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IQ, the market, bad neighborhoods

Discussion in 'Economics and Financials' started by padre31, Apr 25, 2012.

  1. padre31

    padre31 Premium Member Luxury Box

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    Just finished "The Bell Curve, Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life"

    Alen posted a video awhile ago about public education being ineffective and youth leaving Oklahoma etc and I planned on adding this to his thread but I cannot find it.

    Anywho, here is "why" youth leaves OK, and why bad neighborhoods tend to either stay bad, or become gentrified.

    A town, call it "anywhere", railroad tracks running through the center of town, one side of the tracks the working poor and welfare housing etc, other side, middle class, up on a hill is the wealthy.

    Poor kid has a high IQ, so he manages to do well in school and goes onto college and finishes his degree, lands a job, he does not stay in the poor neighborhood, he moves across the tracks into the middle class neighborhood. finds a wifey from the pool of available females at his college, being married he tends to accumulate wealth, he has children with his nurse/teacher what have fellow college grad, then moves up unto wealthy hill etc.

    Meanwhile, on the poor/working class side of the tracks, his absence means..the pool of IQ's has lowered, meaning less chance of higher IQ children raising the local schools test scores etc.

    The gist of this is the market is quite expert at identifying the intellectual talent it needs, and then extracting it from whatever situation it finds itself in, they then climb the success ladder which removes their children from interacting with poor/working class children as well as then associating with more intellectually compatiable children, which means the "old neighborhood" has no such "cognitive elite" but the middle class and wealthy areas have an abundance of such "elites".

    Which means the 130 IQ type will leave Oklahoma for more opportunities in both personal relationships and financial opportunities, meanwhile because the IQ pool has gotten shallower in Oklahoma due to the migration, the area remains pretty much the same.

    Rather fascinating theory, the authors (it is from 1994) did a great job of showing how the market requires high IQ's and Colleges are quite adept at identifying them and offering an education, thus armed they tend to leave the area in search of opportunities in metro areas. If anything this trend has intensified since the early 90's as more technical skills are required throughout the market now.

    Thoughts?
     

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