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What Happened to Society's Life Script
In the fifties, the American dream was, for the vast majority of people, pretty obvious. You find a job with the main employer of the town, whether that was a coal mine or a factory or a railyard or whatever the case may be. You marry, if not literally the girl next door, then something close; maybe a high school sweetheart. If you were a woman you were then expected to stay home and be a housewife, and except for a few very highly-female coded jobs, that's just what you did. If you were a man you might have been required to serve in the army beforehand, but few people went to college; only if you were wealthy and/or very, very smart. It mostly wasn't your decision either way, about any of it. 'Should I go into the military, or skilled labor, or go to college?' wasn't a question very many people had to ask; usually what you did next after finishing high school was readily apparent, often literally by having only a single option or a very small set thereof. If you did have the opportunity to go to college- most people didn't- both the university and your parents had much more say in what you did there. And I think we should note- the vast majority of people here could find respect as a worker bee. This is important because the vast majority of people have to be worker bees to have a functioning society.
Today, that is not the case. Everyone who wants to can go to university, or near enough. Many people stay in university long past the point at which it does any good, in point of fact. The military is 100% volunteer, and few people live with access to a single major employer. Young people can't find spouses, and these days don't seem to be able to blunder into relationships either. Every individual can, with certain reasonable limits, do what he wishes, and nobody with institutional power seems keen to say no, that's stupid, do this instead.
And it seems that we have lost something, there. Occasionally conservative pundits will start talking about the success sequence- finish high school, work full time, get married, and then have children. There's some other obvious things that go along with it, like 'don't do drugs'. But the gist of the success sequence is, well, a (somewhat vague)life script. And realistically the success sequence is the sort of thing our culture should be putting more effort into promoting; it isn't the default message despite every idea therein being a good one.
I think the youth agree with me, here. Jordan Peterson's popularity, notoriously, came from offering boomer dad advice. Recently there's been discussion of positive male role models to replace Andrew Tate; Andrew Tate's pitch isn't much different from tons of other redpill influencers. What's different is he's selling 'you, too, can be like me, just do x, y, z'. Obviously he's a lying grifter, but his fanbase are mostly teens. What replacement for his (dumb)life script are these positive male role models offering? The pro-social version of Andrew Tate isn't the male feminist activist. It's Mike Rowe.
Unfortunately, "work hard, at a quite possibly unpleasant job" isn't a great sales pitch. But I want to circle back to the point I made ending my discussion of the fifties- most people have to be worker bees. In a functioning society there are few girlbosses because there simply are not very many bosses- the average person will always make the median income, live a not particularly impressive lifestyle, and live in flyover. To put it more pithily, average people will always be average. And being average isn't, well, a flashy and appealing thing. In the past, lack of options meant people became average worker bees. Today, people have the option not to do that; they may not be Indian chiefs and fighter pilots and surgeons and other high status jobs instead, but they're being something, and usually that something is below average, gig workers and basement dwellers. It has to be said, therefore- most people can't figure it out on their own. For every unrecognized genius there's a dozen schizos. Boring middle-aged advice serves a useful purpose; to throw out the social pressure to follow it was a mistake. The question becomes, then, 'how do we bring it back?'
Snobbery is not the contempt of the upper class for the lower. In fact, snobbery is the insecurity of the middle class striver who thinks he might be found out.
Prior to the modern age, there was a fundamental disconnect between the classes. A nobleman was better than a commoner. He wasn't necessarily smarter, or better looking, or more talented. He was better as a condition of his birth and nothing could change that.
Now we live in a meritocracy and things are much more brutal. Nowadays, the rich are actually much smarter and better looking and more talented than the poor. They studied hard, got into an Ivy, and then got the big job at the bulge bracket bank. Do you suck? It's not because you were born poor, it's because you actually suck. That's a bitter pill to swallow.
What's worse, we are constantly bombarded with images of the successful. We watch Sex and the City, and see women gallivanting around the city, boasting fake prestigious jobs, gigantic apartments, and dating tall, handsome successful men who are far out of their league. And these women weren't born rich (except Charlotte). They just moved to New York with a dream. So what's wrong with you?
Comparison is the thief of joy.
We live in a society where we are constantly being bombarded with images of the fabulous life. The life that we could obtain if we only worked a little harder. It's almost in reach.
