Illusions of Merit

I was thinking to myself the other day that, paradoxically, one of the more pernicious aspects of pseudo-meritocracy in America is that even if you're given a lot of advantages in life it still is genuinely difficult to acquire certain kinds of highly sought-after positions. This is well-expressed by Keith Gessen in this essay on college admissions:

Even worse than the temporary psychological distortion is, as Lemann argued in “The Big Test,” the permanent sense of entitlement the admissions game provides. Winners can plausibly claim they participated in a brutal competition (even if many potential competitors were never told about it). So we owe no one anything. Many of the people I went to school with became doctors, public advocates, television writers who bring laughter to the American people. But most of them became, like my friend who believed that getting into Harvard was the hardest thing in life, investment bankers.

I found that essay via Kathy G. who wisely remarks that "a distressingly large number of people in our society seem to believe that going to college is proof that they're "smarter" than their non-college-educated fellow citizens, and therefore more deserving of respect, status, and the comforts of middle-class life" despite the fact that "In the U.S., low income is likely to be a huge barrier to going to college, even among the highest scoring students."

More broadly, the merit illusion stems from the well-documented fact that people don't have a great intuitive grasp of statistics or large numbers. If your family connections boost your odds of getting into Harvard from one percent to five percent, you'll perceive that as having triumphed against the odds on merit rather than using family connections to quintuple your chances. And then once you're in it is, again, a genuinely difficult, competitive process to get a job at an investment bank. And climbing to the top of the i-banking world is, again, a genuinely difficult and competitive process.

It's difficult, however, for people to keep in their heads the idea that, yes, you may have displayed considerable merit to get where you are but also you've taken advantage of a lot of undeserved privileges of birth. Similarly, if you wind up needing to compete on merit against a few hundred other people for a couple dozen highly desirable slots, the question of what happened to all those other people who got excluded from consideration for non-merit reasons sort of falls out of sight.

Comments

I periodically like to remind myself of Hobbes' truism that the life of a person who truly had to rely only on "what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them" (meaning without the benefits of the cooperative aid of other people) would end up "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." So, in my view nothing any of us achieves above that Hobbesian minimal level is truly a result solely of our own individual efforts or merit, but rather is dependent in part on the efforts and merit of others.

Posted by DTM | April 2, 2008 4:45 PM

Similarly, if you wind up needing to compete on merit against a few hundred other people for a couple dozen highly desirable slots, the question of what happened to all those other people who got excluded from consideration for non-merit reasons sort of falls out of sight.

I think something needs to be said on this point. It's true that some people don't go to college because of the cost. But I think far more pernicious than the economic calculus they face, poor people are never exposed to opportunities in their childhood or young adult life to improve their skills, habits and thus merit.

The result is that it becomes superficially true that a high-achieving member of society won almost entirely based on merit. But what good is a meritocracy if there is a substantial set of people deprived of the opportunity to ever develop merit? I think if you try to continue arguing in this line, you'll get a lot of people ignoring you b/c your argument is not quite right.

This is how I look at it: if kids are disadvantaged on day one, year one... and that disadvantage continues for most of their upbrining... even if the playing field is somewhat 'leveled' when they're competing to get into college, how was that ever a fair competition?

Posted by mpowell | April 2, 2008 4:51 PM

And climbing to the top of the i-banking world is, again, a genuinely difficult and competitive process.
=====
Do you mean in recent times? What is "the top" in your mind?

Posted by Amicus | April 2, 2008 4:54 PM

Climbing to the top in investment banking, as in law, can be aided by the right family or social connections. Any job that is filled with work that depends heavily on relationships between actors is like that.

Besides, getting into an Ivy League school is more difficult for a middle class kid than it is for someone whose parent is a senator, ex-president, or just donated a wing of a library. Don't make me laugh with that meritocracy shit.

Posted by Rid | April 2, 2008 5:00 PM

Let me see if I understand this: It's really hard and takes a lot of effort to get into Harvard, which makes it possible though still hard to get into high-paying fields such as I-banking or writing for TV -- fields where, even if you are lucky enough to get in them, it's still extremely hard to work your way to the top.

Sounds pretty meritocratic to me, but if any of Keith Gessen's i-banking or TV-writing fellow alumni want to throw some money my way to assuage their guilt for being successful, I'll take it.

Posted by Fred | April 2, 2008 5:04 PM

the question of what happened to all those other people who got excluded from consideration for non-merit reasons sort of falls out of sight.

Oh, those other people generally shuffle sadly and bitterly into middle age, prematurely bald from repressed frustration and given to posting cynical comments on political blogs.

I can only speak from my own experience, of course.

Posted by James Gary | April 2, 2008 5:10 PM

It's difficult, however, for people to keep in their heads the idea that, yes, you may have displayed considerable merit to get where you are but also you've taken advantage of a lot of undeserved privileges of birth.

You mean people like Fred?

Posted by ibid | April 2, 2008 5:12 PM

"Let me see if I understand this: It's really hard and takes a lot of effort to get into Harvard, which makes it possible though still hard to get into high-paying fields such as I-banking or writing for TV -- fields where, even if you are lucky enough to get in them, it's still extremely hard to work your way to the top.

Sounds pretty meritocratic to me"

I think one argument is that the meritocratic nature of the system blinds folks the the reality that some people are given certain advantages on their way into that meritocracy. The other is that having "won" such a meritocratic competition, people view that "victory" as validating their existence and not the way they actually live and behave.

Mike

Posted by MBunge | April 2, 2008 5:13 PM

Let me see if I understand this

I wouldn't think it would be possible to misunderstand something so clearly stated and obvious, but I see Fred has used his Powers Of Idiocy to pull it off.

Posted by 23456 | April 2, 2008 5:14 PM

That is to say, people similiar to Fred. I wasn't questioning whether people think Fred is an amiable guy.

Posted by ibid | April 2, 2008 5:16 PM

In other words, certain forms of "affirmative action" are not labeled as such and regarded as contradictory to the ideal of a meritocracy.

