Does Michael Barone Believe the Poor Lack the Genetic Intelligence and Drive Needed to Compete in the Emerging U.S. Meritocracy?

Am I reading this column by Michael Barone correctly?  Does it blame being poor on lack of intelligence?  Do you believe, as he does, that if you are poor it is most likely because your parents were unintelligent (for the record, I sure don't)?  He says "As college education becomes open to all with the requisite intelligence, graduates will tend to marry graduates and produce children with similar intelligence, while others will tend to produce children without it."   Does he really say, about the U.S. becoming a meritocracy and the lack of upward mobility, "Meritocracy may mean less mobility, but that is bearable…"  and go on to say "Yet should we be so gloomy about this?" Does he really believe that the pay of a CEO isn’t worth the burdens, that the poor don’t want these burdens and thus choose to be poor?  I guess he's trying to cover all the bases by saying that if you are smart and poor, it must be that you have no ambition.  If you did, you'd be a CEO. 

Unless I am misreading this, and please help me if I am, I find the theme of this editorial offensive.  Does it really conclude with the idea that although the paths upward in society are closing, people should be happy they can "...find a valued place in society?" That the U.S. should be pleased with the idea that recent trends "...will lead the U.S. toward something resembling a caste society, with the underclass mired ever more firmly at the bottom and the cognitive elite ever more firmly anchored at the top."  What is the strange logic that produces the conclusion that because there is less upward mobility, the social conditions are fairer than they used to be as his opening sentence and further remarks suggest?  After reading his remarks, I know one person who isn't a member of the "cognitive elite," and I am reminded of our president's propensity to brag about his own academic failings.  Cream may not be the only thing that floats to the top. 

Read it yourself.  Here it is in its entirety.  As you read, think of the claim that the Democrats are the party of elitists.  I would be happy to learn I completely misinterpreted this editorial because I thought and hoped these ideas died long ago:

Is Social Mobility on the Decline?, by Michael Barone, Creators Syndicate: Has a fairer America also become an America with less social mobility? That is the uncomfortable question raised by John Parker's long American survey in The Economist last month.

"A decline in social mobility would run counter to Americans' deepest beliefs about their country," Parker writes. "Unfortunately, that is what seems to be happening. Class is reappearing in a new form."

This was the conclusion, as well, of a recent series of articles in The New York Times -- although, as the Times and Parker both note, polls show that Americans think their chances of moving up are better than a generation ago. Statistics tell a different story: There is a higher correlation today between parents' and children's income than in the 1980s, and the income gap between college graduates and non-graduated doubled between 1979 and 1997.

"America," concludes Parker, "is becoming a stratified society based on education: a meritocracy."

Parker's view parallels that of another Brit, Ferdinand Mount, former editor of the Times Literary Supplement, in his 2004 book, "Mind the Gap: The New Class Divide in Britain." Mount notes that income inequality has been increasing in Britain, not just during the Thatcherite 1980s, but since Tony Blair's New Labor government took office in 1997 -- much to the dismay of many Labor ministers. He notes also that Britons are not converging on one lifestyle -- Uppers and Downers, as he calls them, still dress differently and speak with different accents -- and that Britain, more open to upward mobility in the past than popular legend would have it, is becoming less so.

This he partly blames on the abolition by equality-minded Laborites years ago of the academically demanding grammar schools that were the routes out of the working class for so many Labor politicians themselves.

"We cannot help noticing," Mount concludes, "that the old class system has been reconstituted into a more or less meritocratic upper tier and a lower tier which is defined principally by its failure to qualify for the upper tier."

Which is exactly what Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray predicted for America in their controversial book "The Bell Curve," published 11 years ago. Herrnstein and Murray noted that intelligence is both measurable and in some large but unquantifiable part hereditary, an unexceptionable finding for experimental psychologists but maddening to social engineers. As college education becomes open to all with the requisite intelligence, graduates will tend to marry graduates and produce children with similar intelligence, while others will tend to produce children without it.

"Unchecked, these trends," Herrnstein and Murray wrote, "will lead the U.S. toward something resembling a caste society, with the underclass mired ever more firmly at the bottom and the cognitive elite ever more firmly anchored at the top."

