You talk like some1 I know. He suggested we sterilized low income folks. I’m not too sure we should because of the possibility that a genius can be born, these guys could survive plague better, and some of them do rose up contributing a lot to society. Also, how low is low and the possible abuses in execution.
I wouldn’t advocate sterilization, but the trend isn’t good for society long-term.
I did a lot of math on it. Basically, since the 70’s we haven’t budged the poverty rate because the birth rate of children out of wedlock has risen so much. If we still had only 6% of kids out of wedlock, then the US would have the 3rd or 4th lowest poverty rate in the world. It’s silly to blame the rich or capitalism for poverty when it’s clearly largely due to personal decisions. At a minimum, we should be educating people about the facts and how decisions impact their life. Instead, we’ve created an entire culture of victims with entitlement when their real problem is poor personal decisions.
Of course, this could never be addressed politically. Simply mentioning it would alienate so many voters that it would make someone unelectable. It’s why I expect us to accelerate along this path until we reach the tipping point with deficits and debt.
People care more about the lie of global warming than our economic viability though. We now have more ice at the poles than we had in 1979, and the 1970’s were when people were worried about the earth cooling and a 2nd ice age coming. Now even the head of climate change for the UN has admitted it’s about destroying capitalism and undoing the economic model of the last 150 years. They can’t defeat capitalism through normal political means, so they had to make up something to do it.
It’s ridiculous our country is constantly distracted by fake issues, and we never have a conversation about real issues.
Err… how about we shouldn’t because these are people too? 
Life is more than just dollars and cents. We want to maximize happiness, not money.
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Maybe you should be concerned that by 2050 we’ll have to grow twice as much food in the world as we do today. I’m not sure where we’ll get extra land that’s good for agriculture or all the water to grow that food. That or if you do believe in global warming, then that’ll be completely disruptive to the earth’s environment.
That’s the old Malthus thinking. Don’t worry. The liberal scientists working in elite universities are on the case. Scientists from all races and religions, a truly multi-cultural A team. 
Well, in South Korea, birth rate is lower than ever and probably lowest in the world, but low birth rate neither solves the poverty issue nor makes society any healthier. As a matter of fact, low birth rate becomes the biggest social concern nowadays in S Korea.
S Korea has much worse welfare system than US (except health care, it has public health care system which works way way better than US) and I guess that really results in low birth rate in low income families. Another reason is probably high education rate regardless of income level. However, if you look at what those low income people think (who decided not to marry or have children), they believe “not producing another low-income workforce is the best protest they can show to the society”. This is simply too sad…
Irresponsible parents who gave births to children without good resources to raise them may be the one of reason for worsening poverty problem in US. However, rapidly growing income inequality is also one of critical reasons for growing number of people living in poverty (ie collapse of the middle class).
S Korea removed the first issue almost completely by promoting high education regardless of income level. Yet, poverty issue (ie lack of middle class) didn’t improve much due to persistent income equality. Now, they are worrying about lack of young workforce and importing cheap labor from other countries.
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The fact is more people moved up than down out of the middle class.
Another data gem:
"I have consistently found that 80 to 86% are self made. That also applies to decamillionaires. In 1982 according to Forbes about 38% of America’s wealthiest people were self made. In 2012, the percentage jumped to 70%.
http://www.thomasjstanley.com/2014/05/america-where-millionaires-are-self-made/
I’m always shocked at perception vs reality.
** ALERT: Do not feed the troll **
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I tried to find your relevant post on this thread. Couldn’t find it. Could you quote me your post that does so?
Thanks.
You should look at income inequality since 1993. It’s when Clinton decided to limit corporate tax deductions for exec comp to $1M base pay. That’s when exec comp switched to stock and the income gap soared. It changed the game since limiting worker pay and benefits creates higher profits and a higher stock price. It made it so CEO wasn’t aligned with the average worker.
So, there is no post of yours that explains the relevance of “IQ” post on this thread?
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Here
What is causing it according to you?
If you don’t know, we can move on.
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That
Except that we are not.
This is the Flynn effect
If we want to increase the IQ of our citizenry, invest in pre-K education. It should be free. Also make sure every child has access to good nutrition.
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That’s interesting in the test changes over time. The US is still mediocre compared to developed countries.
I agree on pre-K education. They say 80% of brain development happens before age 3. Schools struggle to make up that gap for kids that start behind. We need to make sure kids start out ahead of the curve. It’d be a much better ROI than tying to spend more later to catch them up.
If education led to high IQs then 3 or 5 year olds wouldn’t have had 160 IQ.
In general, educational interventions, as those described below, have shown short-term effects on IQ, but long-term follow-up is often missing. For example, in the US very large intervention programs such as the Head Start Program have not produced lasting gains in IQ scores. More intensive, but much smaller projects such as the Abecedarian Project have reported lasting effects, often on socioeconomic status variables, rather than IQ.[8]
Anyways, enough dancing around the real question. When I can’t get an answer directly, I have the right to assume what I think the real reason was.
[quote=“User4, post:32, topic:1179, full:true”]
I believe that is where my friend lives. It’s interesting to hear the other side of the houseowning saga. She got a lemon in a good school district. Guy who owned the house before fixed it MacGyver style. Sounds like a better upside in peninsula because of the gentrifiation.
IQ is irrelevant. What’s important is making a good living. Average people learn to work hard to make up for what they lack in smarts. They tend to outperform smart kids in the long-run financially.
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