between the Protestants and Catholics (Irish and more than a few Germans), who tend to have gone to separate schools.
The Jewish percentage is probably a little high because it includes some some people who are half or even just quarter Jewish by ancestry. (It may however miss some others who are part Jewish.) My preference is to allot by fraction of ancestry, but that's a lot of work.
The small number of Slavs jumps out at you. The various kinds of Slavic-Americans tend not to show up in large numbers in elites (outfielders being one exception: Musial, Yastrzemski, etc.)
RHE Notes has all 400 names and his guess at their ethnic identification, which is always interesting.
For example, after 20 years of watching the back of Larry David's head as he plays George Steinbrenner on Seinfeld, I'd assumed that the owner of the Yankees was Jewish. There's a natural tendency to assume that anybody with a Germanic-language surname who has made himself conspicuous in the media is Jewish, but that's by no means always true. Various confident-sounding individuals on the web say Steinbrenner isn't Jewish. And that's how RHE Notes lists Steinbrenner: as Northwestern European.
Steinbrenner's father's Great Lakes shipping firm was named Kinsman, perhaps after the neighborhood in Cleveland, which was a center of Cleveland's Jewish community at one point (but not at other points). His mom's name was Haley. George's upbringing seems Midwestern gentile: Culver Military Academy, Williams College, Delta Kappa Epsilon (same fraternity as the Bushes and three other Presidents), US Air Force officer, graduate assistant at Ohio State to football coach Woody Hayes, etc. Steinbrenner does have an advanced degree, but it's a Master's in P.E., which is about the least Jewish advanced degree imaginable.
So, I dunno.
My initial estimate of the ethnic breakdown:
Northwestern European 53.5%
Jewish [or part Jewish] 35.25%
Italian 3.5%
East Asian 2%
Indian 1.25%
Middle Eastern 1.25%
Greek 1.25%
Eastern European 1.25%
Hispanic 0.5%
Black 0.25%
The black Forbesian is Oprah.
One of the Hispanics is John Arrilliga, son of Basque immigrants. (Do Basques consider themselves Hispanic? I know a 93-year-old Basque lady who arrived in America in the early 1920s, and still has her Basque accent.)
The other is billboard baron and Angels owner Arturo Moreno, a genuine Mexican-American from a family of 11 in Tucson.
In these estimates, Northwestern European serves as kind of a catch-all for people who don't obviously jump out at you as something else. So, maybe there's, say, a Bulgarian whose immigrant father changed his name to "Johnson" to fit in. He would get listed as Northwestern European at first glance. And "Northwestern European" doesn't recognize the fairly sizable ethnic divide between the Protestants and Catholics (Irish and more than a few Germans), who tend to have gone to separate schools.
The Jewish percentage is probably a little high because it includes some some people who are half or even just quarter Jewish by ancestry. (It may however miss some others who are part Jewish.) My preference is to allot by fraction of ancestry, but that's a lot of work.
The small number of Slavs jumps out at you. The various kinds of Slavic-Americans tend not to show up in large numbers in elites (outfielders being one exception: Musial, Yastrzemski, etc.)
RHE Notes has all 400 names and his guess at their ethnic identification, which is always interesting.
For example, after 20 years of watching the back of Larry David's head as he plays George Steinbrenner on Seinfeld, I'd assumed that the owner of the Yankees was Jewish. There's a natural tendency to assume that anybody with a Germanic-language surname who has made himself conspicuous in the media is Jewish, but that's by no means always true. Various confident-sounding individuals on the web say Steinbrenner isn't Jewish. And that's how RHE Notes lists Steinbrenner: as Northwestern European.
Steinbrenner's father's Great Lakes shipping firm was named Kinsman, perhaps after the neighborhood in Cleveland, which was a center of Cleveland's Jewish community at one point (but not at other points). His mom's name was Haley. George's upbringing seems Midwestern gentile: Culver Military Academy, Williams College, Delta Kappa Epsilon (same fraternity as the Bushes and three other Presidents), US Air Force officer, graduate assistant at Ohio State to football coach Woody Hayes, etc. Steinbrenner does have an advanced degree, but it's a Master's in P.E., which is about the least Jewish advanced degree imaginable.
So, I dunno.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
Whatever happened to environmentalists' enthusiasm for 3rd World population control?