Relatedly, certain people who fail on the merits regard the success of others different from them as necessarily attributable to pernicious, anti-meritocratic affirmative action.

Posted by UN Plaza | April 2, 2008 5:18 PM

Are we here defining merit to mean "capacity to perform", or some form of inherent desert? Because it's not obvious to me that "considerable merit" and "undeserved privileges of birth" are inherently exclusive.

Posted by Senescent | April 2, 2008 5:22 PM

"That is to say, people similiar to Fred. I wasn't questioning whether people think Fred is an amiable guy."

So much clearer that time. You mean that to get where I am -- sitting at home, typing on my 400mhz Pentium II with my state college diploma hanging on the wall -- I've "taken advantage of a lot of undeserved privileges of birth."? I guess that's true: I could have been born in Zimbabwe, or born retarded (enjoy swinging at that softball if you can't help yourself). For that matter, my mother (had she believed in that sort of thing) could have aborted me.

In that sense, we've all "taken advantage" of the unearned privilege of being born healthy in America. But that doesn't mean that admission to elite schools isn't almost entirely meritocratic (yes, some get accepted due to affirmative action, legacies, being the children of Senators, etc., but what about the other 80%-90%?). And it doesn't mean that those who succeed in America aren't successful mainly due to their talent and effort. There's no such thing as a perfect meritocracy, but America is about as close to one as you could hope for. Those of us who are unsuccessful have no one to blame but ourselves.

Posted by Fred | April 2, 2008 5:36 PM

I'm confused. Is what you're saying that "one of the more pernicious aspects of pseudo-meritocracy in America" is that it's meritocratic at all? That doesn't seem like a pernicious aspect at all. If anything it's the most defensible aspect.

Posted by right | April 2, 2008 5:38 PM

Fred: You could also have been born in the inner city or backwater Mississippi...

Also, as to "There's no such thing as a perfect meritocracy, but America is about as close to one as you could hope for." You might want to look at this:

http://economicmobility.org/assets/pdfs/EMP_American_Dream.pdf

Recent studies suggest that there
is less economic mobility in the
United States than has long been
presumed. The last thirty years
has seen a considerable drop-off in
median household income growth
compared to earlier generations.
And, by some measurements, we
are actually a less mobile society
than many other nations, including
Canada, France, Germany and
most Scandinavian countries. This
challenges the notion of America as
the land of opportunity.

Posted by David | April 2, 2008 5:52 PM

By the way, the idea of not being able to blame our own parents for many of our failings strikes me as downright unAmerican.

Posted by DTM | April 2, 2008 5:57 PM

This is a great topic and worth much more exploration. My sense is that Freds number of only 10-20% being helped by patronage, legacy and connections is way too low. At a blatent level during the admissions process maybe, but if you consider the help getting into better named K-12 schools (because of ability to live in high rent areas), the help on testing (through experience of relatives and private tutoring), the help on essays and the process (same), the ability to stay or buy cleaner records (including legal help with mistakes made in life), the ability to build better experience and resume bullets (connections helping get flashy experience), etc., the direct effect must be more like 80%-90% (it goes without saying that the 70 level did not have as much help as the first 10-20% with the best connections and highest profile life experiences prior to admission, but that does not mean that it was merit alone).

And thats not even counting the indirect built up effect of opportunity on developing the testing and general skills that are the measurements of pure merit as some of the earlier posts addressed.

Posted by Tom | April 2, 2008 6:00 PM

I did very well in school until high school, when I was orphaned, after which I did very poorly. I had to attend a non-competitive college, because I couldn't get into a competitive one; that in turn made it immensely more difficult to get into grad school. And having a realistic shot at teaching professionally at the college level is largely dependent on attending a well-respected graduate program....

What I'm constantly confronted with is how difficult it is to wrench a second chance from American life. Am I really going to be defined, for the rest of my life, by what happened to me when I was 15, 16, 17 years old? Did doing lousy in high school permanently disqualify people from living

But that doesn't mean that admission to elite schools isn't almost entirely meritocratic (yes, some get accepted due to affirmative action, legacies, being the children of Senators, etc., but what about the other 80%-90%?)

Fred, I'm sorry, but let me say as someone who has grown up in the university system, and operated in it at various levels for the last 6 years-- you're severely underestimating the degree that wealth and legacy plays in college admissions. The idea that the American university system is basically meritocratic simply isn't true; and some of the people most ready to admit that are people in the academy themselves. (Talk to an Ivy league professor or Dean, and they'll be happy to tell you.) You don't have to take my word for it. You could read Privilege, by Ross Douthat, where he discusses the fact of admission-through-donation at length; or, for an even more in-depth account, you can read The Chosen by Jerome Karabel, which is a truly in-depth examination of the history of college admissions, and the myth of undergraduate meritocracy.

(Here's an interesting bit of trivia for you: more undergraduates in American colleges have benefited from legacy or donation than have benefited from race-based affirmative action, and the advantage they receive is substantially higher than that of race-based affirmative action.)

Posted by Freddie | April 2, 2008 6:03 PM

Is what you're saying that "one of the more pernicious aspects of pseudo-meritocracy in America" is that it's meritocratic at all?

No, that's not what he's saying. Here's another version: the system is partially meritocratic, which misleads some people (those who have succeeded in it, especially) to think that it is perfectly meritocratic.

Moreover, it is partial in a way that is difficult to see: it isn't just that you got into Harvard, and somebody else in your high school, who was as "good" as you, did not. It's that whole classes of people don't even get to play the "get into Harvard" game at all.

The result of that invisible imperfection, among other things, is that the "social Darwinist" viewpoint becomes more tempting: richer people must be better people.

It's strange that the strongest adherents to the idea that we live in a pure meritocracy, and consequently "richer = better", are rightwing pundits; next to that of actors, their selection process is the most nepotistic around.

Posted by Ken C. | April 2, 2008 6:08 PM

Actually, one of the peculiar aspects of today's American society is the (partial) separation of educational and economic success.

