Half Sigma

Thoughts on worker pay

Some workers get paid a lot more than others. A few CEOs make tens of millions of dollars per year. Other workers get paid $5.15/hour, and some argue that this legal minimum is too high.

There are several significant numbers here:

V is what a worker gets paid

W is what a worker contributes to his employer in the job he's currently in.

X is what a worker contributes to the economy in the job he's currently in.

Y is what a worker could contribute to an employer if his job was perfectly matched to his talents.

Z is what a worker could contribute to the economy if his job was perfectly matched to his talents.

In a perfectly free market for labor, every worker would get paid slightly less than Y. (Slightly less because we expect the employer to make a profit.)

In a world better than a free market where there were certain government regulations in place to prevent externalities and rent seeking behavior, every worker would get paid slightly less than Z. This model maximizes the nation's output.

In the real world, V is only very modestly correlated with W. Two workers might be at the very same company and contributing the exact same amount to their employer, yet they get paid vastly different salaries.

What's the difference between W and X (or between Y and Z)? One example is a salesman. He contributes to his employer by selling his employer's products, but he's not contributing to the economy at all because his job is a zero sum rent seeking job. Or even worse, if his employer's products are worse than competing products, every sale he rings up actually has a negative impact on the economy.

Why are worker salaries so vastly out of sync with Y? Here are a few reasons:

(1) Lack of information. Workers don't know what they are truly worth because they lack information about the labor market. Most people don't even know what their coworkers are getting paid! At the same time, employers don't even know how much their employees contribute relative to other employees and they have even less of an idea how much potential employees might contribute if hired.

(2) Unequal bargaining power. I've written before about unequal bargaining power. This almost always benefits the employer but in rare cases it benefits the worker.

(3) Management problems of large organizations. A manager makes decisions to benefit himself and not his employer's stockholders. A manager may hire a pretty woman rather than a man or an ugly woman who would do the job better. He may purposely hire someone not so good in order to make himself look better. My post about whether companies really want to hire the best employees is relevant here.

Secular Americans are proud of our military

I previously demonstrated that people who are not proud of our armed forces vote Democratic.

Some might wonder if lack of pride in our armed forces is somehow related to irreligiosity.

It turns out that irreligiosity does not predict an unpatrotic lack of pride in our milistary. Let's compare the BIBLE question to the PROUDMIL question:

Frequency Distribution
Cells contain: -Column percent -N of cases		BIBLE
		1 WORD OF GOD	2 INSPIRED WORD	3 BOOK OF FABLES	ROW TOTAL
PROUDMIL	1: VERY PROUD	56.4 145	44.4 195	47.5 76	48.6 416
	2: SOMEWHAT PROUD	38.1 98	46.5 204	37.5 60	42.3 362
	3: NOT VERY PROUD	4.3 11	6.4 28	11.9 19	6.8 58
	4: NOT PROUD AT ALL	1.2 3	2.7 12	3.1 5	2.3 20
	COL TOTAL	100.0 257	100.0 439	100.0 160	100.0 856

We observe that 85% of respondents who believe the Bible is nothing but a book of fable are proud of our military. The primary reason this is a little lower than the other two categories of Bible belief is because smarter people tend to believe the Bible is just a book of fables, and smarter people are also more likely to lack pride in our military. I did a regression analysis to confirm this and verified that, after high Wordsum score is accounted for, belief that the Bible is just a book of fables does not predict lack of pride in our military compared to those who believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God.

However, those who believe that the Bible is the actual word of God to be taken literally word for word, are somewhat more proud of our armed forces. But remember, more Americans believe the Bible is the inspired word of God rather than the actual word of God.

Summer internships can carry a price

There's an article in today's Wall Street Journal aptly titled Summer Internships Can Carry a Price.

For college students strapped for cash, what could be worse than an unpaid summer internship? Maybe having to pay to get one.

Driven in part by labor-law concerns about uncompensated work, companies are increasingly requiring that students receive college credit for their internships -- or lose their slot. While many colleges are finding creative ways to satisfy employers without actually granting credit for nonacademic work, others are offering some form of credit, and demanding that students pay the related tuition.

Businesses are correct that having someone do work for free violates the labor laws. But making people pay money in order to do work is an ironic way around a law that was designed to ensure that workers are paid a fair wage.

Here's an idea: companies can be really safe and actually pay the interns $5.15/hour.

People who are not proud of our military vote Democratic

In 1996 and 2004, General Social Survey (GSS) respondents were asked how proud they were of America's military:

How proud are you of America in each of the following? ... H. America's armed forces

Frequency Distribution
Cells contain: -Column percent -N of cases		YEAR
		1996	2004	ROW TOTAL
PROUDMIL	1: VERY PROUD	49.0 631	75.0 892	61.5 1,523
	2: SOMEWHAT PROUD	41.8 539	19.0 226	30.9 765
	3: NOT VERY PROUD	6.8 87	4.4 52	5.6 139
	4: NOT PROUD AT ALL	2.4 31	1.6 19	2.0 50
	COL TOTAL	100.0 1,288	100.0 1,189	100.0 2,477

We see that even in 1996 the vast majority (90.8%) of Americans were proud of our military. And pride in the military increased substantially in 2004, which is surely a result of military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

If this were an article in the mainstream media, the analysis would end here, but Half Sigma goes where others fear to tread and finds the interesting information in the data.

Look at what happens when we compare pride in the military to respondents' score on the 10 item "Wordsum" vocabulary test:

Statistics for all valid cases
Cells contain: -Row percent -N of cases		PROUDMIL
		1 Proud	2 Not proud	ROW TOTAL
WORDSUM	0	82.8 11	17.2 2	100.0 13
	1	84.6 22	15.4 4	100.0 26
	2	93.9 46	6.1 3	100.0 49
	3	92.7 84	7.3 7	100.0 91
	4	90.8 179	9.2 18	100.0 197
	5	94.4 304	5.6 18	100.0 322
	6	94.5 399	5.5 23	100.0 422
	7	94.5 342	5.5 20	100.0 362
	8	94.4 229	5.6 14	100.0 243
	9	88.6 153	11.4 20	100.0 172
	10	81.9 85	18.1 19	100.0 104
	COL TOTAL	92.6 1,853	7.4 147	100.0 2,001

We notice a remarkable trend in which respondents with the highest Wordsum scores are signifcantly more likely to lack pride in our military!

Now look what happens when we control for the respondent's political party identification:

Statistics for REPUBLICAN
Cells contain: -Row percent -N of cases		PROUDMIL
		1 Proud	2 Not proud	ROW TOTAL
WORDSUM	1	80.7 8	19.3 2	100.0 10
	2	86.5 6	13.5 1	100.0 7
	3	90.7 20	9.3 2	100.0 22
	4	93.2 41	6.8 3	100.0 44
	5	98.2 81	1.8 2	100.0 83
	6	100.0 145	.0 0	100.0 145
	7	98.5 128	1.5 2	100.0 130
	8	100.0 85	.0 0	100.0 85
	9	99.3 48	.7 0	100.0 48
	10	96.8 30	3.2 1	100.0 31
	COL TOTAL	97.9 592	2.1 13	100.0 605

Statistics for INDEPENDENT
Cells contain: -Row percent -N of cases		PROUDMIL
		1 Proud	2 Not proud	ROW TOTAL
WORDSUM	0	87.7 7	12.3 1	100.0 8
	1	71.7 5	28.3 2	100.0 7
	2	97.0 16	3.0 0	100.0 17
	3	89.9 33	10.1 4	100.0 36
	4	90.4 69	9.6 7	100.0 76
	5	89.9 105	10.1 12	100.0 117
	6	94.1 133	5.9 8	100.0 141
	7	93.2 116	6.8 8	100.0 124
	8	91.6 76	8.4 7	100.0 83
	9	90.9 51	9.1 5	100.0 56
	10	85.0 34	15.0 6	100.0 40
	COL TOTAL	91.3 645	8.7 61	100.0 706

Statistics for DEMOCRAT
Cells contain: -Row percent -N of cases		PROUDMIL
		1 Proud	2 Not proud	ROW TOTAL
WORDSUM	0	74.0 3	26.0 1	100.0 5
	1	100.0 9	.0 0	100.0 9
	2	93.9 23	6.1 1	100.0 24
	3	97.0 32	3.0 1	100.0 33
	4	89.7 69	10.3 8	100.0 77
	5	96.2 118	3.8 5	100.0 123
	6	89.0 121	11.0 15	100.0 136
	7	91.3 99	8.7 9	100.0 108
	8	91.1 68	8.9 7	100.0 74
	9	79.2 54	20.8 14	100.0 68
	10	63.7 21	36.3 12	100.0 32
	COL TOTAL	89.4 617	10.6 73	100.0 690

We discover that of Democrats who scored 10 on the Wordsum test, 36% of them are not proud of our military.