This was the general position Osnabrückish jurist Justus Möser argued — or, perhaps better to say predicted — in his "No Promotion According to Merit," circa 1770. It's a point also made by a number of subsequent thinkers, as outlined by Jeremy Beer here. (Though he omits one of the most notable of all, Michael Young, who popularized the word "meritocracy.")
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I agree, meritocracy is obviously the cause of a lot of widespread unhappiness, because regret lurks wherever something is possible to achieve but not achieved.
People are happy when they exist in a narrow, comfortable possibility space. No great risks, no great opportunities, no great regrets.
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This immediately makes me go "oh yeah, that supermodel hunk like Jeff Bezos? Mark Zuckerberg? Bill Gates? Not to mention this specimen that will make you faint from his handsomeness, richest man in the world Bernard Arnault. Lock up your wives, gentlemen, before they run after him like the gopis running after Krishna!"
EDIT: No disrespect to Bernard, he's not bad-looking for his age. But if you want me to accept that indeed the rich are much better looking than the poor? Well, depends on which rich guy and which poor guy. Sure, on a general population level, guy who has access since birth to healthcare, nutrition, shelter and general upbringing will look better than a toothless meth addict living in a trailer park, but that's not to say that there is an inherent superiority in A as contrasted with B - flip them around, and which is the thief and which the justice?
I'm busted. I believe that there is slight positive correlation between wealth and looks.
But as you point out, many of the richest people are not lookers.
IQ correlates with both wealth and attractiveness. IIRC on average each 'point' on the 1-10 attractiveness scale is worth something like 3 IQ points. But I have not been able to find that study ever again.
Makes sense. Sadly, people who suffer malnutrition, abuse, or fetal alcohol syndrome will be both uglier and stupider.
Later in the life, I imagine the correlation between intelligence and beauty becomes much stronger. People who are smarter tend have fewer problems with obesity, alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs, all of which make one much uglier.
Yes, but a lot of this is genetic. Good traits correlate with good traits and bad traits correlate with bad traits, and this is partly due to assortative mating. Check this out:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/04/myers-race-car-versus-the-general-fitness-factor/
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I admit, I can't resist picking on poor Jeff. Guy looks like a boiled frog since his mid-life crisis, and he dropped his ex-wife for the next door neighbour who - to me - doesn't look that much better save for the plastic surgery she's clearly had done. I know, that's catty. But those bazooms are not real and that's some trout pout. She'll need work done on her forearms, that's where her age is showing. I don't know if there's plastic surgery for arms, I'm sure some enterprising Hollywood doc is working on it.
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Than the poor, sure. I don't see much if any distinction between the UMC and the rich in talent, work ethic or looks. If anything, the UMC are slightly "better" because there is constant selection going on while for the rich there are much higher guard rails.
I don't think the rich necessarily lack merit, it's just that they aren't more meritorious. I still think allowing winners to exist even if they aren't wholly meritous is a good idea in order to stimulate competition, entrepreneurship and risk taking; it's large transfers of intergenerational wealth and the almost complete lack of risk involved in maintaining wealth nowadays that's a bit iffy to me.
Most of the richest Americans are noveau riche. They started in the UMC or below and became rich. Not through birth, but either "talent, work ethic or looks", or luck, or both.
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Put the average UMC on top of a billion dollar inheritance, and most would be able to maintain it. But actually transitioning from UMC to ultra wealth always takes a combination of above average intelligence, hard work, and luck.
Should we care about the role of luck? I don't really: objectively, most members of the UMC have a lifestyle that would seem fantastical to the ultra wealthy of even a couple decades ago, and most of our attention should be on the underclass whose lives are in ruin (big screen TVs and cell phones aside).
What's interesting is that the UMC feels so deeply insecure about their position, which makes action for those truly in need much harder. They are terrified any misstep would send them tumbling into the underclass. A medical event, a recession, a unpopular posting on social media. So they self police relentlessly and do everything possible to distance themselves from that possibility, even at the cost of making escape from the underclass much harder.
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He wasn't necessarily smarter, better looking, or more talented. But let's not let that distract from the fact that he was, is and will remain all of the above. If you have better education, nutrition, exposure, etc - especially if you compound that over time - you are better.
There might have been a weird period from like, 1700-1900, where that wasn't necessarily true. The nobles were eating a lot more sugar, alcohol, and tobacco than the average peasant, and getting an education of mostly latin, greek, and bible study. Not really the sort of thing that would give them a massive boost in life.
What different worlds we live in!
