The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, by Harvard Professor Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, was published in 1994. The book maintained that economic inequality is ultimately the reflection of genetic inequality. This troubled those who desire a more equitable distribution of wealth and income in the United States. I was and am one of those people.
Critics of the book thought that it claimed efforts to achieve a more egalitarian economy in the United States would reduce economic efficiency and technical innovation. Nevertheless, when we look at countries where economic inequality is more pronounced than the United States we do not find that they are known for economic efficiency and technical innovation:
The Gini index measures the degree of inequality in the distribution of family income in a country. The more nearly equal a country’s income, the lower its Gini index, e.g. a Scandinavian country with an index of 25. The more unequal a country’s income distribution, the higher its Gini index, e.g. a Sub Saharan country with an index of 50.
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factb...ribution-of-family-income/country-comparison/
The following chart, from The CIA World Factbook, shows the Gini index of 178 countries. South Africa comes in first, with a Gini index of 63. This cannot really be blamed on apartheid, because the estimate was made in 2014.
The Gini indcx for the United States is 41.6. This means we have more economic inequality than economically flourishing countries like Israel, New Zealand, Taiwan, Canada, Switzerland, Japan, and every Scandinavian country. There is more economic equality in Taiwan than in China. This is ironic, considering the histories of both countries.
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factb...ribution-of-family-income/country-comparison/
The Bell Curve makes a number of assertions that seem plausible to me. For example, a child’s IQ tested at the age of seven gives a reasonably accurate prediction of the child’s academic and economic success later on in life, as well as other desirable outcomes, such as obedience to the law, regular employment, and marriage stability.
The Bell Curve makes two assertions of which I am skeptical. First, it claims that an IQ test is a better predictor of a job applicant’s performance on a job than any other criterion, such as an interview, school grades, or even a test of knowledge that will be necessary on the job.
If I was the manager of a computer shop that used C++ in a Unix environment, and if I had a choice between a job applicant with an IQ of 120 who had learned C++ and Unix, and another job applicant who had learned neither, but who had an IQ of 140, I would hire the applicant with the lower IQ. I would need to train the more intelligent applicant, and I would not have the time to do so.
Second, The Bell Curve asserts that intelligent people perform better in even low skill, low pay jobs. I think the term “over qualified” applies here. I suspect that an intelligent person in a low skill, low pay job, who lacks an obvious way of getting a better job, will likely be bitter about his or her situation in life. This bitterness will influence the way the person behaves toward co workers, bosses, and customers. A less intelligent person in the same job will probably appreciate the fact of employment, and find the job fulfilling.
Charles Murray has sometimes been called a libertarian. In Chapter 22, “A Place for Everyone,” he and Professor Herrnstein ask, “How should policy deal with the twin realities that people differ in intelligence for reasons that are not their fault, and that intelligence has a powerful bearing on how well people do in life?”
They implicitly answer:
“intelligence does not necessarily go with virtue…most wealthy people do not deserve their wealth, nor do the poor their poverty. That being the case it is appropriate for societies to take from the rich and give to the poor.”
That is not the way libertarians think. They either pretend that everyone would benefit from laissez faire capitalism, or they do not care about those who would not.
Speaking for myself, I think we should make a sharp distinction between the working poor and the members of the underclass. The members of the working poor play the game by the rules, but they do not win the prizes. The members of the underclass live on welfare checks and the gains from criminal activity. Much of this criminal activity is directed against the working poor.
This is a distinction the British make between “the poor but honest class,” and “the dangerous class.”
Karl Marx made the same distinction between the proletariat and the lumpen proletariat. Marx wrote:
“the lumpenproletariat, which forms a mass clearly distinguished from the industrial proletariat in all large cities, [is] a recruiting ground for thieves and criminals of all kinds, living on the refuse of society, people without a fixed line of work.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpenproletariat#:~:text=They belonged for the most,a fixed line of work.
Critics of the book thought that it claimed efforts to achieve a more egalitarian economy in the United States would reduce economic efficiency and technical innovation. Nevertheless, when we look at countries where economic inequality is more pronounced than the United States we do not find that they are known for economic efficiency and technical innovation:
The Gini index measures the degree of inequality in the distribution of family income in a country. The more nearly equal a country’s income, the lower its Gini index, e.g. a Scandinavian country with an index of 25. The more unequal a country’s income distribution, the higher its Gini index, e.g. a Sub Saharan country with an index of 50.
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factb...ribution-of-family-income/country-comparison/
The following chart, from The CIA World Factbook, shows the Gini index of 178 countries. South Africa comes in first, with a Gini index of 63. This cannot really be blamed on apartheid, because the estimate was made in 2014.
The Gini indcx for the United States is 41.6. This means we have more economic inequality than economically flourishing countries like Israel, New Zealand, Taiwan, Canada, Switzerland, Japan, and every Scandinavian country. There is more economic equality in Taiwan than in China. This is ironic, considering the histories of both countries.
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factb...ribution-of-family-income/country-comparison/
The Bell Curve makes a number of assertions that seem plausible to me. For example, a child’s IQ tested at the age of seven gives a reasonably accurate prediction of the child’s academic and economic success later on in life, as well as other desirable outcomes, such as obedience to the law, regular employment, and marriage stability.
The Bell Curve makes two assertions of which I am skeptical. First, it claims that an IQ test is a better predictor of a job applicant’s performance on a job than any other criterion, such as an interview, school grades, or even a test of knowledge that will be necessary on the job.
If I was the manager of a computer shop that used C++ in a Unix environment, and if I had a choice between a job applicant with an IQ of 120 who had learned C++ and Unix, and another job applicant who had learned neither, but who had an IQ of 140, I would hire the applicant with the lower IQ. I would need to train the more intelligent applicant, and I would not have the time to do so.
Second, The Bell Curve asserts that intelligent people perform better in even low skill, low pay jobs. I think the term “over qualified” applies here. I suspect that an intelligent person in a low skill, low pay job, who lacks an obvious way of getting a better job, will likely be bitter about his or her situation in life. This bitterness will influence the way the person behaves toward co workers, bosses, and customers. A less intelligent person in the same job will probably appreciate the fact of employment, and find the job fulfilling.
Charles Murray has sometimes been called a libertarian. In Chapter 22, “A Place for Everyone,” he and Professor Herrnstein ask, “How should policy deal with the twin realities that people differ in intelligence for reasons that are not their fault, and that intelligence has a powerful bearing on how well people do in life?”
They implicitly answer:
“intelligence does not necessarily go with virtue…most wealthy people do not deserve their wealth, nor do the poor their poverty. That being the case it is appropriate for societies to take from the rich and give to the poor.”
That is not the way libertarians think. They either pretend that everyone would benefit from laissez faire capitalism, or they do not care about those who would not.
Speaking for myself, I think we should make a sharp distinction between the working poor and the members of the underclass. The members of the working poor play the game by the rules, but they do not win the prizes. The members of the underclass live on welfare checks and the gains from criminal activity. Much of this criminal activity is directed against the working poor.
This is a distinction the British make between “the poor but honest class,” and “the dangerous class.”
Karl Marx made the same distinction between the proletariat and the lumpen proletariat. Marx wrote:
“the lumpenproletariat, which forms a mass clearly distinguished from the industrial proletariat in all large cities, [is] a recruiting ground for thieves and criminals of all kinds, living on the refuse of society, people without a fixed line of work.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpenproletariat#:~:text=They belonged for the most,a fixed line of work.