At the same time, practically zero Republicans are not proud of our military.

This is one of the most amazing differences between the parties I've seen so far in my analysis of the GSS. Clearly I have discovered a question which separates the leftists from the regular people. A key feature of leftism is lack of nationalism.

Because the people who are the brains behind the Democratic party are the ones with Wordsum scores of 10, this leads to the conclusion that more than a third of the Democratic Party's intellectual core is composed of leftists who feel this way about our armed forces.

FOLLOWUP POSTS

Secular Americans are proud of our military
Jewish people are proud of our armed forces

Crooked doctors and drug companies

This article in today's New York Times is about how doctor run charities are often scams in which drug companies pay kickbacks to doctors.

Yet another example of how our nation's charity laws are misused to benefit the wealthy. And how drug companies are more about marketing than they are about R&D or manufacturing.

"Leftist" vs. "liberal"

I have been guilty of misusing the world "liberal" by saying "liberal" where I really meant to say "leftist."

What is leftism? Most importantly, leftists believe in distributive justice over procedural justice, and they value equality of outcomes over equality of opportunity or equality of process.

Secondarily, leftists are hostile to nationalism, which is another way of saying that they are unpatriotic to whatever country they live in.

It's a rare leftist in the United States who will ever call himself a leftist or admit to being one. He will call himself "liberal," which is why it's easy to mix up the two words. And out of politeness, I tend to call people what they prefer to be called.

The problem here is that the meaning of "lefist" is quite clear, while the meaning of "liberal" is actually quite fuzzy. There are people who may call themselves "liberal" because they oppose populist pro-Christianity laws and care about the environment, or even because they like to go to art museums, but they are patriotic Americnas who aren't especially concerned with promoting egalitarianism.

There are even Republicans who call themselves "liberal." Because the Democrats are the party of the left, if "liberal" were completely synomymous with "leftist" then "liberal Republican" would be an oxymoron.

Leftists have been able to obscure their true intentions by getting everyone to call them "liberals." From now on, I will use the word "leftist" when that's what I mean, and I will be cautious when using the world "liberal" because it's a word that means different things to different people.

I would urge other bloggers to do the same.

Geoengineering to fight global warming

I congratulate the NY Times for printing an article about how to fight global warming via geoengineering.

In other words, global warming isn't the irrevocable disaster that anti-fossil fuel advocates make it out to be, but is correctible via engineering projects designed to either (1) reflect heat back into space; or (2) absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, such as by fertilizing ocean areas with iron to encourage algea growth.

The rapid industrialization of India and China, with a combined population of more than 2 billion, makes political solutions to limit fossil fuel use seem extremely unlikely. Mankind won't rest until every ounce of fossil fuel located on the planet has been converted to energy. Geoengineering, therefore, requires serious study.

The real political story of America

I used to think that political division of Americans is mostly left vs. right. But after studying the data in the General Social Survey, I have changed my mind.

The American political pattern is actually one of secular libertarianism on one end and religious populism on the other. The Political Compass, which is popular among bloggers, is wrong. The intelligent educated voters tend to be predominately secular libertarian, while the unintelligent voters tend towards religious populism. (See my previous post, Synthesizing my IQ and politics posts.)

But hold on. Everyone knows this is wrong! The parties align under a left-right continuum, with the Democrats being the leftist party and the Republicans being the rightist party.

But this was not the way things used to be. From the formation of the Republican Party in 1856 until the realigning election of 1932, the Republican Party was the secular libertarian party and the Democratic Party was the religious populist party.

The man who best represents the religious populist tilt of the Democratic Party is William Jennings Bryan. He dominated the Democratic Party between 1896 and 1908, but luckily he lost all three elections in which he was the Democratic nominee for president. William Jennings Bryan was a religious zealot who believed that teaching of evolution should be banned and that all teachers should be required to affirm that they believe in God. He was a supporter of prohibition because he believed that alcohol was sinful. We can be thankful that he never won a presidential election.

Where were the leftists during this period? Because they weren’t welcome in either of the two main parties, they mostly hung out in third parties. There was both a Socialist Party and a Progressive Party during this period. The best known leftist of this era is Eugene V. Debs who was several times the Socialist Party nominee for President.

The only Democrat to win a presidential election during the period of 1896-1928 was Woodrow Wilson, and he only won because Theodore Roosevelt was having a feud with William Howard Taft. Roosevelt formed the Bull Moose Party to challenge Taft, and unfortunately the Republican vote was split and Wilson won the election.

Wilson reminds me quite a bit of George W. Bush. Both graduated from Ivy League schools, both are heavily religious, and both somehow represent the common man despite their elite educational backgrounds. Check out the 1916 election map: it looks very much like the election of 2004, except the blue states voted Republican instead of Democratic.

Wilson was at least a moderate compared to Bryan. Some of Wilson's policies seem leftist: he was anti-big business and the first income tax was created during his presidency. But Wilson was also a racist who supported segregation and he was a fan of the Klu Klux Klan. When the anti-war leftists protested Wilson's involvement in WWI, he had them thrown in jail, including their leader Eugene V. Debs. As I wrote above, the leftists had no party to call home during this era of politics.

Everything changed with the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. Such change wouldn’t have happened were it not for the Great Depression, an economic crisis of a magnitude that we have trouble imagining today. FDR was a leftist, and after his election the leftist parties all but disappeared because FDR represented their views so well.

Since 1932 the leftists controlled the Democratic Party, and were able to use the pre-1932 poor white Democratic voting base combined with a new post-1932 voting base of leftists, minorities and special interests to dominate our government and radically transform American society. Everyone knows the rest of the story.

But is the story changing? Are the political parties realigning to the way they were before the New Deal, except with the Republicans being the religious populists and the Democrats being the secular libertarians? Will this lead to the leftists being kicked out of the Democratic party and being disenfranchised the way they were before 1932?

Synthesizing my IQ and politics posts

(1) In my comparison of IQ with party identification, I discovered a major change in the 2004 sample: people with high IQs have left the Republican Party and joined the Democratic Party.

(2) In my comparison of IQ with religion, I discovered that people with high IQs are less religious. Most people agree that the Republican Party has been more actively promoting a religious agenda. This would cause some high IQ secular Republicans to leave the party and encourage some high IQ independents to become Democratic.

(3) There is a significant correlation between IQ and region. The Northeast and Pacific regions have the highest IQ and the South has the lowest IQ. In the election of 2004, Bush's strongest support came from the low IQ regions and Kerry's support came from the high IQ regions. This electoral pattern is huge change from the pattern of the 1970s in which Democrats controlled the low IQ southern region. This regional shift is consistent with the conclusion that the Republican Party is losing support with high IQ voters.

CONCLUSION

We are observing a significant change in voting patterns. The Republican Party is gaining votes by attracting religious voters, but at a significant cost: the loss of high IQ and high socioeconomic status voters who were Republican because of their support for libertarian economic policies. These voters have tradtionally been the core of the Republican Party.

How will this change the policies of both parties?

IQ by region and the 2004 election

The General Social Survey (GSS) tells us what region each respondent lives in. The chart below shows the dramatic IQ differences between the regions (once again using the score on the Wordsum vocabulary test as a proxy for IQ). I limited the analysis to respondents who claimed to be white; because black respondents score below whites on the Wordsum test, I didn’t want to unfairly penalize regions with high black populations.