Apparently, there's another famine coming in Ethiopia. Matthew Yglesias has links to reports by the BBC, Oxfam, and CAP all listing strategies for fighting Third World hunger, with lots of interesting stuff about how Ethiopia's system of land inheritance is suboptimal and so forth.
What's striking to me as an old-timer, though, is how little emphasis the great and the good give to Third World population control these days, as compared to the 1960s and 1970s, when it was a Center-Left obsession.
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, people on the left talked about the need for population control in the Third World all the time. Now, that suggestion seems to be largely off the table, apparently because it’s considered racist.
Yet, it's not like the problems of population growth in Ethiopia have vanished of their own accord.
What's striking to me as an old-timer, though, is how little emphasis the great and the good give to Third World population control these days, as compared to the 1960s and 1970s, when it was a Center-Left obsession.
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, people on the left talked about the need for population control in the Third World all the time. Now, that suggestion seems to be largely off the table, apparently because it’s considered racist.
Yet, it's not like the problems of population growth in Ethiopia have vanished of their own accord.
According to the CIA World Factbook, Ethiopia’s population is over 85 million, up from 32 million in 1975, despite the famous killer famine of the 1980s. Its current total fertility rate is 6.12 babies per woman per lifetime. The annual population growth rate is 3.2%. At that rate of growth, Ethiopia’s population will be over 140 million in just 16 years.
A Voice of America article in 2006:
At an estimated population of 77 million people, Ethiopia is second only to Nigeria – currently sub-Saharan Africa’s most populous nation. And Ethiopia’s population is growing at a rapid pace, adding some two million people every year. Experts are warning the Horn of Africa nation may not be prepared to handle the consequences of such a population boom.
Ethiopian scholar and population expert Sahlu Haile says the situation in his country is grim.
“Drought and famine continue to plaque the country,” he said. “And although the government is investing a considerable amount of resources for social services, including health and education, this is being neutralized by the number of people needing these services. Deforestation, soil erosion and the resulting shortage of rain and water is creating conflict among people who have been living together peacefully for years.”
By the year 2050, the Washington-based Population Reference Bureau says Ethiopia’s population will grow by an astounding 120 percent.
That means in 44 years, the population of Ethiopia is expected to be around 169 million people.
It is this projection that has Sahlu, a senior program advisor at the Packard Foundation, worried – worried about the strain such huge population growth will put on society.
“The environment continues to deteriorate,” he said. “Not only in the vulnerable areas of the highlands of northern Ethiopia but even in the south and southwest of the country, which are considered the breadbasket of the country. A senior government official said because of population pressure, they are obliged to apportion land, not in hectares, but in square meters. He said, and I quote, the situation is ‘dramatic,’ end quote.” ...
But, Sahlu points out the Ethiopian government is beginning to take the issue of overpopulation seriously. He says it has come up with policies to help reduce the birth rate, currently averaging six children per woman in Ethiopia.
One part involves a major public health initiative. Over the next three years, the government has set a goal of bringing family planning services to Ethiopia’s rural areas by providing basic health training to more than 25,000 young women and deploying them to each village in the country.
And the population may indeed be receptive to such a program. Sahlu says nearly 78 percent of married women in Ethiopia either want to space their births or end them altogether.
But, Sahlu says the lack of money for contraceptives presents a serious problem.
“The 2005 contraceptive deficit is estimated at $12 million,” he said. “And if these young girls go out and promote family planning in the countryside, that is only going to aggravate the situation.”
He adds the Ethiopian government has committed itself to cover 50 percent of the cost of contraceptives, a goal, he says, that may not be realistic.
All experts agree that much work remains to be done to address Ethiopia’s high fertility rate. But those efforts are in competition with a number of other important development issues in Ethiopia: food security, basic infrastructure, healthcare and education.
So, they're short $12 million bucks for contraceptives? $12 million? Can’t, say, Al Gore write them a personal check?
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
How many of the Forbes 400 are Jewish?
Since the early 1980s, Forbes has been publishing its list of the 400 richest Americans. Periodically, various people have tried to estimate the percentage who are Jewish. My recollection is that they usually come up with about 22% to 25%, although of course that varies as different sectors of the economy boom and bust. For example, Texans were heavily represented on the first list during the early 1980s oil boom, but quickly diminished and were replaced by New York real estate tycoons, who gave way to Silicon Valley tech prodigies, and so on.
