"Superior" level
"Superior" level
91 comments
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My read on this is that the genetic component is much more significant in the US than in other places... because the US is significantly more economically stratified, nepotistic, and has a broken education system where rich idiots can get all the education they want, and skate by, but you basically have to be a diligent and lucky genius to escape poverty and the shit-tier education it has bestowed you with.
Thanks for the study. I will review in more detail. I don't agree with your conclusion here. Greater association between success and IQ, as we see in the U.S., would imply a higher degree of meritocracy. That is, more intelligent people are better able to break through class barriers due to their performance. This study implies that Europe is more hierarchically stratified, and that one's abilities are not enough to make any difference in success. To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if this were the case.
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The US is unarguably less meritocratic than the amalgamated EU by every possible metric.... unless your conception of a 'meritocracy' is 'you have to be a genius to even stand a chance at doing better than your parents, otherwise, all that matters is how much wealth you were born into.'
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Class mobility is worse in the US.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/social-mobility-by-country
Less people can actually manage to do better than their parents in the US than the EU (broadly, or aggregated and then adjusted per capita).
Income inequality is worse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient
The EU is thus less hierarchichal, stratified.
You are also not considering that the aggregated EU has better life expectancy, better levels of functional literacy and lower infant mortality than the US, ie, the 'shared environment' is at a higher baseline.
Not to mention the US's political systems have far, far more corruption by way of corporations and the wealthy being allowed to spend infinite money to lobby and advertise and propogandize for their preferred laws and policies.
Look up the Citizens United cass if you've never heard of if, or maybe observe the now regular, astounding and blatantly corrupt deals and grifts the current fascist regime does on a regular basis.
Or, if you prefer an academic source:
Thats over a decade old now, its only gotten worse.
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The conclusions you are reaching fly in the face of obvious, exceptionally well documented facts.
You are wrong.
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The US is unarguably less meritocratic than the amalgamated EU by every possible metric… unless your conception of a ‘meritocracy’ is ‘you have to be a genius to even stand a chance at doing better than your parents, otherwise, all that matters is how much wealth you were born into.’
Okay but then how do you reconcile the study you presented with what you are arguing now? Either the study you cited above is poorly constructed and the results aren't reliable, or what you argue now is incorrect.
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I literally already told you:
Here in the US, we only have downward class mobility, unless you are very, very clever, and continuously lucky, continuously reinvesting those gains from your cleverness into social and financial capital without making any 'bad investments', or ever having any sudden medical or financial disaster happen to you.
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It is entirely possible for the IQ coefficient of life SES status to be higher in the US than in the EU, and for overall social class mobility to be better in the EU.
These are in no way contradictory.
If 10 out of 100 people of say >115 IQ in the US do better in life than their parents...
But 30 out of 100 people of >105 IQ in the EU do better in life than their parents...
Then the EU has better overall social class mobility, and IQ is less strongly correlated with SES improvement, than in the US.
This is literally what a statistics teacher would call a 'trivial' example, because of how basic and obvious it is.
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Measuring the factors that go into SES shifting is completely different from measuring how many people SES shift.
How many people do a thing?
...is not the same question as...
What kind of people do a thing?
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Honestly, if you don't understand that this is possible, that this is an entirely non contradictory scenario...
Then its pretty clear you do not have any sufficient training in statistics, that you are not actually capable of having a meaningfully informed opinion on any of this.
It would take me too long to teach you, and I am used to being paid for my time when it comes to using my Econ degree with a specialization in Econometrics.
Go take a Kahn Academy course or sign up at your local community college or something.
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Here in the US, we only have downward class mobility, unless you are very, very clever, and continuously lucky, continuously reinvesting those gains from your cleverness into social and financial capital without making any ‘bad investments’, or ever having any sudden medical or financial disaster happen to you.
The studies you cite in your second comment don't support this. They show less class mobility in both directions.
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My... second comment?
What does that mean?
My second reply to you?
My second reply in this whole thread?
If you're talking about the thing I most recently linked from Cambridge...
... 2 of 3 of those links were not even academic studies, just amalgamated data sets.
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Again, you're not getting the basic concept.
How many people are upwardly or downwardly mobile... is not the same thing as which kind of people are downward or upwardly mobile, what factors play into that to what degree.
The Cambridge study mentions the former and proposes an explanation for this.
The 2016 study looks at the latter and attempts to explain that.
I am saying that, of that lower upward and downward mobility in the US from the Cambridge study... the only people who can move up are exceptionally smart, and the only people that move down are exceptionally dumb.
Whereas in the EU, you do not need to be as extremely smart or dumb to move up or down socially, thus it occurs more often.
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I am sorry, but again, you clearly do not understand statistics to have a meaningful discussion on this, please, I am not trying to merely insult you, please actually learn statistics so that you can actually have a useful opinion on this topic that you clearly care about.
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91 comments