White IQ by Region
Cells contain: -Row percent -N of cases		WORDSUM
		1 0-4	2 5-7	3 8-10	ROW TOTAL
REGION	1: NEW ENGLAND	16.4 161	46.7 459	36.8 361	100.0 981
	2: MIDDLE ATLANTIC	15.6 419	51.4 1,380	32.9 883	100.0 2,682
	3: E. NOR. CENTRAL	18.6 635	57.1 1,952	24.3 829	100.0 3,417
	4: W. NOR. CENTRAL	16.3 245	57.0 854	26.7 401	100.0 1,500
	5: SOUTH ATLANTIC	21.8 665	53.8 1,641	24.4 744	100.0 3,050
	6: E. SOU. CENTRAL	30.9 348	54.6 614	14.5 163	100.0 1,125
	7: W. SOU. CENTRAL	22.7 349	54.1 832	23.3 359	100.0 1,540
	8: MOUNTAIN	14.7 165	55.9 625	29.4 329	100.0 1,119
	9: PACIFIC	15.9 384	50.9 1,233	33.3 806	100.0 2,423
	COL TOTAL	18.9 3,372	53.8 9,590	27.3 4,875	100.0 17,837

The regions are based on the U.S. Census regions, which don’t follow the common definitions. Most notably, the Middle Atlantic region only includes New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The states of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia are included in the South Atlantic region.

Nine of the top ten universities, as ranked by USA Today, are located in the three most intelligent regions (New England, Middle Atlantic, Pacific).

The chart of IQ by region confirms my recent finding that the Democratic Party has become more intelligent. If we were to limit the analysis to just the 48 contiguous states, then we could say that 100% of the states in the three most intelligent regions voted for Kerry in the 2004 election. (Alaska, which is included in the Pacific region, voted very solidly for Bush.)

One can’t help but notice that the least intelligent part of the country is the deep South. All of the 11 states of the Confederacy are located in one of the three least intelligent regions (South Atlantic, East South Central, West South Central). The South was solidly Democratic in the 1970s (check out the election of 1976) because white southerners still hadn’t forgiven the party of Abraham Lincoln for warring against the Confederacy and emancipating the slaves.

Every single one of the 11 states of the Confederacy voted for Bush in 2004. This switchover of low IQ voters has dragged down the average IQ of the Republican Party. It’s also interesting to note that 15 of the 18 states which cast electoral votes for Lincoln in the election of 1860 voted for Kerry in 2004. (Iowa, Indiana and Ohio went for Lincoln in 1860 and Bush in 2004.) Over the course of 144 years, the regions represented by the two parties have completely flipped!

* * *

Those interested in the topic of IQ by state may want to check out Steve Sailer's recent post on the topic. Furthermore, Steve Sailer reported that it was a hoax that smarter states voted Democratic in the election of 2000, and that may be true, but it’s definitely not a hoax that smarter regions voted Democratic in 2004.

Mathematics of the inheritance dividend

My previous post about the inheritance dividend brought forth some comments saying that it’s not possible.

The GDP of the United States is approximately $12.5 trillion, and there are approximately 220 million citizens 18 years or older. If 18% of GDP were earmarked towards paying the inheritance dividend, this would amount to an annual income of $10,200 per adult citizen.

Currently the federal government spends approximately 20% of GDP. The majority of this spending is for social services and transfer payments. If just half of current federal government spending could be eliminated on account of being made unnecessary by the inheritance dividend, than the federal government would need to spend 28% of GDP.

A 28% flat tax on all income, with no exemptions or deductions, would cover all the required spending and would in fact result in a lower tax rate than the current top rate of 35%.

* * *

I’ve renamed this the inheritance dividend because it puts a more positive and more accurate name on the concept.

It’s an inheritance because, just as some people lucky enough to be born to the right parents receive money without having to do any work, under my proposal all Americans inherit some of the wealth previously created by older generations of Americans.

It’s a dividend because, just as shareholders of a company receive dividends merely for their ownership, all Americans citizens are shareholders of America and therefore are entitled to receive dividend payments from the wealth generated by the nation.

Democrats may now be the more intelligent party

I previously wrote that Republicans are more intelligent than Democrats. It seems that may have been a hasty conclusion based on looking at the entire General Social Survey (GSS) dataset, and ignoring the trend. It seems that the Republicans used to be the more intelligent party, but that may no longer be true.

To determine IQ I use the score on the ten item Wordsum vocabulary test administered to approximately half of the GSS respondents.

The charts below show the breakdown of party identification for low, average, and high IQ respondents. Note that the median Wordsum score is 6, so the 6-7 bracket is slightly above average for the GSS sample. However more intelligent people are more likely to vote, so 6-7 probably best represents the IQ of the average voter. Respondents who identified as “other” (a very tiny number) are excluded from the analysis.

Nixon/Ford/Carter Years 1974-1978
Cells contain: -Column percent -N of cases		WORDSUM
		1 0-5	2 6-7	3 8-10	ROW TOTAL
PARTYID	1: Democrat	48.0 830	41.4 614	32.7 349	41.9 1,793
	2: Independent	33.1 572	36.7 544	39.3 419	35.9 1,535
	3: Republican	18.9 326	22.0 326	28.0 299	22.2 951
	COL TOTAL	100.0 1,728	100.0 1,484	100.0 1,067	100.0 4,279

Reagan/Bush Sr. Years 1982-1991
Cells contain: -Column percent -N of cases		WORDSUM
		1 0-5	2 6-7	3 8-10	ROW TOTAL
PARTYID	1: Democrat	43.5 1,457	35.1 1,088	31.7 641	37.6 3,186
	2: Independent	34.1 1,142	33.9 1,052	35.3 713	34.3 2,907
	3: Republican	22.4 751	31.1 964	33.0 665	28.1 2,381
	COL TOTAL	100.0 3,351	100.0 3,104	100.0 2,019	100.0 8,473

Clinton Years 1993-1998
Cells contain: -Column percent -N of cases		WORDSUM
		1 0-5	2 6-7	3 8-10	ROW TOTAL
PARTYID	1: Democrat	38.5 838	33.1 760	32.3 469	34.9 2,067
	2: Independent	36.8 802	36.3 832	36.1 524	36.4 2,158
	3: Republican	24.7 538	30.6 701	31.6 459	28.7 1,698
	COL TOTAL	100.0 2,178	100.0 2,293	100.0 1,452	100.0 5,923

George W. Bush Years 2004
Cells contain: -Column percent -N of cases		WORDSUM
		1 0-5	2 6-7	3 8-10	ROW TOTAL
PARTYID	1: Democrat	36.9 174	32.1 187	37.9 138	35.2 499
	2: Independent	40.5 191	33.3 194	33.5 122	35.7 507
	3: Republican	22.7 107	34.6 202	28.6 104	29.1 413
	COL TOTAL	100.0 472	100.0 583	100.0 364	100.0 1,419

NIXON/FORD/CARTER YEARS

The 1970s were bad years for Republicans. Only 22.2% of respondents identified as Republican compared to 41.9% as Democratic. Although they were bad years for winning elections, they were good years for the Republican Party’s IQ. As respondents move into the more intellectually capable bracket, their likelihood to identify as Republican increases significantly.

REAGAN/BUSH SR. YEARS

The Reagan Revolution vastly increased the number of respondents who identified as Republican. This is the only time span in the analysis in which high IQ respondents are more likely to be Republican than Democratic. However, Reagan was even more successful attracting average IQ Americans to the Republican party, so overall the average IQ of the Republican Party decreased slightly.

CLINTON YEARS

Even though Clinton was in the White House, the Democratic Party continued to lose support. 34.9% of respondents identified as Democratic compared to 37.6% in the Reagan/Bush Sr. years and 41.9% in the 1970s.

But even though the Republicans gained overall compared to Democrats, among those in the high IQ bracket the story was the opposite; Republicans lost high IQ respondents to the Democrats. Once again, the average IQ of the Republican Party decreased compared to the previous period.

GEORGE W. BUSH YEARS

Unfortunately, there are only 1,419 respondents in this analysis, so the results aren’t as reliable. Nevertheless, we see a huge drop in the percent of high IQ respondents who identify as Republican and an even bigger increase in the percent of high IQ respondents who identify as Democratic.

At the same time, average IQ respondents flocked to the Republican Party, and now a greater percent of this bracket identifies as Republican than identifies as Democratic. (It should be noted that this is not the first time this occurs for a single year. It also happened in 1989, 1991, and 1993.)

CONCLUSION

Once upon a time, the Democratic Party was the party of the less intelligent and the Republican Party was the party of the more intelligent.

But today, the Democratic Party is the party of both the less intelligent and the more intelligent while the Republican Party is the party of the middle. This doesn’t seem to me like a stable situation.