Jacob Berkman of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, who specializes in reporting on Jewish philanthropy, spent a couple of days on Google with the 2009 Forbes 400, and came up with a list of Jewish Forbes 400 members for use by Jewish charities:
But that's just one man's estimate. For example, he includes Meg Whitman of E-bay, who is running for the GOP nomination for governor of California, but most of what I see about her suggests she is largely Boston Brahmin. And some of his "maybes" on his overall list of 149 possibilities are definitely not Jewish, such as the two Bechtels, who have made billions out of Saudi Arabia. (One of Bechtel's key executives in Ibn Saud's kingdom was Cornelius Stribling "Strib" Snodgrass, whom I'm going to guess wasn't Jewish.)
Note the helpful comments from Santos L. Halper below Berkman's posting for recommended changes, some of which Berkman has gone back and incorporated. And, of course, there are the usual issues of how to count people with one Jewish parent, converts, and so forth.
So, I don't know exactly where Berkman stands at this point. The most accurate number might not be 139 anymore. But it's definitely at least 30% (120), and "about one-third" would appear to be a reasonable approximation.
Part of the increase in Jewish numbers is due to the proliferation of Pritzkers of Chicago (there are now 11 on the Forbes 400). They've been rich a long time (an old friend of mine was their nanny in Europe in the 1970s). Presumably they are multiplying due to inheritance.
But the increasing importance of Wall Street in the economy in recent years no doubt played a major role in this increase over the historic baseline.
If the Forbes 400 is about one-third Jewish, that's less than the one-half Jewish Atlantic 50 of most influential pundits. Tom Friedman's chances of someday being on both lists took a hit this year when his father-in-law Matthew Bucksbaum, who was #205 on the Forbes 400 in 2008, dropped off the list in 2009 when his shopping mall company filed for bankruptcy. He must not have been reading his son-in-law's economics advice books closely enough.
Jacob Berkman of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, who specializes in reporting on Jewish philanthropy, spent a couple of days on Google with the 2009 Forbes 400, and came up with a list of Jewish Forbes 400 members for use by Jewish charities:
At least 139 of the Forbes 400 are Jewish
But that's just one man's estimate. For example, he includes Meg Whitman of E-bay, who is running for the GOP nomination for governor of California, but most of what I see about her suggests she is largely Boston Brahmin. And some of his "maybes" on his overall list of 149 possibilities are definitely not Jewish, such as the two Bechtels, who have made billions out of Saudi Arabia. (One of Bechtel's key executives in Ibn Saud's kingdom was Cornelius Stribling "Strib" Snodgrass, whom I'm going to guess wasn't Jewish.)
Note the helpful comments from Santos L. Halper below Berkman's posting for recommended changes, some of which Berkman has gone back and incorporated. And, of course, there are the usual issues of how to count people with one Jewish parent, converts, and so forth.
So, I don't know exactly where Berkman stands at this point. The most accurate number might not be 139 anymore. But it's definitely at least 30% (120), and "about one-third" would appear to be a reasonable approximation.
Part of the increase in Jewish numbers is due to the proliferation of Pritzkers of Chicago (there are now 11 on the Forbes 400). They've been rich a long time (an old friend of mine was their nanny in Europe in the 1970s). Presumably they are multiplying due to inheritance.
But the increasing importance of Wall Street in the economy in recent years no doubt played a major role in this increase over the historic baseline.
If the Forbes 400 is about one-third Jewish, that's less than the one-half Jewish Atlantic 50 of most influential pundits. Tom Friedman's chances of someday being on both lists took a hit this year when his father-in-law Matthew Bucksbaum, who was #205 on the Forbes 400 in 2008, dropped off the list in 2009 when his shopping mall company filed for bankruptcy. He must not have been reading his son-in-law's economics advice books closely enough.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
October 21, 2009
Tom Friedman: America's schools failing to educate enough rainmakers
I've never been to India, but I've somehow gotten the impression that Untouchables are unfortunate. Apparently, I was misinformed because Thomas Friedman, who has been to India lots of times, entitles his NYT column "The New Untouchables" and his New Untouchables are sitting pretty.
