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Mayor Of London Says Economic Inequality Can Be Good, And Some People Are Just Too Dumb To Succeed
Business Insider ^ | 11/28/2013 | ADAM TAYLOR

Posted on 11/28/2013 12:00:24 PM PST by SeekAndFind

Economic inequality has become a hot topic recently, with Pope Francis becoming just the latest high profile individual to speak out about the growing trend.

Last night, however, another big name expressed a very different viewpoint — that economic inequality can be good, and some people just aren't clever enough to succeed.

Boris Johnson, the right wing Conservative party's Mayor of London, was talking at the Centre for Policy Studies in London, a neo-liberal free-market think tank. The speech was titled "What Would Maggie do Today?" but the section that caught the most attention today only dealt indirectly with Margaret Thatcher. Instead, it focused on what Johnson saw as the link between IQ and economic success.

Here's the entire passage [emphasis ours]:

________________________________

Like it or not, the free market economy is the only show in town. Britain is competing in an increasingly impatient and globalised economy, in which the competition is getting ever stiffer.

No one can ignore the harshness of that competition, or the inequality that it inevitably accentuates; and I am afraid that violent economic centrifuge is operating on human beings who are already very far from equal in raw ability, if not spiritual worth.

Whatever you may think of the value of IQ tests, it is surely relevant to a conversation about equality that as many as 16 per cent of our species have an IQ below 85, while about 2 per cent have an IQ above 130. [According to the Guardian, Johnson then asked whether anyone in the audience had a low IQ. To muted laughter he asked: "Over 16% anyone? Put up your hands."] The harder you shake the pack, the easier it will be for some cornflakes to get to the top.

(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: inequality; london; mayor
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To: Kip Russell
"DUmmies"

Jared Diamond is one of the most popular leftist social scientists in the world. His book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" rejects the superior IQ theory. He doesn't deny inherited intelligence, but he smugly states that there's no difference in intelligence between the people of Papua New Guinea and Great Britain. He attributes most of the world's disparity to geographic reasons.

He further states that if you swapped the present population of New Guinea with the population of some western European country like the U.K., the inhabitants of their new surroundings would quickly adapt to the same lifestyles as the previous inhabitants. In short, Brits would become hunter-gatherers and New Guineans would be civilized scientists, mathematicians, doctors, etc. The book is laughable, but many people believe it.

21 posted on 11/28/2013 4:15:22 PM PST by driftless2
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To: max americana

22 posted on 11/28/2013 4:22:41 PM PST by Teacher317 (Obama is failing faster than I can lower my expectations.)
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To: MNDude

I love firing libs and I’ll do it again in the 2014 midterms.


23 posted on 11/28/2013 5:22:02 PM PST by max americana (fired liberals in our company last election, and I laughed while they cried (true story))
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To: Teacher317

Order is Heaven’s first law; and this confest,
Some are, and must be, greater than the rest,

- Alexander Pope, Essay on Man


24 posted on 11/28/2013 5:26:49 PM PST by dr_lew
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To: max americana

Give some details man!


25 posted on 11/28/2013 5:32:44 PM PST by MNDude
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To: SeekAndFind
The Confounded Interest is spot-on that the Fed's QE policy is benefiting the rich at the expense of increased income inequality, but the author fails to realize something else. It is entirely possible people are getting stupider over time, or more accurately, people are getting relatively stupider over time.

As an example, about two years ago, I was in line at my local supermarket, and someone in front of me was taking forever to pay for her groceries. And then I realized what she was doing: she was writing a check. I thought "Checks--How last millenium!" But, she was an older lady, and probably was overwhelmed by debit cards and ATMs.

There was a time when all that was needed for a bookkeeping job was a high school diploma. High school math was rigorous enough to train a potential bookkeeper. Then it required an associates degree, and now a bachelors, because general ledgers are electronic and basic arithmetic is done by computers. But it is more than that.

Manufacturing now is highly automated and required intelligent, disciplined workers, which have always been rare, and are still rare.

The low skill jobs which remain are mostly retail and services, but there are opportunities to work oneself up, but you have to have a certain set of basic skills and knowledge to move up.

The other factor is everything is getting more complicated. Compare 15-year old car to a new car. Compare a 15-year old home alarm system to a current home alarm system. Compare today's home building codes to those 15 years ago. Mechanics, electricians, plumbers, even drywall hangers need to be smarter than they were 15 years ago.

If human intelligence has remained constant, then we are all getting dumber.

26 posted on 11/29/2013 11:21:04 AM PST by magellan
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