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We'll have to agree to disagree on that one - alcohol, tobacco, latin, greek, and bible study are to me what makes a man
I guess when 90% of the currently read classic works were written by nobles in that time period, it's to be expected that their image of a man is what holds.
My ancestors did not bother to invite writing beyond some furtive rock-scratches before the Romans invaded them and wrote them into history, my conclusion from that is that the Romans were doing something right my ancestors were not
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This is highly contentious. You've got a lot of work ahead of you still to think it's that easy to adduce the claim that we live in a meritocracy. Birthright status may not be a formal doctrine of our political thinking anymore, but informal relationships, connections and patronage networks still by 'far' play the largest role out of any single variable in success. And thinking Ivy League schools and large bank accounts are a sufficient proxy for merit leaves a lot unaccounted for. Even books like the Bell Curve couldn't adequately control for and factor out the importance of 'luck' as far as their analysis goes. And luck matters far more than talent.
Any ideologies that depend on any version of Just World Theory are false and should be abandoned.
Nobody believies in "Just World Theory", it is a stawman. I believe stawman "Magic Dirt Theory" is more accurate for your thinking than "Just World Theory" for your opponents.
? Sounds interesting if you'd care to share more about what you mean
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There is a large industry devoted to proving that the rich are undeserving, but it doesn't seem to be true. Let's go over the richest Americans.
Jeff Bezos: Born to teenage parents. His dad was a "unicyclist" according to Wikipedia.
Elon Musk: Born to a dysfunctional family. Dad was absent. Mom raised family on a small income.
Mark Zuckerburg: Upper middle class. Probably 95-99 percentile but not spectacularly rich.
Larry Ellison: Born to an unwed mother. Raised by a middle class family in Chicago.
Warren Buffett. Minor gentry. Father was a U.S. congressman
Bill Gates: Father was a wealthy layer. 99-99.9 percentile.
Steve Ballmer. Upper middle class.
Larry Page. Upper middle class.
Obviously, these people are much more privileged than average, but nothing unremarkable. Only Buffett and maybe Gates could be considered true aristocracy. The most remarkable aspect is that 50% are Jewish. IQ is the true aristocracy in the 21st century.
If you read the biographies of any of these men it's clear that they possessed an exceptional intellect from an early age. Honestly, I doubt any of these 8 have an IQ below 145.
I think we can cherry pick the data and have it any way we want in picking our specific cases to compare that make our points. I'm not saying talent is irrelevant to success. What I'm saying here is that society-wide, resource distribution is the most important variable to what's being addressed here.
You can try and change the distribution of talents all you want. But that still doesn't override the effects of resource distribution. Whenever any misfortune befalls you, it's increasingly difficult to get back up; whereas if you have better luck as far as initial conditions go, you'll more quickly accumulate enough resources to be able to weather the effects of later misfortunes down the road. This fundamentally is why it's almost impossible to escape poverty no matter how talented you are or how hard you work, and consequently there's a lot that can be said about lazy and useless rich people.
And this phenomenon is pretty well attested to, especially amongst experienced investors. If you simply go and fund one business with a ton of money in hopes of leveraging profit from it, you're highly prone to losing your shirt, and that's because the average rate of business failure simply becomes your probability of losing everything. But if you fund ten businesses with a tenth of that same money each, you'll get ahead, even when several of those businesses fail; since then the average rate of business success simply becomes your return on investment. You have to invest in failure to increase your probability of success.
The same thing rings true when you have ideologues who hold up the failure of the solar panel manufacturers like Solyndra as a reason the government shouldn’t “pick winners and losers” with things like loan programs, and yet they ignore the fact that in this is what 'all' investors do, the net effect of the government’s investments can only be positive if several plays are bet. You expect to lose some, because that’s the only way you win some. People hold up Solyndra as proof of their ideology, by ignoring all the companies funded by the same program that didn’t fail. The government is making a profit on that program.
To your point about IQ, there's actually a respectable body of literature that shows that there is no causal relationship between IQ and wealth; and although there 'is' a correlation between IQ and annual income, the correlation is pretty small and flat. The truth is rich people aren't actually that much smarter than poor people. Once you control for factors like 'being raised in a wealthy household', there's no statistically significant correlation between IQ and wealth. The simple fact is, luck actually produces most of peoples fortunes.
I broadly agree with this, but want to add a sort of different framing option.
Instead of just looking at general "luck", I like to look at it as shots on goal or number of at bats. Those middle class strivers operate with the background knowledge that if their big risk doesn't pay off, they can bounce back to "just" a boring middle manager job and, maybe, try again.