For example, I think that lots of the skilled or professional blue-collar type jobs actually pay quite well. Including overtime, I'm pretty sure that quite a good fraction of big-city cops or fire-fighters earn over $100K/year, and the same might be true for plumbers, etc. And the salaries of the (rapidly shrinking) number of autoworker-type jobs are also very high.

On the other hand, given outsourcing, lots of laid-off older white-collar former office workers earn just a fraction of that. And if we ever actually "fixed" our crazy health care system, a gigantic number of former health-care administrators and claims-managers would immediately become unemployed.

I think one problem is that our system seems to imply that the only route to economic success is advanced education, producing a gigantic surplus of less-employable people with journalism or sociology or psychology (or even business) degrees. The same is even true for people with genuine academic degrees in less desirable fields.

By contrast, I think Europe has avoided many of these problems with its apprenticeship programs for less-academically-oriented students.

Posted by RKU | April 2, 2008 6:13 PM

Just to give an idea of the figures we're talking about here, at Harvard (which I will crudely use as a stand-in for elite universities in general), 9 percent-- 9-- of the undergraduates come from the bottom half of American families in terms of income. Now, it's true, academic achievement correlates broadly with family income. But half the country only supplying 9% of the undergrads? The truth is, a very large number of the undergrads attending the Harvards, Princetons and Yales come from elite boarding schools, have family members who have donated money to the schools, or are otherwise financially connected. (I believe something like 8% of applicants are admitted to Harvard, Princeton or Yale; but a quarter of Groton applicants attend one of those three schools.)

What's more, the problem increases over time, because a school like Harvard-- with it's $30 billion endowment, made up of thousands and thousands of donations from thousands of donors. And, trust me, those donors expect strongly preferential treatment, and receive it. But as time goes on, and the imperative to grow the endowment creates a larger and larger project, more and more slots are taken up by students who receive financial/legacy advantage. And the class sizes are staying relatively static. (They have to, in order to keep the rejection rate high, which helps keep the rankings high, which pleases the donors, and inspires them to donate more money....)

Posted by Freddie | April 2, 2008 6:26 PM

I think "pernicious" is the wrong word, deceptive might be better. Success is America is dependent on talent, effort and luck. The fact that it does depend strongly on talent and effort makes it easy to overlook (particularly if you are successful) the amount that it also depends on luck. And if you think it is legitimate for society to reward talent and effort but not luck then this is important. It would justify for example a degree of income redistribution based on the fact that part of the gap between the rich and the poor is due to the fact that the rich are on average luckier.

Posted by James B. Shearer | April 2, 2008 6:26 PM

I like to think of it like a dog show, where the competition is so fierce that the poodles and beagles and terriers all forget to be glad they aren't mutts.

Posted by Aatos | April 2, 2008 6:45 PM

Re: What I'm constantly confronted with is how difficult it is to wrench a second chance from American life.

I have to disagree. Provided you don't have a crminal record and your health is intact, it's not hard at all, provided you can junk the baggage of the past. Maybe that's a gift and not everyone has it (I'll consider that possible) but to get over bad experiences in the past is mainly an internal struggle.

Re: On the other hand, given outsourcing, lots of laid-off older white-collar former office workers earn just a fraction of that.

"lots of"? I've been laid off three times. Each time I've ended up making more money, at least after a couple of years. Lay-offs aren't fun, and weathering the Tech Recession of 2001-02 was REALLY not fun (ask me sometime why my savings are rather meager for my age) but the idea that once you are laid off you are on a permanent downward spiral is just BS.

Re: And if we ever actually "fixed" our crazy health care system, a gigantic number of former health-care administrators and claims-managers would immediately become unemployed.

The administrators, yes. But we'd need even more claims managers if we moved to universal healthcare-- that's 40 million more people to be processed through the system after all. And yes, public systems are far more diligent than private ones at whittling down their payouts. Ask any doctor about that.

Posted by JonF | April 2, 2008 6:47 PM

Well, I think the demographics (Gen-Y being much bigger than Gen-X was) simply mean that a lot more eighteen-year-olds are applying in 2008 than in 1988. So it is harder; the bar has been raised. But like the kids say today: whatever. It's hard to feel too bad for the child who doesn't get into his "first choice."

In any case, spare me the merit bullshit.

If it was a question of merit more than half the graduating class of Stuyvesant, New York City's most elite public school, would probably get into Harvard each year. These after all are kids that had to compete with the very best in a city of eight million. A city with, oh, some pretty smart people in it.

I went to an Ivy Leauge school in the early 90s and I'll let you in on a little secret: it seemed like a New England background was disproportionately represented among genial but not terrible bright students.

Then, of course, there's the usual crap going on where a lot of Jews and Asian get in - but, oh, never quite too many.

Maybe it's best for America that elites colleges not be composed almost entirely of Jews, Asians, Indians, etc. but a lot of games are going on. "Geographic diversity" being one of the more amusing.

They had to put a cap on the number of Jewish students they let in for much of the 20th century and now they're doing it (without coming out and saying there are) with Asians.

Racism has many more malign forms than those taken by admissions committees, but it has few that are as brazen and smug.

What else in America is as overtly racist as college admissions at these elite schools? They've decided at Yale that all Asians are basically the same and if they've seen one industrious over-achieving immigrant making his way up from poverty they've seen them all.

America's dominant culture is indifferent to learning and if you're fortunate enough to be from an immigrant background your parents our on our your ass in a way that overrides society's messages. But they're still playing games at these colleges. In many ways the fix is still in. Though it has gotten better. They still cheat, but not as much.

It's, also, always amusing to hear people whine about Affirmative Action and colleges. Usually it's people who can afford to spend ungodly sums on Kaplan Review courses and the like for their mediocre children. They never seem too upset about legacies, the pipelines from prepschools to the Ivy Leauge, the principle "geographic representation" (wealthy kids but wealthy kids from places with more white Chistians) or other games to limit the number of Asians or Jews.

I'd never heard of the Milton Academy before I went to college. Look it up if you're fortunate enough to be ignorant of its existence. I'd be really, really curious to know how many kids from this pricey Boston prepschool get into the best colleges compared to Stuyvesant. If it was a question of merit Stuyvesant would probably enjoy something like a 30 to 1 edge.