Which leads to the question children ask on long car trips: Are we there yet? Mount says Britain is and Parker says America may well be. And maybe so.

Yet should we be so gloomy about this? The British have tended to see their society as a one-ladder system, with Oxford and Cambridge graduates at the top and lavatory cleaners at the bottom. Yet in America (and I think in Britain, too), there are many ladders upward, with many intermediate rungs. Not everyone has an emotional need to be on top: How many people, if they thought seriously about it, would really want the burdens of a CEO, however lavish the pay?

Meritocracy may leave people with no one to blame for failure. But, as Herrnstein and Murray argued, almost all Americans have the ability "to find valued places in society."

And that depends not so much on intelligence as on personal behavior. Here, perhaps, we are coping with meritocracy already. New York Times columnist David Brooks points out that since 1993, we have seen declines in violent crime, family violence, teenage births, abortions, child poverty, drunken driving, teenage sex, teenage suicide and divorce. We are seeing increases in test scores and, as Parker notes, in membership in voluntary associations.

As Murray has written, all you need to do to avoid poverty in this country is to graduate from high school, get and stay married, and take any job. The intelligence needed to get a place in the cognitive elite may become more concentrated in a fair meritocratic society, but the personal behaviors needed to find a valued place in society are available to everyone.

Meritocracy may mean less mobility, but that is bearable if, as Brooks says, "America is becoming more virtuous."

Just for the record, I know some really dumb and lazy rich people.

[Update:  Brad DeLong has an excellent follow-up.]

Comments

[pgl]

Let's say Jill has more education than Jack. Is it because Jack is a dunce? Or could it be that Jill went to great schools followed by getting an MBA from Wharton - while Jack has to support his single mom who could not afford Wharton. Alas, the author did not distinguish between education outputs and education inputs.

[anne]

Why am I not surprised. This of course is rubbish as sociology or biology, but when did that ever matter to these folks. I remember meeting Richard Herrnstein, not having any idea who he was and thinking this guy is not quite "there."

[ken melvin]

Strange sources this fellow. So easy to reverse the roles and tell, too. If they be so sure, why do they fear free, merit based education? Pell Grants for all. Couldn't be because those poor boys and girls would eat their lunch like they did with the GI Bill, now would it? Not to mention some Southeast Asian Peasant's child. No, I think this is history give me rewrite stuff a la that David Brooks, Saffire and ilk.

[anne]

Ken

Mentioning the GI Bill was important. I do not recall William Saffire writing in this vein however. David Brooks, yes. Am I mistaken? This essay is really quite offensive.

[ken melvin]

Anne,

Don't read Saffire, remember him from Nixon days, but everytime I saw him on The News Hour, his first impulse was to lie. This I'm beginning to see with Brooks, and that is really the only commonality that I can knowledgably assign. The rest I made up.

[Betsy L. Angert]

Dear Ken . . .

On David Brooks and William Saffire, I totally agree with one exception. You say that you are beginning to see this impulse in Brooks; for me it has been his manner for years now. I marvel at how Brooks twists and turns. He needs no wind; he creates it!

On “Barone Believe the Poor Lack the Genetic Intelligence and Drive Needed to Compete” before I read the piece, I thought this rings as the “Bell Curve” did and does. Though the book was published years ago, I often hear it referred to as gospel. DeLong’s remarks, on this, though read with numerous interruptions were quite astute.

The one aspect of the article I do agree with is the idea of inbreeding. As I read the newspapers, watch television, and listen too the radio, even as I chat with friends and family, it seems that those in the hills rarely travel to the valleys. Those that live as from the station as possible, shun the people from the “other side of the tracks.”

Only days ago I was told a story of a woman, a corporate magnate, one that graduated from the best of schools. She is on her third marriage. All three men were and remain friends, and all are Stanford alum. Is this selective breeding?

Betsy L. Angert Be-Think

[Bruce Webb]

I foresee mean days ahead. The Cato/Barone folk are being handed their factual lunch on everything from Iraq to Social Security and are increasingly willing to let their true colors show. They talk about "democracy" and "retirement security" as if they really cared about either but as the facts on the ground show their rhetoric to be increasingly shallow they are falling back on their true age long agenda:

"I've got mine Jack. I'm keeping it and you are not getting a piece."