It remains to be seen if the 2004 data is a fluke: either a statistical fluke or related to a specific antipathy that high IQ respondents have to George W. Bush and not to the Republican Party as a whole.

Does the rise of Christianism increase libertarianism?

Andrew Sullivan cites a Gallup poll which indicates that a decreasing percentage of Americans think the government should be promoting moral values. 60% in 1996 compared with 48% today.

Sullivan thinks that "the rise of Christianism has achieved the opposite of its intent: it has made us more aware of the need to keep government out of our private lives and moral choices."

Maybe Sullivan has been reading Robert Heinlein's posthumous first novel For Us, the Living. In Heinlein's imagined future, a religious populist type takes over the country in the early part of the 21st century, and the people hate it so much that they revolt and form a new government based on libertarian principles in which the government cannot restrict any activity which doesn't directly harm someone else.

The new government also gives everyone a guaranteed income, an idea which I kind of like.

Class

Some people asked what the classes are in America.

The bible of class is the book Class: A Guide Through the American Status System, by Paul Fussell. If there is one non-fiction book that you must read, this is it. Not only is it eye opening, it’s also hilarious. Especially the drawings.

However, the classes as Fussell describes them are slightly different from what people normally think of, so below is my attempt to synthesize this information:

Paul Fussell name	Normal name	Percent of pop.	Typical job
Top out-of-sight	Upper	0.5%	Philanthropist
Upper
Upper middle	Upper middle	7.5%	BIGLAW
Middle
	Middle	33%	School teacher
High prole
	Working class	50%	Aviation mechanic
Mid-prole			Truck driver
Low prole			Walmart
Destitute	Underclass	8%	Welfare mom
Bottom out-of-sight	Incarcerated	1%	Convict

The school teacher probably makes less money than the aviation mechanic, but class is more than just about money. The teacher has a college degree.

The bottom half of the class structure is pretty meritocratic. If you live by the rules and do everything you’re supposed to, you too can earn a college degree and become a school teacher.

On the other hand there’s no easy way to join the upper middle class. A few gifted middle class students do so well academically that they can graduate from the elite undergraduate and graduate schools and get a job at BIGLAW or in investment banking, but that’s not how most of the upper middle class get there.

Upper class status is a complete crapshoot. You are either born to it, or rise to it by being the lucky and undeserving victor in a winner-takes-all contest—even then you probably won’t be accepted by those born to it, but at least your children will be upper class.

Here is a very brief synopsis of Paul Fussell’s book:

• Middle class people have books in their home and proles don’t.
• Legible clothing is low class. As clothing increases in class, the words become smaller, then are replaced by symbols (like the polo pony), and finally at the top end there are no symbols at all, as with J. McLaughlin. You mean you never heard of J. McLaughlin? This demonstrates how there’s a whole level of clothing above Polo by Ralph Lauren that middle class with pretensions of being upper middle class have never even heard of.
• Upper classes like old stuff.
• Anything that’s British has higher class than something that’s not. That’s why the streets in pretentious housing developments have British-sounding names.
• Proles like to collect stuff stupid stuff, such as limited edition plates.
• The middle class think they’ve accomplished something by just going to college, the upper middle class know that if it’s not Ivy it’s not good. (And if you’re upper class, it’s also important to “prep” at the right place.)
• The upper class “summer” in place like Nantuckett and the Hamptons. The upper middle class are too busy working to do that. The real top upper class summer in places like Dark Harbor. You mean you never heard of Dark Harbor? There’s a whole level of summering spots that the upper middle class with pretensions of being upper class never even heard of. And that’s what Fussell means by “out-of-sight.” Regular people might stumble upon the upper class in the Hamptons, but you won’t see the top out-of-sight summering.
• Bowling is very low class. “If the upper class have yachts, what do proles have? Bowling. If you want to maintain upper status, it’s important that you never, never go bowling.”

Wall Street Journal agrees with me: law school is a big lie

Cameron Stracher, author of Double Billing: A Young Lawyer's Tale of Greed, Sex, Lies and the Pursuit of a Swivel Chair, writes the following in today's Wall Street Journal (free link), which is the only time I've ever seen a mainstream publication tell the real truth about law school:

The legal profession is really two professions: the elite lawyers and everyone else. Most of the former start out at big law firms. Many of the latter never find gainful legal employment. Instead, they work at jobs that might be characterized as "quasi-legal": paralegals, clerks, administrators, doing work for which they probably never needed a J.D.

Although hard data about the nature of these jobs is difficult to come by (and relies on self-reporting, which is inherently unreliable), the mean salary for graduates of top 10 law schools is $135,000 while it is $60,000 for "tier three" schools. It's certainly possible that tier-three graduates tend to gravitate toward lower-paying public-interest and government jobs, but this lower salary may also reflect the nonlegal nature of many of these jobs and the fact that these graduates are settling for anything that will pay the bills.

At $38,000 a year for law school, plus living expenses, law-school graduates certainly have a lot of debt ($60,000 on average, upon graduation). For this price, college students and their parents should be thinking harder about their choices. When I went to law school, nearly everyone tried to convince me that doing so would "keep my options open." All this really means is: "You can still be a lawyer."

If I wanted to be a screenwriter, waiting tables would have kept my options open, too. In fact, many wannabe screenwriters find themselves going to law school, misled by adults into thinking that it will help them get into the movie business. It won't. Sure, you can be a talent agent or a movie producer with a law degree, but you can be one without a degree, too. Most of the skills you learn in law school (and legal practice) won't help you make a movie, and the few that will may not be worth the cost (more than $120,000, including tuition, living expenses, as well as three years of forgone experience and salary). Rather than keeping options open, the crushing debt of law school often slams doors shut, pushing law students to find the highest-paying job they can and forever deferring dreams of anything else.

It's time those of us inside the profession did a better job of telling others outside the profession that most of us don't earn $160,000 a year, that we can't afford expensive suits, flashy cars, sexy apartments. We don't lunch with rock stars or produce movies. Every year I'm surprised by the number of my students who think a J.D. degree is a ticket to fame, fortune and the envy of one's peers -- a sure ticket to the upper middle class. Even for the select few for whom it is, not many last long enough at their law firms to really enjoy it.

There's something wrong with a system that makes a whole lot of people pay a whole lot of money for jobs that are not worth it, or that have no future. If we wanted to be honest, we would inform students that law school doesn't keep their options open. Instead, we should say that if they work hard and do well, they can become lawyers.

This is the same thing I explained in my famous blog post, Law school, the big lie.

The only thing I'd disagree with is that alleged $60,000 mean salary for tier three schools, because the law schools employ sneaky use of statistics to inflate salaries. Arizona State University reported the salary of "graduates who had jobs at private law firms at graduation," which is basically reporting the salaries of the luckiest 10% of the graduating class. We see public companies getting caught lying on their financial results all the time; I wouldn't be surprised if the law schools aren't also doing some outright lying--their results aren't even audited by CPAs like the financial results of public companies.

Credentialism in China

The Shengda College graduating class of 2006 rioted because their diplomas had Shengda College written on them. The students had been promised that they would be getting degrees from Zhengzhou University.

I've never heard of either of these schools, but I can imagine the horror if people expecting degrees from Havard University instead got diplomas from Eastern Massachusetts Community College.

Although the different name on the diploma has no impact on on the graduates' actual knowledge or job skills, apparently in China, as in the U.S., employers value the credential a lot more than they value actual ability to do the job. So the graduates are rightly upset, because the name change on the diploma will probably have huge negative economic consequences for the rest of their lives.

Should everyone get a free income from the government?

I just finished reading Robert Heinlein's first novel, For Us, the Living, published posthumously in 2004. The novel is about a man from 1938 who travels to the future and sees a better utopian society.

In this society every person gets a guaranteed income from the government. Society is so wealthy, people only have to work if they want to.

I think the United States in the year 2006 has reached a level of wealth where we too can do the same thing. Give every adult an income, equivalent to the minimum wage or maybe even higher, for doing nothing at all. People would then be free to work at a job and earn more, or just be a slacker and live off the free income.

Our current welfare and social security systems are a big mess, so this could in one fell swoop replace social security, public housing, food stamps, AFDC, and everything else.