Now I'm guessing at MIT or Cal Tech where standards are enforced Stuyvesant comes out ahead, but when they can fudge it in the Ivy Leauge you'll probably find Exeter, Choate, Matt's Dalton and the like beat out the NYC public school with the intellectually superior population.

In any case, some investigative journalist should put together the numbers. We'd learn a lot of how the country still works.

Despite the one stat error, this was an excellent post from Matt. Insightful and gracious. When he knows what he's talking about he can be fantastic.

Posted by M.M. | April 2, 2008 6:54 PM

"Fred: You could also have been born in the inner city or backwater Mississippi..."

I could have been born in lots of places. As for your quote from the article comparing the U.S. to countries that are more homogeneous or have more meritocratic immigration systems, you need to bear in mind differences in human capital. We have a lot of folks with ~80 IQs in this country who would have a difficult time moving up an economic ladder no matter where they were born. This is much less true of Sweden or Canada.

"What I'm constantly confronted with is how difficult it is to wrench a second chance from American life."

It really isn't. It's so common for Americans to succeed at one thing after failing at another that it's become a cliche.

"Am I really going to be defined, for the rest of my life, by what happened to me when I was 15, 16, 17 years old? Did doing lousy in high school permanently disqualify people from living"

It doesn't disqualify you from living, unless you define "living" as "being guaranteed admission to prestigious academic institutions".

"Here's an interesting bit of trivia for you: more undergraduates in American colleges have benefited from legacy or donation than have benefited from race-based affirmative action"

Could be.

"and the advantage they receive is substantially higher than that of race-based affirmative action."

That I find highly doubtful. But from the perspective of societal harmony, I have more of a problem with affirmative action. If Sandy Weil's kid gets into Cornell over a guy whose GPA was a tenth of a point higher -- because Sandy endowed Cornell's medical school -- I really don't have a problem with that. Plenty of folks benefit from the medical training and medical care at the Weil-Cornell medical school/hospitals. On the other hand, when a Chavis gets into medical school over a Bakke, everyone is ultimately worse off.

Posted by Fred | April 2, 2008 7:02 PM

"Now, it's true, academic achievement correlates broadly with family income. But half the country only supplying 9% of the undergrads?"

This doesn't seem so surprising. Generally, smart kids have smart parents, and smart parents tend to make more than the median income.

Posted by Fred | April 2, 2008 7:09 PM

The argument works with equal or greater force for the children of pro athletes, from Barry Bonds to Stephen Curry, or the children of Hollywood luminaries.

Or for that matter city workers in Chicago, although I don't think keeping your job with Streets and San for 10 years is quite as challenging.

Posted by misplaced trust co. | April 2, 2008 7:16 PM

"Actually, one of the peculiar aspects of today's American society is the (partial) separation of educational and economic success.

"For example, I think that lots of the skilled or professional blue-collar type jobs actually pay quite well. Including overtime, I'm pretty sure that quite a good fraction of big-city cops or fire-fighters earn over $100K/year, and the same might be true for plumbers, etc. And the salaries of the (rapidly shrinking) number of autoworker-type jobs are also very high."

Good points. Cops and firefighters do get paid well. The guys who go into those fields know this; they aren't stupid.

As for the autoworkers, the WSJ had an article yesterday about some autoworker -- not a regular assembly line worker, but some sort of smith -- who made $170k with OT before taking a severance package, finishing a college degree, and then snagging a $60k white collar project manager job (after sucking it up through a $15 per hour junior position).

Posted by Fred | April 2, 2008 7:16 PM

Well, Fred, if you're fine with decisions made at the margins (or, more realistically, far beyond the margins) on at all the basis of the wealth of one's parents, you're not in favor of meritocracy, you're in favor of aristocracy.

And your determinist claims about IQ and nongermane cynical observation about affirmative action don't really convince me of your good faith when it comes to ordering society in both an inclusive and merit-based manner.

Posted by Dan Cock | April 2, 2008 7:20 PM

Ivy league schools are oversold. Most Fortune 500 CEOs didn't attend one and the percentage is declining over time.

http://www.usatoday.com/educate/college/careers/CEOs/news4-7-05.htm

Posted by Campesino | April 2, 2008 7:41 PM

Re: What I'm constantly confronted with is how difficult it is to wrench a second chance from American life.

I have to disagree. Provided you don't have a crminal record and your health is intact, it's not hard at all, provided you can junk the baggage of the past. Maybe that's a gift and not everyone has it (I'll consider that possible) but to get over bad experiences in the past is mainly an internal struggle.

Re: On the other hand, given outsourcing, lots of laid-off older white-collar former office workers earn just a fraction of that.

"lots of"? I've been laid off three times. Each time I've ended up making more money, at least after a couple of years. Lay-offs aren't fun, and weathering the Tech Recession of 2001-02 was REALLY not fun (ask me sometime why my savings are rather meager for my age) but the idea that once you are laid off you are on a permanent downward spiral is just BS.

*************************************************

I must agree, JohnF. I've been laid-off twice and depending on how you want to define it, I'm on my third or fourth career track. Every time I lost a job after a short time I had a job with more money and usually more authority.

Of course, as a former National Merit Scholar, I'm just too invested in my illusions of merit to let them go now.

Posted by Campesino | April 2, 2008 7:49 PM

Recent studies suggest that there
is less economic mobility in the
United States than has long been
presumed. The last thirty years
has seen a considerable drop-off in
median household income growth
compared to earlier generations.
And, by some measurements, we
are actually a less mobile society
than many other nations, including
Canada, France, Germany and
most Scandinavian countries. This
challenges the notion of America as
the land of opportunity.

Posted by David | April 2, 2008 5:52 PM
************************************************

Sez who?

http://www.treasury.gov/press/releases/hp673.htm

Treasury Releases Income Mobility Study

Washington DC--The Treasury Department today released a study on income mobility of U.S. taxpayers from 1996 through 2005.