And BTW the idea that there is any correlation between "college" and "intelligence" is to ignore the reality of upper education in this country. If you have money there is always a college that will take you. That was one of the many dirty secrets of the Vietnam era, you could easily have flunked your entire way from 18 to the end of your draft eligibility, you just had to drift down the food chain of colleges. You couple that with the 'legacy' system that operated at the Ivy's and you see that for the rich 'meritocracy' is a sham. Sure America offers opportunities to climb up, but once you are at the top there are all kinds of safety nets to insure that neither you, your kids, or your grandkids ever fall out of the tree of privilege.

[hmmm]

If this guy is so bright why hasn't he ever heard of "regression towards the mean" and the early examples of genuis in families?

Nah, that involves numbers and facts?

Right now many of the more difficult and demanding intellectual jobs are being subjected to world wide competition. Engineering and related technical jobs were always tough because after each wave of layoffs, employers had a buit in tendency to prefer recent graduades with updated skills and loweer pay demands.

There is no reason to believe that other categories of "knowledge worker" are shielded from competition. And even if certain classes of professional manage to mantain their monopolies a decreased number of people able to afford these services means less income flow.

Lower wage earners were just hit by the markets. Many of their jobs unlike the bulk of white collar jobs benefited dramatically from technology, productivity increased. In addition waves of highly competent immigrants added competition and a number of these jobs can be outsourced. And since many of these jobs did not have the structural protections or clique protections (eg. x has a college degre and is one of us) "conservatives" argued that any increase in governmental protections were "inflationary." It did not matter that other sectors and positions added far more to costs than increases inm minimum wage would and in fact despite a nearly 50% increase in real per capita wealth, real lower wages are roughly 70% of what they were and this based on inflation measurements which don't measure the full costs of medicine nor in some parts of the country rents.

The assumption being that "inferior" people deserve less and that anyone who makes more deserves it by definition.

However revolutionary movements have been traditionally spearheaded by middle class individuals with lowered expectations and as real world economic realities collide with what these people assume they deserved as a "meritocracy" there will be some interesting developments.

[anne]

Thanks Ken, Betsy....

Though I dearly love the New York Times, I found David Brooks from the beginning impossible to read for the absolutist classist Anglo morality that struck me as no morality. Imagine me defending William Saffire, but the arrogance had a different bent allowing for argument since the arguments were wholly politically directed rather than couched as religious sermons.

[anne]

Thanks Ken, Betsy....

Though I dearly love the New York Times, I found David Brooks from the beginning impossible to read for the absolute classist pretentious Anglo morality that strikes me as no morality. Imagine me defending William Saffire, but the arrogance had a different bent allowing for argument since the arguments were wholly politically directed rather than couched as religious dictates.

[anne]

Mark, I am sorry. The post took almost 5 minutes, so I hit the button again just before the post. Trust in slowness from now on :)

[Lord]

This must be why we need to repeal the estate tax. It is a tax on intelligence and we need more rather than less of that. Johnny shouldn't have to pay for the burden of having wealthy parents.

[Betsy L. Angert]

Dear Bruce . . .

The Bush dynasty is a testament to your thoughts on education and elitism. From Andover, to Yale, to Harvard, the Bush babies flourish and find their way. They have for generations.

Business failures are the folly of Baby Bush George. Friends and family are the safety net. They ensure that he will “succeed.” Scary!

If this presidency is thought to be success, I welcome failings. For those that “fall short” and slam into concrete learning is likely. Those that are caught in the web of wealthy bailouts never seem to learn from their distress.

Betsy L. Angert Be-Think

[dude]

Its just flawed reasoning.

"As college education becomes open to all with the requisite intelligence, graduates will tend to marry graduates and produce children with similar intelligence, while others will tend to produce children without it."
-- This would imply it is impossible for someone who is not a college grad to be intelligent. It further assumes that people who graduate from college are automatically intelligent. He is confusing "intelligence" with "education", which are two totally different things.

