I think we are really just discussing the problem of overpopulation.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324705104578151601554982808
They were significantly higher for the middle and lower classes. The wealthy pay about the same today that they did in the fifties.
You’d be surprised at what the lawn guys in my neighborhood get paid. $65 for about 90 mins of work isn’t bad. When I busted my shower valve? That was about $150 plus parts. Don’t need a degree.
But the problem with devaluing a diploma means a diploma signals nothing. I see a football player with a high school diploma I doubt he can read at the 8th grade level or do 6th grade math. That’s the schools fault and it helps nobody. It’s fraud and should be illegal.
Additionally, it burdens society with the new expectation being a college degree. Many of which are worthless as well. But these cost the student maybe 6 figures in debt and 4-5 years of lost income.
The bolded is much more true than most people seem to realize.
As I can attest and so can plenty of other people with high IQs, an IQ test pretty much measures how well you do when you take IQ tests. It doesn’t really predict success or market value, or worth to society.
It doesn’t measure how well you take care of yourself, interact with other people, how determined you are, how athletic you are, you honest you are, how artistic or musically inclined you may be, how well you retain information, and it doesn’t measure your ability or potential in many areas of intelligence or expertise.
Google tells me that 1 in just under 600 people has my level of IQ. So if IQ measured worth or ability, then it would stand to reason that I should be better at most things than the next 596 people. That hasn’t been my experience. There are things I am good at. There are things that other people are good at, and if someone is really good at something, chances are, I’m not as good.
This quote is attributed to Einstein but that’s probably false. It’s still a good quote:
Everybody is a Genius. But If You Judge a Fish by Its Ability to Climb a Tree, It Will Live Its Whole Life Believing that It is Stupid.
What I got out of it was an ease at learning certain things. Not everything, I still suck at foreign languages. So academically, things were easy for me. But life isn’t a school test.
Plenty of people are more determined than me, and less distracted. Their minds are far more focused. That helps them get ahead in life.
Plenty of people are more artistic and creative, or musically inclined. If I practiced long enough I might be able to mimic some of their skills, but they have a gift and they’re definitely better at it than me. Their genius lies there, and possibly other places as well.
Plenty of people are better with memory and retention, despite the ease of learning new concepts, I require lots of rote repetition to learn information that I have no emotional connection to. Other people’s minds are geniuses of memory.
Certain skills like fine motor coordination don’t require tons of high intellect, but pay off quite well. I couldn’t keep up with a certain employee who made pizzas way faster than me. That was 10 years experience making pizzas versus my own, but still. Ability and skill are their own forms of genius.
What certain levels of intelligence do is allow someone to fill a niche role which requires another level of function. Sometimes those niche roles are difficult to find, or not particularly in demand. Some of the things I’ve done in my life which were far better than anyone else I’ve ever met, have no practical value. Other things, which make people tons of money, often don’t require a lot of intellect, just opportunity and capital, and a knowledge to sell high and buy low. It isn’t rocket surgery.
The market rewards certain skills or abilities. If someone can memorize and recite 10,000 digits of pi forwards and backwards, that’s an ability I lack, which doesn’t have any market value. If someone can compose symphonies with the greatest of ease, but never picked up a musical instrument, the market won’t exactly reward them. I have a particular set of skills. So does everyone else.
In my experience, everyone I’ve ever met was better than me at something. It might not have been useful, but it was something. We’re all good at something. The market rewards certain somethings. But comparing IQ is about as useful in the scheme of things as comparing which of us can spell chrysanthemum out loud, when someone is bleeding in the middle of the street.
Either you can stop that person from bleeding or you can’t. If you can, you’re a genius. I will award you whatever pride I’m supposed to have at my high IQ, you can be called genius by me, because I can’t do that. I pass out. That makes you better for society in a lot of situations than me.
IQ is not useless but it’s far overrated, and people of average or below average IQs can take it from me that “genius” is just what certain people with certain skill sets like to call themselves to feel better about the things they suck at and therefore don’t emphasize.
And I’ll echo jsgoddess about ignorance.
What’s worse than low IQ or slower learning, is when you encounter information you don’t like and decide to not believe in it because it makes you feel bad.
That is far, far worse than actually being a slow learner. It makes you anti-learning.