The study showed that, just as in the previous 10-year period, a majority of American taxpayers move from one income group to another over time. The study also recognizes that the dynamism of the U.S. economy significantly contributes to income mobility.

The key findings of the study included:

Income mobility of individuals was considerable in the U.S. economy during the 1996 through 2005 period with roughly half of taxpayers who began in the bottom quintile moving up to a higher income group within 10 years.
About 55 percent of taxpayers moved to a different income quintile within 10 years.
Among those with the very highest incomes in 1996--the top 1/100 of one percent--only 25 percent remained in the group in 2005. Moreover, the median real income of these taxpayers declined over the study period.
The degree of mobility among income groups is unchanged from the prior decade (1987 through 1996).
Economic growth resulted in rising incomes for most taxpayers over the study period:
Median real incomes of all taxpayers increased by 24 percent after adjusting for inflation;
Real incomes of two-thirds of all taxpayers increased over this period; and
Median incomes of those initially in the lower income groups increased more than the median incomes of those initially in the high income groups.
*************************************************

or

http://www.nber.org/papers/w13345

This paper uses Social Security Administration longitudinal earnings micro data since 1937 to analyze the evolution of inequality and mobility in the United States. Earnings inequality follows a U-shape pattern, decreasing sharply up to 1953 and increasing steadily afterwards. We find that short-term and long-term (rank based) mobility among all workers has been quite stable since 1950 (after a temporary surge during World War II).

Posted by Campesino | April 2, 2008 8:02 PM

I doubt if there are 10 college-age black people in the U.S. who scored over 1400 on the SAT (M+V) who aren't in college because they couldn't afford it. The scholarship opportunities for smart blacks are overwhelming.

I know a young lady from a very poor household with about an 1100 SAT score who just got a big scholarship restricted to blacks to go to a prestigious university because we talked her into checking the "Black" box on her application (she's Jewish on one side and New Orleans "Creole of Color" on the other and not visibly black-looking).

Posted by Steve Sailer | April 2, 2008 8:31 PM

Now I'm guessing at MIT or Cal Tech where standards are enforced Stuyvesant comes out ahead,

True. I went to Caltech [note the capitalization] and can't remember knowing anyone who went to the upper-crust east-coast prep schools. Public magnet schools like Stuyvesant, Thomas Jefferson, and IMSA were much better-represented. Personally I went to Long Beach Poly, a public school with a good magnet program.

The percentage of incoming freshman at Caltech who went to public high schools is a lot higher than for the Ivy League schools.

Posted by Adam Villani | April 2, 2008 8:36 PM

I agree with Steve - being poor and black opens up a world of opportunities that are not available to most children from Atherton.

Posted by rich and white | April 2, 2008 8:46 PM

Whatever else is true, Fred, this is certainly the case: if your parents or family endows enough money, there is no academic barrier that will keep you out of a Harvard or a Yale. If you aren't a felon, and you have your high school diploma, if your family can make, say, a $4 a million dollar donation to the foundation, you're in. That's just the way the world works.

I am disturbed though that you have no problem with money-based affirmative action and so much of a problem with race-based affirmative action. I thought the problem was fundamental issues of fairness, such as the fact that a spot taken by a less deserving applicant denies entry for a more deserving one. If that's the case, then I don't see how you can not denounce legacy and monetary privilege with as much passion as you denounce race-based affirmative action. And on a human level, I can't quite understand favoring benefits for those who already have every possible advantage and opposing benefits for those who, statistically speaking, face far greater hurdles to achieving the American dream.

This is just one of those things thats casually understood in the academy and little understood outside of that. I'm not arguing that people who attend these universities shouldn't enjoy the fruits of their success. And I'm also not suggesting that attending one of these universities isn't an effective signaling mechanism for employers or graduate schools. But there are two memes that are sort of generally believed about these colleges that simply aren't true: one, that person X attended this elite university, so therefore they are of the highest intelligence, dedication or character; and two, this school has a great academic reputation, therefore the quality of education it offers is outstanding. Sometimes those things are true, but they can't be derived from the prestige or reputation of the university in question.

Posted by Freddie | April 2, 2008 9:15 PM

I also agree with Steve. In my next life, I'm hoping to be born to poor, black parents...

Posted by richer and even whiter | April 2, 2008 9:23 PM

Campesino:

You might try looking in the bibliography of the study. You might also take note of the fact that the Heritage Institute is also part of this Economic Mobility Project--even some conservatives see it as a problem. Last year I read something like 15 different studies all coming to the same conclusion as the quote I used, so I considered it pretty uncontroversial. These references are from the Pew Study I linked to orginally:

International Social Survey Programme. 1999. Social Inequality III. German Social Science Infrastructure
Services. ZA No. 3430.

Jantti, Markus, et al. 2006. “American Exceptionalism in a New Light: A Comparison of Intergenerational Earnings Mobility in the Nordic Countries, the United Kingdom and the United States.” Discussion Paper 1938.
Institute for the Study of Labor: Bonn, Germany.

Kopczuk, Wojciech, Emmanuel Saez, and Jae Song.
2007. “Uncovering the American Dream: Inequality
and Mobility in Social Security Earnings Data Since 1937.” Working Paper. March 18.

Ladd, Everett Carll and Karlyn Bowman. 1998.
Attitudes Toward Economic Inequality. The AEI Press.

Mishel, Lawrence, Jared Bernstein, and Sylvia Allegretto. 2007. The State of Working America 2006/07,Figure 3Z. Cornell University Press.

McMurrer, Daniel P. and Isabel V. Sawhill, 1998. Getting Ahead: Economic and Social Mobility in America. Urban Institute Press.

Sawhill, Isabel. “Still the Land of Opportunity?” Public Interest, no. 135 (Spring 1999).
Sawhill, Isabel and Sara McLanahan, “Opportunity
in America,” The Future of Children, vol. 16, no. 2(Fall 2006).

Posted by David | April 2, 2008 9:29 PM

I've been laid-off twice and depending on how you want to define it, I'm on my third or fourth career track. Every time I lost a job after a short time I had a job with more money and usually more authority.

