Do smart people get rich? (loan, tier, union, pension)
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Think back about the people you have known who you thought were really smart. Schoolmates, co-workers, casual acquaintances, etc. How many of those people became, or are becoming, rich? No cheating, by thinking of rich people first and then thinking they must have been smart.
I suspect several on my list might have gone to prison. One became an oil engineer, then cattle rancher. One became a small-town lawyer. One an evangelist preacher. One a well-known TV commentator,one who who lived on political appointments and drove an old car, the last two were both Rhodes Scholars.
I think in society, if you're rich, people automatically think you're smart. But then, there are a lot of rich people, if not 99% of them, that are standing on the shoulders of a family member or circle of wealth that passed down that wealth.
On the other hand, I think the real smart people understand that power and wealth is not the end all be all of life and live happy lives content with what they have. I tend to be drawn to those people more so than the 1%.
Hollywood and marketing have done a good job of hammering the glitz and glamour of fame and wealth into the American pysche for decades. They tell us that we need that BMW or Lexus. WE're bombarded with movies and TV shows where people live in spacial houses in pristine neighborhoods.
I think the real smart people avoid all that and just live their lives in peace. They may not be wealthy, but they are financially free. They are able to follow their passion, travel, and live comfortably according to their own standard.
First... 'Rich' is a rarity. RICH, to ME, means having enough wealth to live comfortably (~$3-400k/yr) from the income from the income from your investments, at 4-5% yield. That's in the neighborhood of $100 MM.
I don't know anyone in that 'hood.
But folks living off the returns on investment, i.e. wealthy? Yes, They are all very smart.
And the few that I know that are stupid usually live paycheck to paycheck, often from the government.
The rest are in-between in both respects so in my experience intelligence correlates positively with wealth.
Also depends on where you live. $400k/yr in the South allows you to live like a king whereas $400k/yr in the North East megalopolis, not so much. You'll be comfortable in the North East, but your money will go a lot farther in the South or even the Mid West. Just depends.
Also depends on where you live. $400k/yr in the South allows you to live like a king whereas $400k/yr in the North East megalopolis, not so much. You'll be comfortable in the North East, but your money will go a lot farther in the South or even the Mid West. Just depends.
If you don't have to actually work, 300-400k a year is living like a king just about anywhere. A married couple could literally jetset around the world from all-inclusive resort to all-inclusive resort while being "homeless" on that money if one chose to do so.
I'm not really sure why anyone would want to set up shop in Boston or New York or similar on 300-400k of passive income if they weren't tied to a job in a city. One could easily live in a much nicer area with a far better climate and tax situation and still visit those places 30... even 60 days a year if you wanted.
It's a truly eye-opening work and statistically proves what you may have suspected all along: raw intelligence accounts more for your success in life more than any other factor. People with the same IQ come out within a few percents of each other regardless of race or the socioeconomic status of their upbringing. Far better to be a black man with a 140 IQ than a white man with an IQ of 105.
Sure, there are outliers. The idiot scion of a rich family who stays rich because his family is smart enough and has enough resources to save him from himself, or the truly brilliant kid I went to college with who became schizophrenic and was a nearly homeless and nearly hopeless drug addict by the time we graduated. But, in large numbers, the math doesn't lie.
Intellelctualists, normally considered "smart" normally don't really get rich. They are - impractical?
To get rich, you either have to be marked by the richness destiny or, to be "money smart". What, to be honest, requires some sort of foolishness, as they have short "something's going to go wrong" horizon.
I read book once, Millions and Millionaires, written about the rich folk from 1900s. NONE of them had any major education, some had as little as four classes in some parochial chool - yet, they became the richest people of their time.
So no, "smart" - no, "money smart" - yes. Look around. I have nop doubt, you met successful business owners and, to be honest, I worked for some. Sometimes, you shake your head in disbelief - and THAT is successful businessman? Literally, dumb as a peg, not cultured, yet, whatever he touches, brings him profit. Midas touch.
It's a truly eye-opening work and statistically proves what you may have suspected all along: raw intelligence accounts more for your success in life more than any other factor. People with the same IQ come out within a few percents of each other regardless of race or the socioeconomic status of their upbringing. Far better to be a black man with a 140 IQ than a white man with an IQ of 105.
Sure, there are outliers. The idiot scion of a rich family who stays rich because his family is smart enough and has enough resources to save him from himself, or the truly brilliant kid I went to college with who became schizophrenic and was a nearly homeless and nearly hopeless drug addict by the time we graduated. But, in large numbers, the math doesn't lie.
How do we know what the IQ of the population is? Not very many people take official IQ tests by a licensed paycjologist. I've never taken one, nor would I even know where to get one.