I've mentioned before that the NYT op-ed page is one of the fringes of the Steveosphere. But, really, I've got it so much easier than those poor bastards. All I have to do each day is use Occam's Razor to find the simplest explanation for whatever subject comes up. (A long time ago an old venture capitalist who had given dozens of depositions under oath told me: "Always tell the truth; it's easier to remember.") But to be an NYT columnist, you have to wield Occam's Butterknife like Mickey Mouse in the Sorcerer's Apprentice.
For example, I could have happily written half of Friedman's new column, but I couldn't have pounded out the other half with a straight face:
I've mentioned before that the NYT op-ed page is one of the fringes of the Steveosphere. But, really, I've got it so much easier than those poor bastards. All I have to do each day is use Occam's Razor to find the simplest explanation for whatever subject comes up. (A long time ago an old venture capitalist who had given dozens of depositions under oath told me: "Always tell the truth; it's easier to remember.") But to be an NYT columnist, you have to wield Occam's Butterknife like Mickey Mouse in the Sorcerer's Apprentice.
For example, I could have happily written half of Friedman's new column, but I couldn't have pounded out the other half with a straight face:
Last summer I attended a talk by Michelle Rhee, the dynamic chancellor of public schools in Washington. Just before the session began, a man came up, introduced himself as Todd Martin and whispered to me that what Rhee was about to speak about — our struggling public schools — was actually a critical, but unspoken, reason for the Great Recession.
There’s something to that. While the subprime mortgage mess involved a huge ethical breakdown on Wall Street, it coincided with an education breakdown on Main Street — precisely when technology and open borders were enabling so many more people to compete with Americans for middle-class jobs.
And middle-class houses, let's not forget, but then most people who read Friedman have never been told that in the first place, so how can they forget what they've never learned?
In our subprime era, we thought we could have the American dream — a house and yard — with nothing down. This version of the American dream was delivered not by improving education, productivity and savings, but by Wall Street alchemy and borrowed money from Asia.
A year ago, it all exploded. Now that we are picking up the pieces, we need to understand that it is not only our financial system that needs a reboot and an upgrade, but also our public school system. Otherwise, the jobless recovery won’t be just a passing phase, but our future.
Importing tens of millions of people from the bottom of the Latin American pyramid of productivity didn't exactly help, either.
Nor did letting much of our manufacturing go overseas with the idea that we'd all get rich off selling each other ever more complicated financial instruments.
“Our education failure is the largest contributing factor to the decline of the American worker’s global competitiveness, particularly at the middle and bottom ranges,” argued Martin, a former global executive with PepsiCo and Kraft Europe and now an international investor. “This loss of competitiveness has weakened the American worker’s production of wealth, precisely when technology brought global competition much closer to home. So over a decade, American workers have maintained their standard of living by borrowing and overconsuming vis-Ã -vis their real income. When the Great Recession wiped out all the credit and asset bubbles that made that overconsumption possible, it left too many American workers not only deeper in debt than ever, but out of a job and lacking the skills to compete globally.”
This problem will be reversed only when the decline in worker competitiveness reverses — when we create enough new jobs and educated workers that are worth, say, $40-an-hour compared with the global alternatives. If we don’t, there’s no telling how “jobless” this recovery will be.
A Washington lawyer friend recently told me about layoffs at his firm. I asked him who was getting axed. He said it was interesting: lawyers who were used to just showing up and having work handed to them were the first to go because with the bursting of the credit bubble, that flow of work just isn’t there. But those who have the ability to imagine new services, new opportunities and new ways to recruit work were being retained. They are the new untouchables.
Oh, now I get it! Being an "untouchable" is now a good thing. Just like "the world is flat" is a smart thing to say.
Friedman's New Untouchables are basically the Old Rainmakers -- lawyers who could bring in big accounts.
That's just swell ... So what Friedman is telling us is that even for those people who pass the Bar Exam, our K-19 education system is failing them because, while it is turning them into lawyers, it isn't turning them into rainmaker lawyers.
That is the key to understanding our full education challenge today. Those who are waiting for this recession to end so someone can again hand them work could have a long wait. Those with the imagination to make themselves untouchables — to invent smarter ways to do old jobs, energy-saving ways to provide new services, new ways to attract old customers or new ways to combine existing technologies — will thrive. Therefore, we not only need a higher percentage of our kids graduating from high school and college — more education — but we need more of them with the right education.