Well, I have no doubt that this is true in many, probably even most cases, but I think it heavily depends on the person's age.

For example, I have the strong impression that white-color office workers laid off due to outsourcing or anything have a pretty difficult time getting a remotely comparable job if they're over fifty or so. And these groups are frequently the primary targets of cost-effectiveness layoffs or buyouts.

For example, I can think of a few people I know who've been out of the mainstream corporate world since their late-forties/early fifties and have had a pretty tough time putting together more than about $40K/year in any of the years since then. Not exactly dire poverty, but not a great living for highly intelligent, well-educated individuals now in their late fifties or so.

Posted by RKU | April 2, 2008 9:29 PM

Re: We have a lot of folks with ~80 IQs in this country who would have a difficult time moving up an economic ladder no matter where they were born. This is much less true of Sweden or Canada.

Even if I concede that IQ means something in the real world, I cannot credit that any significantly large and random group of people* (as in many millions) has any significant difference in IQ.

* You can claim that Swedes are not random (ignoring recent immigration of course). You cannot make that claim about either Canada or the US, both of which are "mongrels" when it comes to ethnicity.

Re: Income mobility of individuals was considerable in the U.S. economy during the 1996 through 2005 period with roughly half of taxpayers who began in the bottom quintile moving up to a higher income group within 10 years.

Does this filter out college students and other life start-outs? My income was bargain basement "poverty" when I was in college. But I really didn't move up in socioeconomic class simple because I graduated and got a job. The real question is where people end up by middle age relative to where their parents were.

Posted by JonF | April 2, 2008 9:29 PM

Campesino: Here is that left-wing the Economist on the matter:

http://www.economist.com/world/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_SDVVJTT

"The rise of the working rich reinforces America's self-image as the land of opportunity. But, by some measures, that image is an illusion. Several new studies* show parental income to be a better predictor of whether someone will be rich or poor in America than in Canada or much of Europe. In America about half of the income disparities in one generation are reflected in the next. In Canada and the Nordic countries that proportion is about a fifth.

It is not clear whether this sclerosis is increasing: the evidence is mixed. Many studies suggest that mobility between generations has stayed roughly the same in recent decades, and some suggest it is decreasing. Even so, ordinary Americans seem to believe that theirs is still a land of opportunity. The proportion who think you can start poor and end up rich has risen 20 percentage points since 1980."

Posted by David | April 2, 2008 9:38 PM

"I am disturbed though that you have no problem with money-based affirmative action and so much of a problem with race-based affirmative action."

Freddie, I'm not sure why you are disturbed. To use your example, a $4 million donation could provide full scholarships for thirty or more truly-qualified-but-poor minority students; or it could endow a couple of professorships for cancer researchers. On a utilitarian basis, or in a balance-of-equities analysis, why would I be troubled by this? Would those thirty truly-qualified-but-poor minority applicants be better off if the school didn't get that $4 million donation and instead admitted an under-qualified minority applicant? Would future cancer patients be better off without those two researchers on staff?

"I also agree with Steve. In my next life, I'm hoping to be born to poor, black parents..."

Snark aside, Sailer's point was that, all things being equal, if you want to get into an elite school, you have a far better chance of getting in, and getting a full ride if you are black. That's so obviously true that neither of you attempted to refute it.

Posted by Fred | April 2, 2008 9:51 PM

JonF,

"Even if I concede that IQ means something in the real world, I cannot credit that any significantly large and random group of people* (as in many millions) has any significant difference in IQ."

How big of you to consider conceding that IQ "means something" in the real world.

"* You can claim that Swedes are not random (ignoring recent immigration of course). You cannot make that claim about either Canada or the US, both of which are "mongrels" when it comes to ethnicity."

Canada, lacking a history of slavery, doesn't have a large population of blacks whose average IQ lags the white majority by one standard deviation. Canada, lacking a border with Mexico, and having a largely meritocratic immigration system, also lacks our large Latino population.

Posted by Fred | April 2, 2008 9:58 PM

Fred, my good man, poor form. Any race nut worth a toss keeps slavery out of discussions about the problem of the 'blecks'. Bring it up and you risk being asked to explain why slavery itself might not itself be something of a justification for all this horrid affirmative action business.

Posted by Reginald Twistleton-Twistleton | April 2, 2008 10:43 PM

Sailer's point was that, all things being equal, if you want to get into an elite school, you have a far better chance of getting in, and getting a full ride if you are black.

Well, there's the rub. In the real world, all things aren't equal.

Posted by Adam Villani | April 2, 2008 11:05 PM

On a utilitarian basis, or in a balance-of-equities analysis, why would I be troubled by this?

Except that you've explicitly used arguments about fairness to rail against affirmative action in the past. And, of course, there are many utilitarian arguments in support of affirmative action. I think this is a clear example of "any port in a storm" arguing; in this particular context, it's inconvenient for you to make arguments about fairness and equality, so you make a utilitarian argument. I hope you're as ready to abandon arguments to fairness and equality when affirmative action comes up in the future. If you're so willing to abandon the appeal to equality and merit in college admissions, you can't in good faith use them later as a bludgeon against affirmative action.

Posted by Freddie | April 2, 2008 11:08 PM

That I find highly doubtful. But from the perspective of societal harmony, I have more of a problem with affirmative action. If Sandy Weil's kid gets into Cornell over a guy whose GPA was a tenth of a point higher -- because Sandy endowed Cornell's medical school -- I really don't have a problem with that. Plenty of folks benefit from the medical training and medical care at the Weil-Cornell medical school/hospitals. On the other hand, when a Chavis gets into medical school over a Bakke, everyone is ultimately worse off.

I love how, in the case of the legacy brat, you chose a scenario involving a nearly imperceptible difference in merit (as of course gross educational inferiority is never overruled by wealth!), whereas in the case of affirmative action, you chose an example ending in utter tragedy. Really, that's honest.