I contrast this to an ex-girlfriend's cousin who, upon saving up $500 for his own power washer, agonized over actually pulling the trigger to start his pressure washing business because he wasn't sure if the garage he was working out would re-hire him if he quit.
Risking everything you have (right now) on one bet knowing you can rebuilt that "Everything" in a few years is one version of "luck." Risking everything you have right now and also everything you would have had over several years is another. "Opportunity cost" means something really different based on class.
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Cherry picking would be going over a list of rich people, selecting the ones which fit the thesis, and presenting them as representative. Picking the top and showing 6 of 8 fit the thesis isn't cherry picking.
It's not respectable. It's playing a silly game of showing IQ doesn't correlate with wealth when you "correct" for a bunch of other things that also correlate with IQ and wealth, including income.
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My great-grandfather immigrated from holland on accident(damn naval blockade), made a fortune, picked his wife on the basis of looks, and had a heart attack after kid number five. My great-grandmother’s second husband was an abusive drunk who never worked and drank through the inheritance from the first husband in rather short order, while having five more kids.
All ten children were raised by the same set of parents- an abusive drunken wastrel and a woman who, at the very least, couldn’t make up her mind not to marry a known alcoholic. Somehow, the five Dutch children all became rather wealthy-despite the exact same upbringing- and the five others bounced between prison and trailer parks. This is still the pattern in their descendants.
Genes matter, and I’m far from an HBD maximalist. I can see the evidence in my own family.
That may be so, but consider that back then, a widow with five kids was not really in a position to be choosy about her suitors unless she was extremely wealthy, and that having a husband was often a necessity. Being hard-drinking in the 19th century was not a negative quality for a man, and he may have been charming and attentive before the marriage then became abusive afterwards (classic abuser pattern).
I'm not saying she didn't make a bad choice, but her choices were probably a lot more limited than we imagine.
Never forget what They took from us!
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She was very wealthy- her first husband left a fortune.
Ah, then she may have married for love and been deceived by a fortune-hunter. Again, bad life choices, but modern people screw up the same way. The success of the Dutch-descended first five kids may have been down as much to a stable early life and being older as it is to better genetics from the paternal side. Environment means a hell of a lot.
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Jeroboam's list wasn't cherry-picking. It's literally a list of the richest Americans.
But let's expand it to Britain and see what we get.
So we have one aristocrat, a mixture or working and middle class backgrounds, and a few inheritors of family businesses. Seems to me like IQ is the main factor here. Even those who inherited their wealth have demonstrated their high IQ through successfully managing large businesses, and of course, IQ is arguably more heritable than wealth, since wealth can be squandered in a way brain cells can't.
Also, from the new Scientist article you posted:
On the surface, Zagorsky’s analysis confirms the findings of previous studies linking higher intelligence with higher income. “Each point increase in IQ test scores is associated with $202 to $616 more income per year,” he says. For example, a person with a score of 130 (in the top 2%, in terms of IQ) might earn about $12,000 more per year than someone with an average IQ score of about 100.
On the surface, people with higher intelligence scores also had greater wealth. 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.
So IQ predicts both earnings and wealth, but goes away when you control for years spent in school (a consequence of IQ), type of work (a consequence of IQ), divorce (a consequence of IQ) and inheritance (which obviously correlates with IQ, since you need a high IQ to earn enough to pass on a significant amount to your children).
That study controls away the very thing it's supposed to be measuring.
It's also worth noting the AFQT is not designed as an IQ test: at the upper extreme, as you might expect for a vocational test, its ability to predict IQ decreases. It's not made to measure fluid intelligence above 125 or so. See e.g. https://gwern.net/doc/iq/high/smpy/2004-frey.pdf (figure 1A).
A restatement of your point: the very reason the military uses the ASVAB is that it is highly predictive of success in career placement. It is silly to take an instrument explicitly designed to measure likelihood of success, control away success, and then claim it doesn't (as much) predict success after your controls.
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I think we can cherry pick the data and have it any way we want in picking our specific cases to compare that make our points.
Cherry pick one school district in the USA where black students outperform all their peers
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Your source fails to support your assertions in two ways:
(1) This source might reasonably be taken as supposedly contributing towards your final claim "The simple fact is, luck actually produces most of peoples fortunes." However, it says, "The work reveals that while exceptionally smart individuals typically earn more, they are also more likely to spend to their credit card limit, compared with people of average intelligence." Is it luck if someone has high time preference? It seems more connected with someone's choices than their IQ, supporting a "Victorian values" style conservativism about "thrift" and "clean living."