The most productive members of my crew at my last job were people who were pro-learning. They might not have had high IQs. The worst members were the ones who felt like they knew everything already, and didn’t. That’ll be true throughout human society.
@ Anyone here with an average or lower IQ- If you ever felt bad about your IQ take it from me, you probably have far better other qualities that matter more and outshine that supposed weakness than you might imagine. IQ does not equal worth. Attitude and skill set and experience matters. Character matters. Physical ability also matters. My self-worth is based on other things besides IQ, yours should be as well.
Receipts as a percent of GDP have been pretty flat since the '50s.
That just sounds like existing electrical workers creating a barrier to entry to their market. But I don’t know much about electrical workers; are there other ways to become trained or certified?
I think “stupid” is mainly a (likely insulting) shorthand for “least able” or “least skilled.”
I recall reading a book that had some popularity a while back - sorry I forget the author/title - which made an impression on me. Sure there are various types of intelligence - traditional IQ is only one of them. But what does society offer those who are average or below average on ALL of those measures?
Think of the lowest 10% of your grade school/high school. However you define it. What are the employment options for them? Hell, think of the bottom 5% - or even 1%. In a population of 350 million, even 1% is a sizeable number. Then figure in UNDERemployment for folk of all abilities, and realize that more highly skilled folk may be taking some of the lowest skilled jobs simply because they lack better alternatives at their maximum potential. Add in folk who may rate high on SOME form of skill/intelligence but very low on others (possibly some autistics, for example) whose ability to work would require special accommodations/supervision.
The best option I’ve ever arrived at was some form of workfare along the lines of the CCC, aimed at public construction/recreation/service efforts. But those generally have no chance of success due to factors including general resistance to anything smacking of welfare, administrative costs, and the competition w/ private interests.
I don’t think resisting technology is the answer, but perhaps the government could provide incentives for capitalists to finance labor intensive industries. I’m not smart enough to envision how that might be done…
If you had read the article linked to in the OP, you wouldn’t attest that.
Of course, they are just social scientists, so compared with a high-IQ pizza delivery guy, what do they know?
Regards,
Shodan
My IQ is above average but not a whole lot. I can figure things out and understand logic like how things work and how they are made. I’m a handyman for lots of things and I fix my own stuff.
Most people I’ve encountered including my own family are as stupid as an animal. They cannot figure out that putting a ball in a square hole does not work.
For example, my nephew bought a brand new socket wrench set to carry in his car. One day he tried to use and he said that the ratchet is broken. I asked why and he said he can’t put a socket on it.
I looked at the ratchet and pointed to the back of the ratchet head and asked him what did this say?
Push.
Right, did you push it?
No.
There’s your problem. Push it if you want the socket to go on it.
A reoccurring theme Mike Rowe brings up in his show Dirty Jobs is the people he works with are not stupid and destitute, but good hardworking people making an honest living and yet our society generally looks down on them. I didn’t use to be that way, he states. I think there is some truth to that. I think modern American’s generally do look down on ‘simple folk’. Coming from blue collar trade roots is a badge of honor for politicians and rags-to-riches Cinderella stories, but it’s ‘making something of yourself’ and getting out of that occupation that’s the proud part.
Was the book titled Emotional IQ?
Well, there are some niches kept open for the less mentally endowed:
No, that wasn’t it. I’ll try to remember. I was thinking “The Bell Curve”, but that wasn’t it either. ISTR the writer published a couple of similar books maybe 3-5 yrs ago that gained some notoriety. I think some of his conclusions were generally disfavored, but thought some aspects of his observations had merit.
It’s one thing to be low-intelligence or uninformed. Everyone is unintelligent in certain ways, and uninformed about certain subjects or fields.
It’s another thing to revel in foolishness, or intentionally promote it.
I can’t get around the paywall for some reason, but I have a couple of concerns:
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it’s listed under “Commentary” and is clearly an opinion piece.
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where do capital gains come in? I’d wager a lot of people in the upper end have significant income from investments, and the long term capital gains tax rate is way lower than the regular income tax rate.
I get the sense that in the USA, it’s not OK to be just average (or God forbid, below average). But it’s a mathematical fact that 50% of the population is going to be at or below the median IQ.