The character from 1938 didn't approve of the system. He said it was morally wrong to let lazy people live without working. But the economist from the future explained that it's no different than a rich child living off of his lucky inheritance, and in fact we are all living off an inheritance left by our ancestors, because our work today wouldn't be so financially rewarding if we were not lucky enough to be born in the United States in the 21st century. Why should only people who work get to enjoy the bounty?

Leftists probably wouldn't like the idea because it wouldn't promote egalitarianism that they like so much. Most people would still work so they can be in a higher social class, and the non-workers would still comprise an underclass.

But the free income for doing nothing model provides much better incentives, than our current social programs because (1) there is no punishment for working, you don't lose your welfare or unemployment income; (2) there's no reward for having children so this should lower the birthrate among the poor; and (3) there's no punishment for marriage--two non-working slackers can marry and combine their incomes.

FOLLOW-UP POSTS

Mathematics of the inheritance dividend

High IQ does not result in higher income, part II

Because my previous post on this subject caused quite a bit of controversy, I redid the regression analysis, this time using the 1991 income data in the General Social Survey (GSS). I’m looking at code RINCOM91, which is the respondent’s income from his job.

Unfortunately, the largest bucket here is only $75,000+, which I transformed to $85,000. As I wrote in my previous post on this topic, the GSS is unable to tell us what’s going on amongst the highest incomes. However, only 3.7% of respondents reported income of $75,000+.

As with my analysis of the 1998 data, after degree, age, sex and region (residents of New England, Northeast, and Pacific regions have slightly higher incomes) are accounted for, the results show no benefit to having an above average verbal IQ. At least, unlike in my 1998 analysis, the highest verbal IQ bucket (WORDSUM=10) doesn’t correlate with a drop in income. As in the 1998 analysis, there is a noticeable negative effect from having a below average IQ, but this effect is not quite as large as the effect from being a high school dropout.

One interesting finding in the 1991 analysis is that black people (RACE=2) are predicted to have higher incomes, but the correlation isn’t statistically significant. My interpretation in conjunction with the 1998 analysis is that being black doesn’t have a statistically significant negative impact on income.

Commenters who are familiar with the IQ literature, and that includes the visitors from the blog Gene Expression, are quite surprised at my findings. Everyone familiar with the IQ literature seems to somehow take it for granted that high IQ causes higher income independent of educational credentials.

In fact, the literature doesn’t say this. Someone gave me a link to an article by Charles Murray, “Income Inequality and IQ” (link to pdf file), but none of the findings in that article contradict my findings that high IQ doesn’t result in higher income after educational credentials are accounted for.

Charles Murray’s points, which are entirely supported by the GSS data, are that (1) IQ by itself is correlated with higher income; (2) IQ is correlated with higher educational attainment; (3) higher educational attainment is correlated with higher income. Clearly the means by which IQ correlates with higher income is through educational credentials; smarter people are more likely to get a college degree or a graduate degree. This is what the GSS data shows. But it’s the credential that employers seem to value and not the employee’s intelligence.

Murray’s article also has some confusing stuff about the correlation between IQ and occupational prestige. Occupational prestige is not the same thing as income. I can think of plenty of comparisons where the higher prestige job has lower pay. Most college professors are not especially well paid, but the occupation has a very high prestige. When comparing low IQ and high IQ people in the same income bracket, the high IQ person will more likely be in a more prestigious profession, so therefore IQ will have a higher correlation with prestige than it does with actual income.

The IQ literature is also full of studies which show that IQ is correlated with job performance. IQ has a higher correlation with job performance than any other indicator such as education, experience, or performance on job interviews. Some people naively assume that this means higher IQ people are paid more. But few employers actually use IQ tests to select job applicants so high IQ doesn’t help people land better jobs. Furthermore, it seems that after high IQ people get hired, their superior job performance doesn’t result in any raises or promotions. My previous blog post, Do companies really want to hire the best employees?, is relevant here.

A commenter pointed out that some doctors are better than other doctors, but this is truly an example of how job performance has no impact on income. Doctors get reimbursed the same amount by insurance companies whether they are great or just barely competent. If anything, the system favors the unethical doctor who lies on insurance forms and recommends unneeded but profitable procedures.

THE PROBLEM WITH USING A VOCABULARY TEST

WORDSUM is a vocabulary test. While mostly measuring g, it is also measuring the respondent's verbal ability independent of g.

Although a high score on a vocabulary test would also predict a high score on a math test because both tests measure g, the higher the measured verbal score the more likely it is that the respondent has greater verbal ability than math ability.

When a college student chooses a major, his ratio of verbal to math ability will probably have a big impact on his decision. The high vocabulary repsondents in the GSS will therefore be more likely to choose a verbal major like Roman history or journalism instead of mathematical major like engineering or accounting.

It is my observation that mathematical majors lead to higher paying career tracks than verbal majors, and I suspect this might be a reason why the regression analysis shows no benefit at all from having a higher vocabulary score. But this also affirms the conclusion that selecting the right track early in life is more important to income than being smart after one's course is already set.

Below is the output from the 1991 regression analysis:

Regression Coefficients					Test That Each Coefficient = 0
	B	SE(B)	Beta	SE(Beta)	T-statistic	Probability
DEGREE(d:0)	-6,202.809	936.556	-.096	.014	-6.623	.000
DEGREE(d:3)	10,021.341	743.474	.198	.015	13.479	.000
DEGREE(d:4)	18,496.806	1,042.939	.265	.015	17.735	.000
AGE(d:18-24)	-10,220.789	977.682	-.158	.015	-10.454	.000
AGE(d:31-35)	2,399.852	855.328	.044	.016	2.806	.005
AGE(d:36-45)	3,720.585	718.024	.084	.016	5.182	.000
AGE(d:46-55)	7,639.124	795.457	.152	.016	9.603	.000
REGION(d:1-2,9)	3,069.914	568.149	.074	.014	5.403	.000
SEX(d:1)	11,543.463	537.833	.293	.014	21.463	.000
RACE(d:2)	1,087.639	842.690	.018	.014	1.291	.197
WORDSUM(d:0-3)	-4,963.375	1,128.756	-.068	.015	-4.397	.000
WORDSUM(d:4-5)	-2,281.987	767.078	-.050	.017	-2.975	.003
WORDSUM(d:7-8)	1.782	751.051	.000	.017	.002	.998
WORDSUM(d:9)	612.797	1,118.896	.009	.016	.548	.584
WORDSUM(d:10)	107.799	1,280.405	.001	.016	.084	.933
Constant	14,807.817	775.048			19.106	.000

Multiple R =

.563

R-Squared =

.317

Std Error of Estimate =

16,326.705

Allocation of cases (unweighted)
Valid cases	3,748
Cases with invalid codes on variables in the model	42,762
Total cases	46,510

More IQ followup

It has been brought to my attention that Razib from the blog Gene Expression did an analysis of religiosity and IQ by country and discovered that countries with higher average IQs were less religious (the U.S. being an outlier because we are too religious for our IQ).

I discovered the same negative correlation between IQ and religiosity myself in the GSS data. The country correlation lends evidence to the theory that the IQ score differences between countries reflect at least partially the genetic IQ of the countries' inahabitants. And of course it further supports the theory that more intelligent people tend to be less religious.

There is also a post at Gene Expression supporting my discovery that IQ is not related to income after college degrees are factored into the analysis. Michaelv writes, "Further data indicating higher average wages for college dropouts with level 3 NALS literacy than for high school graduates with level 4 NALS literacy strongly suggests that credentialism dominated the determination of socio-economic status."

Are there any studies out there that demonstrate that g has a significant predictive effect with respect to income after college degrees are considered? It seems to me that g primarily predicts income because it predicts the quantity and quality of your educational credentials. This is probably something the IQ community doesn't want to talk about because they are so concerned with proving that IQ matters that they don't want to investigate areas where it should matter but doesn't.

More intelligent people are more libertarian on economic issues

There is a tendency for more intelligent people to hold more libertarian views on economic issues. (Some people may call them economic “conservatives.”) This is not as strong as the tendency for more intelligent people to be less religious.

Once again, the Wordsum vocabulary test of the GSS is used to make these comparisons. Note that the median score on the Wordsum test is 6.

