There is a major piece of the puzzle or maybe an elephant in the room, which is genetics. Bright parents have bright children. You will never have percentage parity across all wealth and income groups. The smarties are usually screwing each other. The kids at Harvard screw other kids at Harvard. Two parents with IQs of 135+ are probably going to have a kid with a high IQ. That will definitely skew any distribution curve.
Goat...
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That's been investigated, and it doesn't add up.
And considering the wide disparity between even Western countries re: economic mobility, it seems clear that policy and/or culture are the big players.
The only way to combat that is wealth transfers and higher taxes. That's what those countries do.
In the real world, all the $ and mobility is in tech/engineering right now. And the IQs there are a lot higher than 105 or 110 on average. Probably closer to 135.
Well it's a bit ambiguous
"The median net worth for people with an IQ of 120 was almost $128,000 compared with $58,000 for those with an IQ of 100.
But when Zagorsky controlled for other factors - such as divorce, years spent in school, type of work and inheritance - he found no link between IQ and net worth. In fact, people with a slightly above-average IQ of 105 , had an average net worth higher than those who were just a bit smarter, with a score of 110."
I would mainly be interested in seeing the comparison between an IQ of say 135 (which I believe is considered gifted) compared to the average.
That would be interesting, but the point is those controlling factors - divorce rates, schooling, inheritance and type of work - are all largely influenced by class. The whole point of this debate is that the class you are born into has a huge effect on your future. This study seems to confirm that a high IQ doesn't really overcome all those other class-related factors.
About divorce... I'm guessing divorce rates are just as high for the richest americans. It seems to be quite fashionable lately. On the contrary, those born into poverty are often born out of wedlock in which case a divorce isn't possible
Guess all you want. I'm providing actual research that suggests IQ isn't the determining factor.About divorce... I'm guessing divorce rates are just as high for the richest americans. It seems to be quite fashionable lately. On the contrary, those born into poverty are often born out of wedlock in which case a divorce isn't possible
Here is an article for you about what I was claiming https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201206/brainiacs-and-billionaires
Also FYI a lot of tech companies are paying people now do to their contributions to the company instead of rank or position. There aren't even set minimum working hours.
That article doesn't prove anything. It makes claims that are attributed only "to research."
Of course smart people make more. But the study - not article, but study - I linked shows that other factors are more important.
It would be great if intelligence determined success. But in our society, it's an advantage, but nowhere near determinative.
There is this
"A recent study coauthored by Aguinis found that among more than 633,000 subjects in four domains, elite performance followed a power-law (or 80/20) distribution, with the performers on the tail dominating in terms of output. By contrast, in a normal "bell-curve," distribution would describe a "majority rule" in which those of average ability are the most generative in aggregate, as they are the vast majority of the population.
Norman Augustine, former chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin, underscores the power-law distribution in stating that the top 1 percent produce nearly 20 times the per capita output of the bottom half in many measurable undertakings. At the level of nations, Heiner Rindermann and James Thompson examined cognitive ability data sets from over 90 countries to show that average IQ is essentially the decisive factor in human capital and that it is really the top 5 percent—or the normal smart—of a country's population that has the biggest impact on that nation's wealth."
"A recent study coauthored by Aguinis found that among more than 633,000 subjects in four domains, elite performance followed a power-law (or 80/20) distribution, with the performers on the tail dominating in terms of output. By contrast, in a normal "bell-curve," distribution would describe a "majority rule" in which those of average ability are the most generative in aggregate, as they are the vast majority of the population.
Norman Augustine, former chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin, underscores the power-law distribution in stating that the top 1 percent produce nearly 20 times the per capita output of the bottom half in many measurable undertakings. At the level of nations, Heiner Rindermann and James Thompson examined cognitive ability data sets from over 90 countries to show that average IQ is essentially the decisive factor in human capital and that it is really the top 5 percent—or the normal smart—of a country's population that has the biggest impact on that nation's wealth."
Those studies are measuring performance, not personal wealth. If anything, they suggest that, sometimes, the smartest among us are used by the richest to create wealth.
You do realize that those people are also compensated for that? To an extreme extent. The new tech age has turned all of your data on it's head. All of the new billionaires are coming out of silicon. This is not old money.
And, again, you can say that over and over and over and over all you want. And I've seen examples of it. I know a guy who built a web design firm from scratch and sold it to GoPro two years ago for insane amounts of money. He's a self-made 1%er, no doubt. Good for him.
But the statistics don't back up the claim that this is the norm. The norm is that if you are born rich, you are much more likely to stay rich. Even today. And the IQ studies suggest that there are other factors that are far more important than IQ when it comes to predicting your economic success.
Facts is facts, man.