(2) The claim in the study is that when you control for other factors (and assume that these are causally independent of IQ) then the link with wealth disappears:
Worst of all, your sources do very little to support your claim that "What I'm saying here is that society-wide, resource distribution is the most important variable to what's being addressed here." To substantiate that claim, you need to show that "resource distribution" is crucial. A good start would be to clearly define what you mean by that. Then support it with evidence, rather than sweeping claims e.g.:
Is it? Even when including time preference under "hard you work"? Obviously, anyone can avoid wealth if they are spendthrift enough. Mike Tyson is smart, phenomenally physically talented, and hard working, but he still ended up bankrupt.
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The today's poor are rich compared to poor people at 1900.
Person does not have to be extra rich in order to diversify their investments. 80 IQ person would have difficulties to diversify investment.
That is like saying "Sex has no difference to hand-to-hand fighting ability after height, bone mass, muscle strength were controlled for".
You want your opponents to show that IQ produces income, but somehow that IQ produces income only, without any other effects that go with high IQ
These factors aren't indepedent of IQ. High IQ people are less likely to divorce and less likely to smoke. Smoking can't be such causal factor, just several decades ago smoking has socially desirable and rich and smart people smoked more than the poor. 1950 equivalent of Zagorsky would have reasoned that people earn more BECAUSE they smoke.
If you measure individual's 20 parameters and run linear regression on them, you can explain income better than IQ, but same linear regression can get individual's IQ estimate from these 20 parameters. So by the moment you collected 20 parameters, the linear regression already knows person's IQ and adding it doesn't change much, because linear regression already knows it. If you likewise "control" for 20 parameters without parents' wealth, and then add parents' wealth as 21 parameter, it explains nothing, then you say "see, I have proven parents' wealth has no effect on person's income". The very fact that you need to collect multiple parameters to overcome explanatory power of IQ is evidence that IQ is the most important parameter.
Luck matters, and matters a lot, but you simply pushing points based statistical illiteracy.
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Are you new here? Not only is there a nearly perfect correlation between IQ and income, there is no ceiling. A person with an IQ of 150 will (on average) be wealthier than a mere simpleton with an IQ of 120.
https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/2023/02/there-is-no-iq-threshold-effect-also-not-for-income/
You can argue about causation all you want, but how could higher IQ not be correlated with higher wealth? That just doesn't even make sense. I mean, seriously read about the 8 billionaires I linked. All are EXTREME outliers in intelligence. At least +3 STD.
Without re-litigating the HBD debate, consider that the academic literature on this subject is extremely compromised and dishonest. Throw it into the dumpster and start from first principles.
If this is going to be a discussion where we're simply hurling academic papers at each other that neither of us are going to read, then I see little point in continuing it.
Read the links provided and your question will likely be answered.
My entire point is that I reject your framing of the matter that IQ spells out an aristocracy as well as the proposition that we live in a meritocracy. My counter-narrative to that is that luck matters more than talent. Since you don't directly deny that outright or do much to address it, I suppose I'll take the concessions. But I'll add further on the matter for anyone who isn't satisfied with a dismissive sneer.
To reiterate again, when it comes to wealth, rich people simply aren’t that much smarter than poor people. Zagorsky pointed out that “people with above-average IQ scores are only 1.2 times as likely as individuals with below-average IQ scores to have a comparatively high net worth,” which means, “relatively large numbers” of people with low IQs are rich. And even to the extent that there are more rich people with high IQs than poor, this is 'entirely' explained by luck, not talent. Rich people are only that 1.2 times more likely to be smarter insofar as they were advantaged to develop more of their potential IQ by the fortunes of their environment (like “growing up rich” for example). Once you control for all that, no correlation remains.
Instead of a 1:1 correspondence, high IQ barely helps and the curve is pretty flat. So yes, there is 'some' correlation, but it’s weak. Zagorsky said “the average income difference between a person with an IQ score in the normal range (100) and someone in the top 2% of society (130) is currently between $6000 and $18,500 per year,” or roughly on average just $12,000. That isn't actually a lot. And he says, “the relationship is not very strong.” There is a stronger correlation at the highest incomes, few are so lucky, and the correlation is only notable for any IQ above average, after which more IQ makes little observable difference. “People with above-average IQ scores (> 100) are three times as likely as below-average IQ individuals to have a high (> $105,000) income,” that describes almost no one (only 10% of individuals earn so much), and all one needs to have so good a chance at that is any above-average IQ.