Posted by EpicureanQuaker | April 2, 2008 11:34 PM

true, but who cares. you should be more concerned about about the people who don't have the chance to quintuple their odds of getting in with a family connection than competitive realities of the people who do.

Posted by john q. public | April 2, 2008 11:36 PM

"Bring it up and you risk being asked to explain why slavery itself might not itself be something of a justification for all this horrid affirmative action business."

Since affirmative action hasn't been limited to descendants of American slaves the question is moot, but I'll answer it anyway. First, there is no precedent for reparations being given to the great-great-grandchildren of victims. Second, if such a precedent were to be started, affirmative action in college admissions would be a poor form of reparations: because their average IQ is about 85, too few African Americans are in a position to benefit from it. The bulk of the beneficiaries would continue to be biracial blacks, the children of black immigrants, etc.

"Well, there's the rub. In the real world, all things aren't equal."

True. The child of affluent black parents would still have a far better chance of getting admission and a free-ride to an elite college than the child of poor white parents.

"And, of course, there are many utilitarian arguments in support of affirmative action."

Let's hear one. Bear in mind it would have to overcome the arguments against affirmative action, e.g., the sense of resentment it inculcates in both its recipients as well as its victims, the cloud of suspicion it throws over the qualifications and achievements of truly-talented minorities, that it puts under-qualified practitioners in positions where their incompetence puts their fellow minorities in danger (affluent white liberals don't send their wives and daughters to the Dr. Patrick Chavises of the world).

"I love how, in the case of the legacy brat, you chose a scenario involving a nearly imperceptible difference in merit (as of course gross educational inferiority is never overruled by wealth!), whereas in the case of affirmative action, you chose an example ending in utter tragedy. Really, that's honest."

It was honest because I was assuming that the legacy brat was white, and if that legacy brat were only of average white intelligence, he would still be smarter than 5 out of 6 African Americans. More likely, the legacy brat would be of above-average intelligence, although perhaps not as intelligent as his high achieving parent.

Posted by Fred | April 3, 2008 12:38 AM

"I went to Caltech [note the capitalization] and can't remember knowing anyone who went to the upper-crust east-coast prep schools. Public magnet schools like Stuyvesant, Thomas Jefferson, and IMSA were much better-represented."
-- Adam Villani

Mr. Villani,

Spelling duly noted.

Informative post.

Somehow I'm guessing the number of students playing in bad bands or boring their roommates freshman year with tedious tales of time spent on heroin was considerably less at Caltech as well.

It'd be nice to know how students at Caltech or MIT fared getting into the Ivys. I imagine a fair share applied to those schools as well. ("Sure, you're smart, kid, but are you well rounded?" And with such questions the noble search for merit and a "well rounded" student body continues! An oh so boring Asian kid with a poor background and real ability in math and science loses out to someone from Choate who had a cool volunteer job and wrote about diversity on her application essay.)

Still, more than anything I'd love to just see the numbers from public magnet schools versus incredibly expensive elite prepschools. First in places with unbending standards (MIT, Caltech) then, yeah, in the Ivys.

But we can probably draw some fairly solid conclusions even without the hard numbers.

I'm guessing, for instance, that - unlike, say, Yale - Caltech doesn't offer its students a major in Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Getting a degree from a great school for talking about yourself and your feelings for four years makes a nice treat for the elite.

It's, of course, not at all clear that if Yale actually took the most worthy students (many with immigrant parents) they'd find very many of them were willing to spend their time in New Haven pursing such degrees. Among other things, the kids from ritzy schools often seem more open to learning about how they're persecuted by society.

Finally, the stories of what you could actually get credit for at Brown in the 80s and 90s are so amazing that I want to believe, at least, some of them are mere legend.

Posted by M.M. | April 3, 2008 2:12 AM

Generally, smart kids have smart parents, and smart parents tend to make more than the median income.

Bullshit. Your statement clearly indicates that you haven't met a lot of rich people or smart people in your life.

Posted by novakant | April 3, 2008 2:40 AM

I'm suprised and skeptical of the magnitude of racial IQ disparity claimed by Fred. I hadn't thought it so large. Fred can you link a source?

For my part I have found the following site a place willing to touch these incendiary topics with clear statistical competence:

http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/

I would ask novakant where he thinks merit comes from? Considering the old argument between Genetics and Environment both would include strong ties to the parents. If a meritocracy were effective you would expect some stratification wrt parents' status over time due to genetics and the impact of parents on environment.

Too many on this thread are worrying about Ivy league education. The fact that they have many of the flaws outlined above, is only hurting their futures. They are living on their reputations not their quality of education. Despite often inferior instruction, they have often superior students, and so come out well.

However, the name on the degree means less than it used to. Because our society is based upon competition, those willing to hire the best instead of those with the right pedigree fare better. Even in engineering where education is fundamental, the name of the school has only little correlation to the productivity & potential of the engineer.

Posted by Keith | April 3, 2008 4:20 AM

And in investment banking, the risks have now been socialized. The Fed will intervene to protect your job.

Posted by bob h | April 3, 2008 6:27 AM

Re: How big of you to consider conceding that IQ "means something" in the real world.

I don't actually believe it does mean anything. For one thing, very few people are actually tested for IQ, and the figure is not usually publicly disclosed, so it isn't actually used for anything in the real world on any significant scale.

Re: And in investment banking, the risks have now been socialized. The Fed will intervene to protect your job.

Huh? I doubt the employees of Bear Sterns would agree with you. Most of them are staring at unemployment and the loss of tehir retirement savings.

Posted by JonF | April 3, 2008 6:52 AM

An additional reply to Fred:
You still didn't answer my question. We're talking about millions of people and you have yet to show me why those people are not a true random set. Was there something about the slave-taking process that selected only certain types? And what the effects of the introduction European genes into that population subsequently (most Blacks in this country have one or more white ancestors). As for immigrants, it would seem to me that even today packing up and moving to a foreign country requires a certain amount of ambition and drive, if not raw intelligence. That process should be selecting for traits that are at least somewhat useful in the economy.