As the Harvard University labor expert Lawrence Katz explains it: “If you think about the labor market today, the top half of the college market, those with the high-end analytical and problem-solving skills who can compete on the world market or game the financial system or deal with new government regulations, have done great. But the bottom half of the top, those engineers and programmers working on more routine tasks and not actively engaged in developing new ideas or recombining existing technologies or thinking about what new customers want, have done poorly. They’ve been much more exposed to global competitors that make them easily substitutable.”
Those at the high end of the bottom half — high school grads in construction or manufacturing — have been clobbered by global competition and immigration, added Katz. “But those who have some interpersonal skills — the salesperson who can deal with customers face to face or the home contractor who can help you redesign your kitchen without going to an architect — have done well.”
Just being an average accountant, lawyer, contractor or assembly-line worker is not the ticket it used to be. As Daniel Pink, the author of “A Whole New Mind,” puts it: In a world in which more and more average work can be done by a computer, robot or talented foreigner faster, cheaper “and just as well,” vanilla doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s all about what chocolate sauce, whipped cream and cherry you can put on top. So our schools have a doubly hard task now — not just improving reading, writing and arithmetic but entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity.
Bottom line: We’re not going back to the good old days without fixing our schools as well as our banks.
Okay, so our schools have to not only teach the times tables, they have to teach salesmanship and entrepreneurship. Hmmhmm, my impression from watching The Wire was that our public schools were already turning out more than enough crack salesmen but not enough kids who were good at arithmetic.
You know, this is almost enough to make you wonder if globalization isn't all that Tom Friedman has cracked it up to be.
I kind of have the impression that quite a few Americans, like, maybe, two or three hundred million of them, don't possess either the IQs or the personalities to be rainmakers. Are they permanently obsolete in the world that Friedman has been such an energetic cheerleader for?
Fortunately, all we have to do is Fix Education.
And, fortunately, as David Brooks has been informing us recently, IQ is so yesterday and personality hardly even exists.
You know what else our schools have been failing to do? They've been doing a terrible job of teaching our children another crucial skill for survival in Tom Friedman's globalized economy: how to marry a billionaire's daughter.
Tom did it, so how hard could it be?
Let's get Michelle Rhee and Arne Duncan cracking on this right away. As a start, all Washington D.C. public schoolchildren should make annual field trips to the 7.5 acre Friedman-Bucksbaum compound in Bethesda for socializing with Tom's daughters.
You know, this is almost enough to make you wonder if globalization isn't all that Tom Friedman has cracked it up to be.
I kind of have the impression that quite a few Americans, like, maybe, two or three hundred million of them, don't possess either the IQs or the personalities to be rainmakers. Are they permanently obsolete in the world that Friedman has been such an energetic cheerleader for?
Fortunately, all we have to do is Fix Education.
And, fortunately, as David Brooks has been informing us recently, IQ is so yesterday and personality hardly even exists.
You know what else our schools have been failing to do? They've been doing a terrible job of teaching our children another crucial skill for survival in Tom Friedman's globalized economy: how to marry a billionaire's daughter.
Tom did it, so how hard could it be?
Let's get Michelle Rhee and Arne Duncan cracking on this right away. As a start, all Washington D.C. public schoolchildren should make annual field trips to the 7.5 acre Friedman-Bucksbaum compound in Bethesda for socializing with Tom's daughters.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
Good News! Annual harvest worker shortage solved
This is the first autumn in memory when we haven't been deluged with articles about how we're all going to starve because of looming shortages of illegal aliens to pick crops.
Remember the Pearanoia of 2006 when the New York Times, among others, ran a front page article about how pear growers in Lake County, CA couldn't find enough pear pickers (at the wages they felt like paying)? But in 2009, Google News finds only one mention all October of Tamar Jacoby, chief lobbyist for Guest Peasant Programs.
Congratulations to the federal government and financial industry for working closely together to stave off for at least one year this annual threat to the survival of humanity by merely doubling the unemployment rate. Bravo!
Remember the Pearanoia of 2006 when the New York Times, among others, ran a front page article about how pear growers in Lake County, CA couldn't find enough pear pickers (at the wages they felt like paying)? But in 2009, Google News finds only one mention all October of Tamar Jacoby, chief lobbyist for Guest Peasant Programs.