And so I'll reiterate again. Those who end up at the top will be mediocre or slightly above mediocre; not the best and brightest. Look at Zagorsky’s table. Look at how many high IQ people earn less than $30,000 a year, which is less than the U.S. national median. Look at how many earn less than $40,000, the national median for those holding a full time job. Almost all high-IQ people earn less than $60,000 a year, which is below the U.S. national median household income. And yet see how many low IQ people earn more than these amounts. Again, you'll see that luck matters more than IQ. We even know that skills matter more than intelligence (though even what skills you are taught is largely a function of luck, e.g. what social class you get born into, what schools you get sent to, what learning disabilities you're born with, etc) but when studied we find even skills are overwhelmed by luck in any correlation with success.
Agreed.
This doesn't seem to mesh with the data I've seen from Kirkegaard and others. I simply don't trust academics in the area of IQ research. Nor would I trust Soviet economists.
Looking at the 10 richest Americans, it's clear that all 10 have extreme outlier IQs on the high side. I'd say that all 10 have an IQ of at least 145, but even if we say they are "merely" at 130, the odds that this would happen through luck are less than 1 in a trillion.
I will grant that the presence of career academics might lower the average wage of high IQ people somewhat. This is far outweighed by doctors, lawyers, and software engineers who all (until recently) had to pass through an IQ filter.
In my personal life, I see a clear and obvious relationship between IQ and income. It's going to take a lot of high quality data to convince me to ignore the obvious data in front of my face. You may call that availability bias, I'll call it passing a shit test.
I don't disagree with your point, but arguing that rich people clearly have high IQ without any actual testing data is kinda circular, n'est pas?
I worry when we start getting into iq correlates with verbal indicators of intelligence which correlate with success academically which correlate with success professionally. It gets a little bit like front squat correlates with vertical jump correlates with volleyball talent so a 400lb front squat qualifies you for volleyball. You start to create errors.
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It's probably worth looking at the purported data, to convince yourself that you aren't being fooled by availability bias. Zagorsky is doing his sleight-of-hand pretty much out in the open. I've mentioned a few things in other comments. He also has a table with a range of less than +/- 2SD.
The claim "Almost all high-IQ people earn less than $60,000 a year, which is below the U.S. national median household income" doesn't appear in the study; it's misleading in two obvious ways. One, it's comparing per-capita income to household income. Two, the income figures are for 2004; median household income in 2004 was $44,000. And a less obvious joker -- the per-capita incomes are not individual incomes, but household incomes for single people and half that for married people.
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IQ is a bell curve, which means there's a lot more people in the middle than the ends. So that figure is greatly influenced by the mass of people near the center of the bell curve; that is, a randomly selected person is most likely (by a factor of more than 2:1) to be within 1SD of the median. It speaks to the strength of the correlation that, even considering that, a randomly selected person in the top half is 20% more likely to have high net worth than a randomly selected person in the bottom half.
$12,000 is indeed a lot, if the median is $40,000.
10% is not "almost no-one" and that claim does not mean "all one needs to have so good a chance at that is any above-average IQ"; that is, it does not mean that someone with an IQ of 101 is as likely to have a > $105,000 income than someone with an IQ of 120. And further, note that these graphs left off the "very rich".
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Have you met many rich people? They're smart! Some are dumb but there's a clear and obvious connection between intellect and wealth! How many stupid people are on 500K comp packages in big tech companies? Some, presumably... but not many. Doctors, lawyers, tech people, entrepreneurs and high finance are pretty clever.
Statistics are all well and good but past a certain point, if they contradict obvious common sense... away with them! Ten thousand papers saying that intelligence has nothing to do with wealth wouldn't make it so.
Domain expertise can be taught to almost anyone. You have to be smart to be a doctor, but that doesn't mean you have to be a genius. Or even exceptional. Having worked in healthcare, I've met some incredibly stupid doctors, when you catch them outside their field of expertise. "Dumb" is not synonymous with "retarded," and "smart" is not synonymous with "genius."
And it's actually quite funny that you mention tech. Because that's the side of healthcare I'm directly engaged in. You couldn't imagine how many idiots proliferate in our field. Far from being the exception, most of us who work in it know first hand that it's the rule.
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