Mayor Of London Says Economic Inequality Can Be Good, And Some People Are Just Too Dumb To Succeed

"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.

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.

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