A semester’s worth of interaction with someone at the age of 18 is not enough to tell what they are inherently capable of. I used to say this too, but over the years I’ve really come to realize that so many apparently “incapable” kids could have been more capable with better education earlier, and can still be capable now if given a real chance to remediate ( and the will to do so).
A thousand times this. A kid who can’t get through a JC program in college basics isn’t going to be successful in a trades program. He especially isn’t going to be the plumber who makes six figures a year running three crews. The reason trades programs are seen as sucking is because people sent the “dumb” kids into them, and continuing to market them as the alternative for kids if and only if they can’t hack college work means the cycle will continue. If I had a bright, ambitious kid who wanted to go into a specific trade, I’d support it, because that kid will be fine. A kid who is a little below average but no real focus? That kid needs a generic college degree to have some sort of an edge.
There are a lot more people that believe they are smart, than there are truly smart people.
Just want to add a few comments about the building trades from a carpenter’s point-of-view. Yes, being an electrician does require extensive knowledge. However that particular trade is on the extreme of the more common disciplines. The knock on the building trades is the work is physically demanding, it’s hard work. It’s less about being smart as it is being strong. Just nailing 2x4’s to the “X” is all the knowledge you need to start, but if you can’t throw 7 or 8 2x4’s over your shoulder and climb an extension ladder, you will not prosper.
It’s called grunt work, and there’s plenty on a building site. So many times I’ve seen people walk up, see how hard we were working, and just simply turn around and walk away … no way are they going to work that hard.
I suspect the author of the article is confusing cause with effect. I have a feeling that what he’s describing isn’t as much a concerted effort to denigrate and punish the less intelligent among us, but rather a sort of natural response to the rise of higher-intelligence jobs and the consequent high pay, and the severe decrease in the mid-range jobs that are not intelligence-centric (i.e. well paying manufacturing jobs, etc…) Prior to about the mid 1970s, the US was an agrarian nation at first, and transitioned over decades into a manufacturing giant. That all changed starting in the 1970s, when manufacturing started moving overseas seriously and automation started becoming more prevalent and more capable. This meant that the jobs that were previously the bread and butter of the less intelligent/non-academic crowd vanished fast, either to overseas factories, or to machines.
What this means in practical terms is that we sort of have a bifurcated labor market- we have a series of low-skill, low-intelligence, low-pay jobs (waiter, unskilled manufacturing, unskilled trades, fast food cook, landscaper, etc…), a relatively small number of skilled jobs that pay moderately well , but don’t require academic-style intelligence (skilled trades, some manufacturing), and a growing set of high skill, high intelligence and high paying jobs.
So with that middle ground being so gutted, you end up with the social cachet following the high paying, high intelligence jobs- those are the desirable ones, and the rest are considered less so. This has always been the case, but in prior decades and centuries, they were either the province of the nobility/independently wealthy, or something that was so small in number that the vast, vast majority of common people didn’t even aspire to them, because they could get a good job without having to do all that college stuff.
But nowadays having the trappings of the “intelligent person” jobs is the aspirational goal- not because the smart people have made them that way, but because of the economic forces that ended up paying them well. The rest sort of fell into place on its own.
And the criticism of “Big Bang Theory” is off the mark- that show is as much about making fun of the weird quirks of the main characters as it is anything, and if there’s any intelligence worship, it’s fairly subtle, and centered around the idea that college professors get to go on expeditions to Antarctica, be astronauts, and live the lifestyle that those guys on the show live. All of which are true, with certain caveats and within certain boundaries.
The problem with the criticism is that a show about people as dumb as TBBT’s cast is smart would be some combination of exploitative, negative, and just not funny. Even as a drama, it might be bleaker than people would want to watch; nobody wants to watch someone have trouble reading a 200 page novel, or constantly dealing with the consequences of earnest, but poor decisions made through a lack of intelligence or understanding, like say agreeing to usurious loans or not filling out their tax returns correctly and suffering penalties as a result that impact their families. That’s depressing stuff, and while it would probably be dramatic, it wouldn’t be fun in the least bit.
The author of the article does have a point in that the less intelligent among us are truly in a bind, in that there’s precious little for them to do that’s productive, and that society’s evolved in such a way that academic tests and qualifications are percolating down the academic ladder into places where they really may or may not have a place.