As fasr as his claim that a meritocracy resulting in less mobility, I am not sure what to say. I thought that the whole point of a meritocracy was to **promote** mobility, as opposed to a class system in which merit is ignored in favor of one's position in society. Sounds to me that he may be arguing for a system that is really a class system in disguise, and CEO compensation is an obvious indicator that we have no meritocracy. What other job in the world can you have where you can fail miserably, and they will pay you a bonus so large that your grandkids will never be able to spend it? What other job in the world is there where you can bankrupt the number 7 company on the Fortune 500 and walk away with hundreds of millions? Seems to me that this is an Owellian effort to obfuscate or completely turn on its head the definition of "meritocracy".

I wonder if he even considered the possibility that rich smart people could potentially have dumb kids. I mean, we know that it happens. Furthermore, what about jobs in which book intelligence is not the determining factor for success? For example, a pro athlete may not be able to score well on a SAT or IQ test. Does that mean that his elite performance on the field lacks "merit"?

There is so much wrong with this that its hard to know when to stop.

[bakho]

Dickens and Flynn explain that the Bell Curve erroneously attributes IQ to genetics. However, since IQ can have large increases from one generation to the next (same gene pool), genetics alone is not a good explanation. Dickens and Flynn propose that there is a genetics X environment interaction that is far more important than genetics alone.

Students see this all the time in study groups. If your study group is a good one, everyone learns better because someone in the group can explain to the others. However, if everyone in the study group is clueless, it is almost as bad as not having a study group. Doesn't our experience tell us that environment is important. Don't professors spend time on creating "educational environments"? just asking.

http://www.brookings.edu/views/articles/dickens/200104.htm

[cm]

That's just reheated racial/elitist theories in a more modern-day disguise, without explicit references to the obvious racial implications.

[ent lord]

I wonder the impact "legacy points" have on IQ? Since many universities give a boost to scions of alumnus who don't quite make the grade, it would seem that legacy points are also the result of IQ. However, it is the IQ of the first family member to crack that particular "Old Boys Club" which is then passed on to succeeding generations.
Can we then assume that families that are moving down the social scale are getting stupider? Or does it mean the offspring of Sam Walton and Dave Thomas are getting smarter because of parental mobility while families where the mobility is at best sideways, ie, the grandchildren of George Bush Sr marks a loss of intelligence by that group? Or does the addition of legacy points ensure that the twins remain as intelligent as their great grandparents?
All kinds of fun can be had with this silliness until you realize grown up people are taking this seriously.
The question would be then if NBA players are enjoying a greater intellectual gain than elected representatives given this model? If so, then shouldn't NBA players be governing while Congress plays roundball for our entertainment? Maybe drug kingpins should be opinionating on Fox and Fox pundits on the street corner selling drugs? (I will stop with this because it is starting to make sense.)

[anne]

Darn; now I remember what Michael Barone is about and why the recent post of a Wall Street Journal demographic essay on supposed urban migration and causes and effects was annoying beyond the mixing of suppositions and what may have been data.

"Herrnstein and Murray noted that intelligence is both measurable and in some large but unquantifiable part hereditary, an unexceptionable finding for experimental psychologists but maddening to social engineers. As college education becomes open to all with the requisite intelligence, graduates will tend to marry graduates and produce children with similar intelligence, while others will tend to produce children without it.

" 'Unchecked, these trends,' Herrnstein and Murray wrote, 'will lead the U.S. toward something resembling a caste society, with the underclass mired ever more firmly at the bottom and the cognitive elite ever more firmly anchored at the top.'

"Which leads to the question children ask on long car trips: Are we there yet? Mount says Britain is and Parker says America may well be. And maybe so.

"Yet should we be so gloomy about this?"

[anne]

What Michael Barone is doing is making supposed genetic findings fit a preconceived rationale for increasing social-economic stratification. No matter that the genetic findings are wholly fantasy.

[anne]

Brad DeLong has referred us to Mark Thoma's post, because the topic of genetics and group intelligence has once again come to be much discussed for reasons that confuse me. Why when intelligence is variable individual to individual, when study shows just how overwhelmingly mixed a genetic heritage we have, when distinguishing societal or cultural influences on proclivities an possibilities, we should pay attention to supposed deterministic group differences in intelligenc is beyond me.

Anyway, Michael Barone's saddening primary article is evidently no longer available.