When it comes to helping the poor, the more intelligent are definitely more libertarian:

EQWLTH Some people think that the government in Washington ought to reduce the income differences between the rich and the poor, perhaps by raising the taxes of wealthy families or by giving income assistance to the poor. Others think that the government should not concern itself with reducing this income difference between the rich and the poor. Here is a card with a scale from 1 to 7. Think of a score of 1 as meaning that the government ought to reduce the income differences between rich and poor, and a score of 7 meaning that the government should not concern itself with reducing income differences. What score between 1 and 7 comes closest to the way you feel?

Frequency Distribution
Cells contain: -Column percent -N of cases		WORDSUM
		1 0-5	2 6-7	3 8-10	ROW TOTAL
EQWLTH	1: GOVT REDUCE DIFF	27.3 1,028	15.1 538	10.1 235	18.7 1,801
	2	10.8 405	9.9 353	9.5 220	10.2 978
	3	16.3 614	18.2 647	18.2 423	17.5 1,684
	4	20.9 785	21.2 754	18.5 430	20.4 1,969
	5	9.9 371	13.6 484	15.8 367	12.7 1,222
	6	4.8 180	8.9 317	11.6 270	8.0 767
	7: NO GOVT ACTION	10.0 376	12.9 459	16.3 378	12.6 1,213
	COL TOTAL	100.0 3,759	100.0 3,552	100.0 2,323	100.0 9,634

AIDHOUSE On the whole, do you think it should or should not be the government's responsibility to ... I. Provide decent housing for those who can't afford it.

Frequency Distribution
Cells contain: -Column percent -N of cases		WORDSUM
		1 0-5	2 6-7	3 8-10	ROW TOTAL
AIDHOUSE	1: DEFIN SHOULD BE	28.1 150	15.8 92	11.7 46	19.1 288
	2: PROBAB SHOULD BE	49.2 262	51.2 299	49.7 195	50.1 756
	3: PROB SHOULD NOT BE	16.5 88	25.3 148	30.9 121	23.7 357
	4: DEFIN SHOULD NOT BE	6.2 33	7.7 45	7.7 30	7.2 108
	COL TOTAL	100.0 533	100.0 584	100.0 392	100.0 1,509

More intelligent respondents are far more libertarian when it comes to government price controls:

SETPRICE Here are some things the government might do for the economy. Circle one number for each action to show whether you are in favor of it or against it. ... B. Control of prices by legislation.

Frequency Distribution
Cells contain: -Column percent -N of cases		WORDSUM
		1 0-5	2 6-7	3 8-10	ROW TOTAL
SETPRICE	1: STRONGLY IN FAVOR	13.8 79	9.4 57	3.2 13	9.4 149
	2: IN FAVOR	31.5 181	27.3 166	19.4 78	26.8 425
	3: NEITHER	25.4 146	23.2 141	22.6 91	23.8 378
	4: AGAINST	22.8 131	29.8 181	36.2 146	28.9 458
	5: STRONGLY AGAINST	6.4 37	10.4 63	18.6 75	11.0 175
	COL TOTAL	100.0 574	100.0 608	100.0 403	100.0 1,585

When it comes to cutting government spending, the more intelligent are slightly less in favor than the average to slightly above average respondents. But there is a stronger tendency for the less intelligent to be against spending cuts, so overall people who favor spending cuts are more intelligent than average:

CUTGOVT Here are some things the government might do for the economy. Circle one number for each action to show whether you are in favor of it or against it. ... C. Cuts in government spending.

Frequency Distribution
Cells contain: -Column percent -N of cases		WORDSUM
		1 0-5	2 6-7	3 8-10	ROW TOTAL
CUTGOVT	1: STRONGLY IN FAVOR	35.5 207	40.5 250	41.0 166	38.8 623
	2: IN FAVOR	39.1 228	44.7 276	40.7 165	41.7 669
	3: NEITHER	17.3 101	10.2 63	12.6 51	13.4 215
	4: AGAINST	5.3 31	3.9 24	4.4 18	4.5 73
	5: STRONGLY AGAINST	2.7 16	.8 5	1.2 5	1.6 26
	COL TOTAL	100.0 583	100.0 618	100.0 405	100.0 1,606

People who favor less government regulation of business are more intelligent than average, but people opposed to less government regulation of business are also more intelligent than average. How is that? The more intelligent are less likely to be undecided.

Libertarians will at least be happy that the nation has a strong preference for less government regulation: 46.1% want less and only 18% don’t.

LESSREG Here are some things the government might do for the economy. Circle one number for each action to show whether you are in favor of it or against it. ... E. Less government regulation of business.

Frequency Distribution
Cells contain: -Column percent -N of cases		WORDSUM
		1 0-5	2 6-7	3 8-10	ROW TOTAL
LESSREG	1: STRONGLY IN FAVOR	10.7 62	15.3 94	13.2 53	13.1 209
	2: IN FAVOR	32.4 187	32.4 199	34.7 139	33.0 525
	3: NEITHER	40.6 234	35.3 217	30.2 121	35.9 572
	4: AGAINST	13.0 75	14.2 87	18.7 75	14.9 237
	5: STRONGLY AGAINST	3.3 19	2.8 17	3.2 13	3.1 49
	COL TOTAL	100.0 577	100.0 614	100.0 401	100.0 1,592

But one area where more intelligent people are far less libertarian is when it comes to government spending on the environment. More intelligent people want the government to spend more:

Listed below are various areas of government spending. Please indicate whether you would like to see more or less government spending in each area. Remember that if you say "much more," it might require a tax increase to pay for it. ... A. The environment.

Frequency Distribution
Cells contain: -Column percent -N of cases		WORDSUM
		1 0-5	2 6-7	3 8-10	ROW TOTAL
SPENVIRO	1: SPEND MUCH MORE	13.7 77	12.4 75	16.1 64	13.8 216
	2: SPEND MORE	37.4 210	43.0 260	46.2 184	41.8 654
	3: SPEND SAME	36.1 203	35.4 214	28.1 112	33.8 529
	4: SPEND LESS	9.6 54	7.8 47	6.8 27	8.2 128
	5: SPEND MUCH LESS	3.2 18	1.5 9	2.8 11	2.4 38
	COL TOTAL	100.0 562	100.0 605	100.0 398	100.0 1,565

ANALYSIS

I pointed out before that, traditionally, Republicans are more intelligent than Democrats. This blog post explains the phenomenon: more intelligent people are more likely to agree with the Republican platform of “conservative” economic policies.

Government spending for the environment is a specific exception to the general principle of the more intelligent being more libertarian (or more economically conservative). I suspect that respondents don’t see the question as an economics question but rather as a question about how much they care about the environment. The more intelligent are more environmentally conscious. Other questions in the GSS show the same tendency for more intelligent people to care more about the environment.

In a certain sense, the more intelligent “consume” environmental spending more than the less intelligent. More intelligent people have greater income and they use it to go on vacations where they admire the beauty of nature. Communing with nature is an intellectual pursuit. The more intelligent are in favor of government spending which they perceive to directly benefit them and which promotes the values they hold dear.

High IQ may cause LOWER income

Using the General Social Survey, I transformed the respondent’s 1998 income variable (RINCOM98) and then did a multiple regression analysis.

I expected to discover that verbal IQ (based on the 10 item Wordsum test) would be a bigger determinant of income than the respondent’s degree. I was completely wrong.

It turns out that verbal IQ has hardly any impact at all on income after the highest degree completed is added to the regression analysis. The biggest impact is at the bottom of the bell curve, where having a very low IQ causes a drop in income of $5,300 (although not as big as the $7,700 drop associated with being a high school dropout).

Having an IQ slightly above average (WORSDUM 7-8) yields only a $3,200 boost to income, in comparison to $13,900 for a bachelor’s degree and $26,900 for a graduate degree.

Now here’s the kicker. Having an IQ in the highest bucket (WORDSUM=10) results in a $2,500 lower income than just having an average IQ, and a $5,700 lower income compared to having a slightly above average IQ.

Does this mean IQ is useless? Not exactly. IQ has a strong impact on whether or not a person obtains a bachelor’s or graduate degree in the first place. However, the regression analysis indicates that the credential is more highly valued in the workplace than actually being intelligent.

Of course this analysis is riddled with problems. First of all, although the ten item Wordsum test appears to be a pretty good test considering how short it is, it’s still only a ten item test and therefore has a high margin of error. If respondents’ IQs based on a longer and more comprehensive test were included in the GSS, then the more reliable IQ score would surely show a stronger impact in the regression analysis.

