* Today’s NYT spins Hilary as being potentially the first female nominee of either major party. This is how it’s going to work from now on. From 2016 to 2024, the first woman President. From 2024 to 2032, the first Hispanic president. From 2032 to 2040, the first gay President. From 2040 to 2048, the first transexual President. Then in 2048 it will be the turn of a black guy again. White guys have had this job for 200 years – for the next 200 yrs. its the turn of the coalition of the fringes.
* If Hillary is elected, what would she do differently from Jeb? I’m biased towards saying “nothing”, but maybe someone who’s been following these two more than I have lately can correct me? Is there an issue (neoconnery, immigration, taxes, anything) on which they will behave differently from each other?
* In a healthy society, you want successful people to be effing like rabbits and having lots and lots of kids, the best of whom are highly successful, but the rest drift down the social structure … replacing some middle class people. While a few middle class kids move up, most stay where they are, a good chunk move down … replacing some working class people. While a few working class people move up, most stay where they are and a good chunk move down … replacing the lumpen proletariat whom ideally have not bred at all.
This is what we had in Western Europe during the last 1000 years. (See Greg Clark’s “Farewell to Alms”) And it’s what allowed western Europeans to get smarter, more conscientious, more cooperative, less violent and wildly more successful so they ran hogwild over the world.
While you want “upward mobility” in terms of each generation being better off because of technological progress, what you actually want socially is *eugenic fertility*–the successful out breeding the unsuccessful–which implies average individual downward mobility.
* Immigration depresses fertility among American women, especially high IQ women. As immigration increases our population density and makes housing more expensive, people put off marrying and children. When they do have children, they have fewer because they can’t afford it. Immigrants, especially Tiger Cubs, also compete against Americans in the labor market, which makes it necessary for parents to invest more in their kids (and have fewer kids in the process).
Immigration makes life expensive and competitive. That has an especially large effect on educated women.
I think low IQ women tend to have their birthrates depressed too, but their short term orientation makes them less able to postpone births and less invested in their children’s welfare. So they’re less sensitive to immigration-related fertility depression.
Evidence from other nations shows that getting low IQ women to have fewer children can probably be done through payoffs, incentives, and frequent visits from social workers. I’d note that black fertility has been reduced significantly over the last two decades and Hispanic fertility is falling quickly.
Getting high IQ women to have more children is harder. There are few successful examples of that. Definitely bringing down immigration levels is a first step in that.
* Can we all just get the hell real for a minute.
Of people in the top 20%, the average # of workers per household is 2
Of people in the second 20%, the average # of workers per household is 2
Of people in the third 20%, the average # of workers per household is 1
Of people in the fourth 20%, the average # of workers per household is 1
Of people in the bottom 20%, the average # of workers per household is 0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States
Pretty damned simple. Get a job. Get married.
* A couple of decades ago while in graduate school, I read a study conducted by a sociologist who surveyed the military as a mechanism for social mobility by race.
Predictably whites did very well, which confirmed my anecdotal experience of lots of “direction-less” poor white kids from the rural Midwest who did a stint in the military after high school and went on to good careers afterwards.
Poor Asians also did well. Getting the military to pay for your medical school (and residency) or law school is bound to raise you up if you came from a less affluent background that did not allow you to afford those schools in the first place.
Hispanics did somewhat well. They also benefitted from their military experiences, but their social mobility via military was somewhat lower than that of whites and Asians.
Blacks did rather poorly on average. Their social mobility benefit via military experience was the worst among the racial groups. In fact, there was almost no upward rise (which actually contradicted my personal experiences with black officers who went on to bigger and better things, but the study was largely about the enlisted).
While I read the study, I thought to myself, “Hmmm. Even the army can’t fix stupid.” However, the conclusion of the sociologist was that blacks faced so much worse “institutional racism” than other racial groups, and that this “likely” explained the failure to benefit from the military training and experience.
* Iowa definitely is a net exporter of hardworking, high-IQ people. There is a considerable brain drain from the small towns in Iowa to the Des Moines metro area, the Chicago metro area, and to other “happening” states like Colorado, Texas, and Washington (for some reason they don’t go for the Northeast or the South as much).
However, that brain drain has devastated and depopulated these small Iowa towns. Because often only the old and the low IQ are left.
The state government in Iowa has been trying desperately to reclaim such people*, but has had very little success. Most Iowans who leave never return permanently.
* There’s more segregation and black incarceration in the north because northern blacks tend to be more badly behaved. Blogger “Agnostic” (akinokure) speculated that Southern blacks were more docile because Southern whites were more hell raising and tough , so that scared a lot of blacks into behaving themselves. Interesting theory. It’s notable that Southern whites tend to get incarcerated quite a bit more than northern whites (and northern whites are incarcerated a lot more than Canadian whites), so maybe there’ something to his theory.
* I remember a TV documentary about the ‘Great Migration’ in which one of the participants mentioned that Blacks were afraid of Whites in the South. It wasn’t explicitly stated that they weren’t afraid of Whites in the North but that was clearly implied.