Congratulations to the federal government and financial industry for working closely together to stave off for at least one year this annual threat to the survival of humanity by merely doubling the unemployment rate. Bravo!
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
Hiding in Plain Sight
From my Wednesday Taki's Magazine column:
Read it there and comment about it here.Everybody complains about how dumbed-down movies have gotten. Here, for example, are representative quotes from A.O. Scott of the New York Times in “Spoon-Fed Cinema” bemoaning the state of cinema c. 2009: “infantile,” “male immaturity,” and “a program of mass infantilization.”
Yet, nobody ever seems to mention one obvious change in audience composition over the decades that has exacerbated blockbusteritis. And only one renegade filmmaker has used this trend in demographics to be able to afford to make innovative movies; but nobody wants to talk about him, either.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
October 20, 2009
F. Scott Fitzgerald's finances
Here's an article based on the tax returns of F. Scott Fitzgerald from 1919 to 1940. Fitzgerald averaged about the contemporary equivalent of a half million bucks per year for two decades, mostly from short stories (and movie sales of short stories, such as Benjamin Button.) Short stories were a remarkably lucrative line of work between the wars, since the big magazines like the Saturday Evening Post were the chief venues for advertising nationally distributed products like cars. After 1950, advertising dollars moved to television, and the really big magazines like Life, Look, and the Post folded up within a couple of decades.
People used to like to read short stories because each one was a story and it was short. Now, though, nobody reads short stories except other short story writers. And the stories always end with an "epiphany" in which the main character realizes his life is hopeless, as utterly doomed as, say, the contemporary short story author's life.
I've never seen cause and effect concerning the decline of short stories untangled. Did short stories become unpopular when they became depressing? Or did they become unpopular first, which then made the short story writers all depressed?
Novels don't come with advertising, so they weren't as lucrative for Fitzgerald. (By the way, why don't novels include advertising? I'm slowly making notes for a novel and I would be happy to have the book include advertising.) Fitzgerald only made $8,397 in royalties off The Great Gatsby during his lifetime. It didn't become a classic until WWII, when the Pentagon gave away paperback novels to soldiers. For whatever reason, it struck a chord with servicemen at war, and has since become a high school staple. Fitzgerald's grandchildren make a half million per year off the 84-year-old book.
That's pretty wild that Fitzgerald's descendant are making over a half mil per year off his books 69 years after he died. Do copyrights last forever these days? I recall that 98-year-old Irving Berlin was sore when his 75-year copyright on the song Alexander's Rag Time Band ran out in 1987, so I guess Congress decided 75 years just wasn't long enough.
I think the reason why everybody loves Gatsby is because everybody wishes they'd been invited to Gatsby's parties, but the book also lets you feel morally superior to the soulless people who, unlike you, were invited. So, what's not to like?
People used to like to read short stories because each one was a story and it was short. Now, though, nobody reads short stories except other short story writers. And the stories always end with an "epiphany" in which the main character realizes his life is hopeless, as utterly doomed as, say, the contemporary short story author's life.
I've never seen cause and effect concerning the decline of short stories untangled. Did short stories become unpopular when they became depressing? Or did they become unpopular first, which then made the short story writers all depressed?
Novels don't come with advertising, so they weren't as lucrative for Fitzgerald. (By the way, why don't novels include advertising? I'm slowly making notes for a novel and I would be happy to have the book include advertising.) Fitzgerald only made $8,397 in royalties off The Great Gatsby during his lifetime. It didn't become a classic until WWII, when the Pentagon gave away paperback novels to soldiers. For whatever reason, it struck a chord with servicemen at war, and has since become a high school staple. Fitzgerald's grandchildren make a half million per year off the 84-year-old book.
That's pretty wild that Fitzgerald's descendant are making over a half mil per year off his books 69 years after he died. Do copyrights last forever these days? I recall that 98-year-old Irving Berlin was sore when his 75-year copyright on the song Alexander's Rag Time Band ran out in 1987, so I guess Congress decided 75 years just wasn't long enough.
I think the reason why everybody loves Gatsby is because everybody wishes they'd been invited to Gatsby's parties, but the book also lets you feel morally superior to the soulless people who, unlike you, were invited. So, what's not to like?
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