However, the degree data is also lacking because it does not distinguish between degrees. A degree from the College of Staten Island is given the same weight as a degree from Harvard. And a degree in something with little employment value such as sociology is given the same weight as a degree in engineering.

Furthemore, Wordsum has shown to be highly predictive elsewhere in the GSS. For example, the higher the Wordsum score the more likely it is that the respondent believes the Bible to be just a book of fables. And Wordsum of 9 or 10 is more highly predictive than having a graduate degree.

The unreliability of Wordsum and the unreliability of the degree designations probably approximately cancel each other out, so it’s more likely than not that above average IQ has little impact on income besides helping the high IQ person get credentialed.

And does having a very high IQ actually lower one’s income? Possibly. Perhaps, once a person is able to demonstrate that he can do a job with a minimum level of competence, social factors such as being liked by your boss are more important to getting a raise or promotion than performing at a level beyond minimum competence. And perhaps the high IQ person doesn’t get along as well with his boss.

The GSS is not able to shed any light on what’s going on at the very top. How are the highest salaries (such as $150,000 and beyond) related to having high IQs beyond the measurement of Wordsum (such as top 2% or higher)?

Below is the regression analysis, which may not be entirely comprehensible:

Regression Coefficients Test That Each Coefficient = 0 B SE(B) Beta SE(Beta) T-statistic Probability AGE(d:18-24) -9,159.910 1,784.448 -.098 .019 -5.133 .000 AGE(d:31-35) 4,884.386 1,592.251 .061 .020 3.068 .002 AGE(d:36-45) 9,718.142 1,345.105 .158 .022 7.225 .000 AGE(d:46-65) 12,716.188 1,313.930 .217 .022 9.678 .000 DEGREE(d:2) 4,293.367 1,621.822 .045 .017 2.647 .008 DEGREE(d:3) 13,900.688 1,182.686 .211 .018 11.753 .000 DEGREE(d:4) 26,937.154 1,685.428 .289 .018 15.982 .000 DEGREE(d:0) -7,654.691 1,652.566 -.081 .018 -4.632 .000 REGION(d:1-2,9) 1,473.943 940.341 .026 .016 1.567 .118 SEX(d:1) 14,454.761 893.279 .265 .016 16.182 .000 RACE(d:2) -2,659.872 1,313.958 -.034 .017 -2.024 .043 WORDSUM(d:0-3) -5,326.575 1,780.757 -.057 .019 -2.991 .003 WORDSUM(d:4-5) -79.940 1,302.007 -.001 .021 -.061 .951 WORDSUM(d:7-8) 3,201.366 1,250.954 .054 .021 2.559 .011 WORDSUM(d:9) 3,138.231 1,876.389 .031 .019 1.672 .095 WORDSUM(d:10) -2,452.396 2,210.348 -.021 .019 -1.110 .268 Constant 13,815.349 1,482.865 9.317 .000

Color coding: <-2.0 <-1.0 <0.0 >0.0 >1.0 >2.0 T Effect of each variable: Negative Positive

Multiple R = .561 R-Squared = .315 Std Error of Estimate = 22,756.823

FOLLOWUP POSTS

More IQ followup
High IQ does not result in higher income, part II

Religion and intelligence: a short rant

According to this webpage, studies going back to the 1920s have shown that more intelligent people are less religious. So all I did was rediscover what was already known.

However, I worked with a much larger sample size than any of those older studies, and also I discovered that it is primarily IQ and not more years of schooling which leads to less religiosity.

Furthermore, I demonstrated that the lower religiosity of high IQ people carries over to their views on political issues with religious overtones, such as abortion and prayer in schools.

For some reason I was not aware of the long known negative correlation between IQ and religiosity. This is a rare form of political correctness that the political left isn’t behind. The mainstream media is only eager to tell us the benefits of religion. They keep telling us that religion brings happiness. In January 2005, this was on the front page of Time Magazine. There have also been vague but not really proven suggestions that religion brings better health.

Doesn’t anyone think that it’s at least as important to tell us that religion also brings stupidity? I guess not.

The perks of executive management

Time Warner CFO Wayne Pace was "sugar daddy" to Andreia Schwartz, the Manhattan Madam.

This is further evidence that corporate officers are overpaid.

I love the GSS

The General Social Survey (GSS) is an incredibly useful tool. I have access to a lot of great sociological data, all free of charge, and a free web based statistics program to go along with it.

I want to thank the people who made it possible. If any government grants were involved, then it’s a rare example of government money well spent.

I wonder if this portends a new era of sociology in which bloggers like me put the leftist college professors out of business? In my blog I have already posted some cutting edge observations which are as useful as you could get from any of those academic journals that college professors write articles for but no one reads because the copyrighted articles aren’t available for free over the internet.

Furthermore, I’ve uncovered some other fascinating observations that not only go against the conventional wisdom of the politically correct, but also go against the conventional wisdom of the politically incorrect. I will blog about these in the near future.

GSS based research, published in blogs, is superior to academic journals because it’s available for free on the internet and it’s subject to instantaneous peer review. After my post about liberals and Republicans being smarter than conservatives and Democrats, SciFiGeek left a comment in which he added his own observations from the GSS data.

The only thing I worry about is that once the secret is out, so many bloggers will start using it that the server (which seems to be at UC Berkeley) won’t be able to handle the load.

Religious people are less intelligent

I’ve become addicted to analyzing the General Social Survey (with thanks once again to the Inductivist who introduced me to it).

One of the clearest trends I observed is the inverse correlation between religiosity and verbal IQ (the GSS includes a verbal IQ test). In other words, people who are more religious tend to be less intelligent.

To demonstrate this, here are some charts which show, for a particular viewpoint, the percent of people with that viewpoint who have high verbal IQs.

(I put people with WORDSUM(9-10) into the high verbal IQ category, which is the top 13.8% of respondents. This means that for any of the results you see below, a number higher than 13.8% indicates a disproportionately high percentage of smart people agree with that response.)

GOD Please look at this card and tell me which statement comes closest to expressing what you believe about God.

I don't believe in God	26.3%
I don't know whether there is a God and I don't believe there is any way to find out	27.7%
I don't believe in a personal God, but I do believe in a Higher Power of some kind	26.8%
I find myself believing in God some of the time, but not at others	11.4%
While I have doubts, I feel that I do believe in God	14.7%
I know God really exists and I have no doubts about it............	10.1%

Note: the majority of respondents (64.4%) said that they have no doubts. Only 6.5% reported being atheists or agnostics, and only 13.4% of people with high verbal IQs reported being atheists or agnostics. America is a pretty religious place, even for smart people.

BIBLE Which of these statements comes closest to describing your feelings about the Bible?

The Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word	4.6%
The Bible is the inspired word of God but not everything in it should be taken literally, word for word	15.4%
The Bible is an ancient book of fables, legends, history, and moral precepts recorded by men	27.0%

There are many other religious questions like this in the GSS, and they all follow the same pattern in which the less religious bucket has a higher percentage of people with high verbal IQs.

The secularism of more intelligent people carries over into political issues. For example:

ABANY Please tell me whether or not you think it should be possible for a pregnant woman to obtain a legal abortion if ... G. The woman wants it for any reason?

Yes	19.0%
No	9.5%

PRAYER The United States Supreme Court has ruled that no state or local government may require the reading of the Lord's Prayer or Bible verses in public schools. What are your views on this--do you approve or disapprove of the court ruling?

Approve	21.9%
Disapprove	8.3%

Blacks genetically less intelligent than whites according to Wall Street Journal

Three months ago I wrote about Dr. Bruce Lan’s research into brain genes and evolution. Based upon my reading of the NY Times article, which apparently put a PC spin on things, I concluded that Dr. Lahn’s research indicated that there are genetic differences between the races which affect brain function.

On the front page of yesterday’s Wall Street Journal is an article which talks about the issue directly. Below is an excerpt in which I highlight the important conclusion:

In recent years, Dr. Lahn has become interested in why the human brain is so large and complex. Although humans and chimpanzees share about 96% of their DNA, human brains are about four times larger. Even today, researchers can find a correlation, on average, between people's brain size and their IQ.