Outside of statistic correlation, I believe economic success has little to with intelligence.
I mean, being painfully stupid will hold one back, and certain avenues to economic success do require intelligence, but the greatest predictor of wealth (outside the inherited type) is the specific ambition to become wealthy (which is a pretty common ambition, hence the statistical correlation).
Plenty of dummber than average people find ways to make a good living (I mean, we have all had managers, right), and a lot of really intelligent people pursue occupations that will never raise them above lower middle class because of a passion, or a desire to live in a geographic area with less opportunity.
Think back about the people you have known who you thought were really smart. Schoolmates, co-workers, casual acquaintances, etc. How many of those people became, or are becoming, rich? No cheating, by thinking of rich people first and then thinking they must have been smart.
I suspect several on my list might have gone to prison. One became an oil engineer, then cattle rancher. One became a small-town lawyer. One an evangelist preacher. One a well-known TV commentator,one who who lived on political appointments and drove an old car, the last two were both Rhodes Scholars.
I think you're asking, "How well does IQ correlate with socioeconomic status."
Last book I read on that subject was "the Bell Curve," a controversial c. 1994 work by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray. I found it readable enough, and it tackled a delicate subject well. Despite blowing up in the media. Never mind...
They did provide an answer to the question however. There are multiple variables involved, best ask in the context of those too. 'Nuff said, I thought it interesting way back when.
PS: anecdotally...which is worthless unfortunately....yes, it is and was my experience what my father used to call "sharp" people tended to do well in life, from childhood on. Not so much, well: not so much1 No great shocker there. I'm 53 and thinking on the arc of my childhood friends and acquaintances since.
First... 'Rich' is a rarity. RICH, to ME, means having enough wealth to live comfortably (~$3-400k/yr) from the income from the income from your investments, at 4-5% yield. That's in the neighborhood of $100 MM.
I don't know anyone in that 'hood.
I think you're asking, "How well does IQ correlate with socioeconomic status."
Last book I read on that subject was "the Bell Curve," a controversial c. 1994 work by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray. I found it readable enough, and it tackled a delicate subject well. Despite blowing up in the media. Never mind...
They did provide an answer to the question however. There are multiple variables involved, best ask in the context of those too. 'Nuff said, I thought it interesting way back when.
PS: anecdotally...which is worthless unfortunately....yes, it is and was my experience what my father used to call "sharp" people tended to do well in life, from childhood on. Not so much, well: not so much1 No great shocker there. I'm 53 and thinking on the arc of my childhood friends and acquaintances since.
The Bell Curve was a successful book BECAUSE of its controversy.
The first half of the book is basically a defense of intelligence measurements and an argument that we need to promote intelligence because of a "cognitive caste" system that's developing. Because of WWII, intelligence measurement became taboo in psychological circles and even moreso in pop culture, when before it had been fairly fashionable. Murray & Hernstein tried to rehabilitate the idea somewhat.
They also did not say everything the media said... since in the book they admit that heredity is only about half responsible for GROUP intelligence, not individual, and environment makes up the difference. Furthermore, in the book they say that IQ is only 20% predictive of what someone will do with their lives, the other 80% is environmental. They were trying to argue against the Stephen Jay Goulds of the world who said intelligence was 95-100% environmental.
The 2nd half of the book, in which they make a bunch of conservative policy recommendations based on their findings, is the controversial part. They recommend ending affirmative action, welfare, food stamps, etc.. Since they make an argument essentially the same as William Graham Sumner in the 1880s-90s, that welfare policies directed at the poor only retard societal improvement by facilitating lower IQ people to produce more children than they otherwise might. They argue for various policy changes to discourage births among lower IQ individuals. They argue that resources such as education and possibly even some kind of subsidy should be directed as much as possible to the top performers. Almost a reverse welfare. His book is credited for some of the impetus behind welfare reform in the 90s.
However, if some of that sounds like what the Nazis said, it's because they did.
This video does a pretty good job on describing what they book is about, the critiques, and counter-critiques. It's legnthy but it's a complicated subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo The creator of the video does not have sympathy for The Bell Curve's conclusions.
One unfortunate aspect of it is that Hernstein died in 1994, who was the one who did the social scientific legwork, so he never got to defend the data side of the book. Murray was policy & political guy, a political scientist by education who had been working for the Manhattan Institute for 10 years and then the American Enterprise Institute - conservative think tanks - for 13 years when the book came out. So with him the main spokesperson, it got more political because what he could defend was the political side of it.
Last edited by redguard57; 08-01-2021 at 04:25 PM..
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