Dr. Lahn's group zeroed in on the role of two genes, called ASPM and microcephalin, that are known to have a role in brain size. Humans with defective copies of either gene are born with brains only about one-third the normal size.

Studying DNA from several species, the Chicago team found that, over millions of years, the genes had undergone more rapid change in monkeys, apes and humans than in other animals. Their next step was to determine if evolution had continued in modern humans. Dr. Lahn's graduate students began decoding DNA from 1,184 people belonging to 59 groups from around the world, including Bedouins, Pima Indians and French-speaking Basques.

The data showed that evolution had continued in recent millennia. A statistical analysis of DNA patterns suggested that new mutations in each of the two brain-related genes had spread quickly through some human populations. Evidently, these mutations were advantageous among those populations -- just as the genetic variant promoting milk digestion was advantageous to early Europeans. Dr. Lahn and his team further observed that the new mutations are found most frequently outside of Africa. What the data didn't say was how the mutations were advantageous. Perhaps the genes play a role outside of the brain or affect a brain function that has nothing to do with intelligence.

While acknowledging that the evidence doesn't permit a firm conclusion, Dr. Lahn favors the idea that the advantage conferred by the mutations was a bigger and smarter brain. He found ways to suggest that in his papers. One mutation, which according to his estimates arose some 40,000 years ago, coincided with the first art found in caves, the paper observed. The other mutation, present mostly in people from the Middle East and Europe, and estimated to be 5,800 years old, coincided with the "development of cities and written language."

That suggested brain evolution might have occurred in tandem with important cultural changes. Yet because neither variant is common in sub-Saharan Africa, there was another potential implication: Some groups had been left out.

Unfortunately, because of political correctness, it seems that Dr. Lahn has to stop doing his brain research. “Dr. Lahn stands by his work but says that because of the controversy he is moving into other projects.”

This is further evidence that the research does indeed show that blacks are less intelligent than whites. If the research confirmed the politically correct but apparently scientifically incorrect notion that there is no genetic difference in intelligence between the races, then there would be no need for him to stop doing his brain research.

Liberals smarter than conservatives, Republicans smarter than Democrats

The General Social Survey includes a ten item vocabulary test, coded WORDSUM, which is likely strongly correlated with intelligence. This is an opportunity for us to determine whether liberals and Democrats are smarter than conservatives and Republicans.

For the purpose of this comparison, I consider a high vocabulary score to be 9 or 10 correct answers on the vocabulary test (WORDSUM 9-10).

LIBERALS ARE SMARTER THAN CONSERVATIVES

Of those who consider themselves “liberal” or “extremely liberal” (POLVIEWS 1-2), 20.8% had high vocabulary scores.

Of whose who consider themselves “conservative” or “extremely conservative” (POLVIEWS 6-7), only 13.8% had high vocabulary scores.

REPUBLICANS ARE SMARTER THAN DEMOCRATS

Of those who identify as Republican (PARTYID 5-6), 15.6% had high vocabulary scores.

Of those who identify as Democrats (PARTYID 0-1), only 11.9% had high vocabulary scores.

ANALYSIS

This is an extremely surprising result. Because there is a strong correlation between liberal and Democrat, and between conservative and Republican, I would have assumed that if something were true for liberals it would also be true for Democrats, and the same for conservatives and Republicans.

My hypothesis is that people consider many factors when determining if they are liberal or conservative, including leftist or rightist orientation (leftist being liberal), religiosity (religious being conservative), and attitudes corresponding to what’s considered “Openness” in the Five Factor personality model (with Openness being liberal).

But when people decide which party to vote for, a major factor is how much money they make and/or what social class they consider themselves a part of. People who are of a higher social class or make more money (both of these factors correlating with higher intelligence) are more likely to vote Republican.

UPDATE

I may have been wrong. See my post: Democrats may now be the more intelligent party.

Theory of Jews, politics and genes

I've been posting a lot on this subject recently, so this post is mostly a review of my previous posts.

(1) Political views are almost certainly genetic.

(1a) This was discussed in a NY Times article, and the conclusions were based on research involving identical twins.

(1b) How else does one explain how two intelligent people, who perhaps even studied the exact same field (such as economics), could have vastly divergent views on political matters? Political views are not an expression of logical reasoning, but rather an expression of some base emotion. and personality differences of this sort are usually influenced by genes.

(2) Jews are more strongly Democratic than any other identifiable U.S. group except for blacks.

(2a) One can understand why blacks vote Democratic. The Democratic party is in favor of giving stuff to black people, like "civil rights," affirmative action, and government spending on social welfare which disproportionately benefits black recipients. It's a vote of self-interest which is easy enough to explain.

(2b) But why do Jews vote Democratic? In the U.S. Jews are economically successful, they should be voting Republican. This is not just a matter of unthinking party identification; the intellectual leftist core of the Democratic party is disproportionately Jewish. Jews have been disproportionately involved in leftist politics in other countries and previous times. Jewish leftism predated the Holocaust which is often incorrectly blamed for Jewish identification with the left.

(2c) Because we know that politics are genetic, the simplest and most obvious explanation for the mysterious Jewish leftist bent is that the Jewish gene pool has a disproportionate share of leftist genes. This conclusion is boosted by our knowledge that Ashkenazi (European) Jews have been a relatively closed population for the last two thousand years. Although there has been some interbreeding between Jews and non-Jews based on the nearly similar appearance--for example, Russian Jews do not look like Middle Eastern Jews, they look like Russians--the Jewish gene pool has been separate enough to develop distinct Jewish mental traits. The most important is that Ashkenazi Jews have higher IQ than any other identifiable ethnic group. The genetic basis for higher Jewish intelligence was prominently explained in a NY Times article. It naturally follows that other mental traits have been selected for among European Jews, so if we see Jews behaving differently from other Europeans for no apparent reason, it's logical to suspect a genetic basis for the difference.

(3) Jews provide a link to understand exactly what it is that makes a person leftist, or "liberal" as it has come to be called in the United States. By determining what personality traits Jews have in common with non-Jewish leftists, we can hopefully figure out what makes the leftist tick. Because leftism is extremely harmful to mankind in that it creates political systems with poor economies and lack of freedom, it is extremely important to understand leftism so it can be properly suppressed.

(4) I suspect that one common personality trait is guilt, and this is explained in detail my my post on guilt, religion, and politics. Guilt is popularly associated with both Jews (just do a Google search for "Jewish guilt") and liberals, there's a good explanation for why Jews would be genetically predisposed towards feeling guilt, and guilt explains a lot of leftist behavior. Is this just a coincidence?

(5) Maybe "individualism" is the personality trait? The guilty liberal MattyA wrote about his dislike of individulaism in his essay. Guilt and individualism seem to be related. I will need to write more about individualism in a future post.

UPDATE

Maybe Jews aren't leftist after all? Jewish people are proud of our armed forces.

Philanthropy is entertainment for rich people

Tyler Cowen writes in his New York Times column:

DONORS to charities, it seems, do not behave rationally. Increasing evidence shows that donors often tolerate high administrative costs, fail to monitor charities and do not insist on measurable results — the opposite of how they act when they invest in the stock market.

. . .

[D]onors often give to charities for reasons of pride. Monitoring a charity means worrying about the wisdom of contributing to that charity. Many donors would instead prefer simply to feel good about their generosity and thus they deceive themselves into thinking that all is going well. Furthermore, many donors seek a sense of affiliation and wish to be a part of large and successful organizations — the "winning team," so to speak. Again, these donors do not focus on how, or if, they actually end up improving the world.

As I wrote in my post about internships sold at charity auctions, "a great deal of 'charity' is not about charity at all but is really a status building and social activity for rich people. This why I'm opposed to the policy of giving income tax breaks for 'charitable' giving."

In addition to entertainment for rich people, charity also helps with guilt alleviation, which is a selfish purpose and not a charitable one.

I stand by my call to eliminate income tax deductions for "charitable" donations.

New York Times says behavior is genetic

It's very suprising to see the New York Times so strongly explaining the link between genes and behavior. But the NY Times informs us that the following are influenced by genetics:

Risk taking
Body weight
Addiction to cigarettes
Dance ability
Obsessive compulsive disorder
Attention deficit disorder
Sexual desire
Anorexia
Homosexuality

I am certain that I am on to something with my theory on the link between guilt, politics, and genes. If only someone would properly research it.