Posted by JonF | April 3, 2008 6:58 AM

They are living on their reputations not their quality of education. Despite often inferior instruction, they have often superior students, and so come out well.

Well, there's also access to more professional opportunities outside of the classroom. These are available at a state school, too, but state schools are so large that only a small proportion of the students are going to get to participate. If you're one of those students, great. If not, you're just one of the unwashed masses. Whereas at "top ranked" schools, a larger proportion of the students get access to these opportunities to work closely with professors, publish the newspaper, etc. (presumably because they've been "pre-screened" by the admissions office)

The exception is Harvard, where it seems like participation in every single extracurricular or non-classroom activity is contingent on a strict screening processes followed by competitive evaluation before you're allowed in.

That said, if all this is about is "how much money do you make?" it's pretty simple. If you're really that smart, then you should have no problem fulfilling the pre-med requirements at a state school and attending a state med school or getting a business loan to buy a diner.

But "merit" is tied in with certain class assumptions and people who've managed to navigate the paths through the elite university and professional system no doubt feel that they've "accomplished something" and feel that since they've succeeded under the value system that they've chosen for themselves that this has some kind of universal relevance.

Posted by Tyro | April 3, 2008 8:45 AM

Well, I have no doubt that this is true in many, probably even most cases, but I think it heavily depends on the person's age.

For example, I have the strong impression that white-color office workers laid off due to outsourcing or anything have a pretty difficult time getting a remotely comparable job if they're over fifty or so. And these groups are frequently the primary targets of cost-effectiveness layoffs or buyouts.
*************************************************

I was 50 the last time I was laid off.

Posted by Campesino | April 3, 2008 9:30 AM

It's difficult, however, for people to keep in their heads the idea that, yes, you may have displayed considerable merit to get where you are but also you've taken advantage of a lot of undeserved privileges of birth.

FWIW, I agree.

What I don't understand is why progressives don't apply the same logic to outsourcing. Sure, the American worked hard to get his job on the line at Ford; but he also took advantage of his great fortune in being born American and not Honduran/African/Chinese/the vast majority of the world. Why am I supposed to care more about that American (who is so much more fortunate) than I am about the guy who takes his job and as a result can afford things like protein?

As someone who was beyond fortunate in being born to an upper-middle class American family, I would much rather replay the class lottery than the country of birth one.

Posted by Amber | April 3, 2008 10:15 AM

It's also useful to remember that even if you've qualified for a prestigious, complicated job on the basis of "merit", you can still, and contradictorily, be a completely incompetent imbecile. That's how you get Bear-Stearns and Enron and other debacles.

Posted by NoahB | April 3, 2008 10:18 AM

It's also useful to remember that even if you've qualified for a prestigious, complicated job on the basis of "merit", you can still, and contradictorily, be a completely incompetent imbecile.

This is true. There are lots and lots of smart people out there, but the hiring practices of a lot of these firms seem to focus on not hiring only the best people but rather on hiring a bell-curve-distributed group whose mean happens to be a little better than average. This does confirm a lot of the stuff we were told about higher education when we were in high school-- it does help "get your foot in the door," and sometimes that's 3/4ths of what's required.

Posted by Tyro | April 3, 2008 10:40 AM

To commenter M.M. -- I attended Thomas Jefferson, a public magnet like Stuyvesant in the D.C. metro area. At the time I graduated, the school capped each class at around 425 students. In my class, as I recall, about 10 students were admitted to each of the Ivies, maybe 15 to Duke and to Stanford, and around 25 to MIT. Around 150 were admitted to UVA, the flagship state school. Matriculation numbers are less helpful here, as many students in this pool were admitted to more than one of these schools. My friends who eventually attended MIT, for example, were also admitted to Ivy League schools with science research programs in their preferred discipline (Harvard and Penn, for example, for math and comp sci).

If converted to percentages, these admission rates are lower than those for private schools in New York and New England, but not by much. You have far better odds of admission to an elite college if you graduated from TJ or Stuyvesant than if you attended most other private D.C. and New York high schools.

That's because public magnet school admissions aren't meritocratic, either--they select for the same academic and extracurricular criteria as the Ivies, but in eighth grade.

Posted by Maureen | April 3, 2008 11:29 AM

Is meritocracy just a fancy way of saying, "I deserve what I've got?"

How does meritocracy stack up against social harmony as a principle or a societal goal?

How does it stack up against national well-being, in terms of environment, safety, health?

The total quality of life for the vast majority might be stagnant or in decline, but hey, at least we've all got an equal chance to be all that we can be, whether that's to earn seven figures or write for a hit TV show.

For the first time in my life, I'm really proud to be an American.

Posted by YY | April 3, 2008 11:47 AM

While the myth of meritocracy is alive and well in our country, we can take heart that opportunties are improving for young, capable students from low income families. The biggest complaint of admission officers at many good, small liberal arts colleges is that strong students from disadvantaged backgrounds simply do not apply for admission. The "sticker shock" of published costs exceeding $40,000 causes many families to just default to the local community college, state school or the work force. In reality there are many cases of highly qualified students from low income backgrounds who will pay less, with no loans, at a highly competitive private college, than they would at their public, state institution. They simply need to get the documents on file, which of course, is not so simple.

Posted by NaPatriot | April 3, 2008 11:49 AM

How does meritocracy stack up against social harmony as a principle or societal goal?

I world argue that if people believed that they were being shafted in favor of those who were less meritorious, this would cause a breakdown in social harmony.

It depends, of course, whether you believe that hard work, knowledge, and intelligence are virtues. If you believe so, then you would want a system that, more-or-less, rewards these virtues via a meritocratic system. If a society publicly espouses those virtues and then rewards those who disregard them, then your goals of "social harmony" are going to go right out the window.

Posted by Tyro | April 3, 2008 11:56 AM

The biggest complaint of admission officers at many good, small liberal arts colleges is that strong students from disadvantaged backgrounds simply do not apply for admission. The "sticker shock" of published costs exceeding $40,000 causes many families to just default to the local community college, state school or the work force.

Yes, I think this is probably the biggest problem with America's elite universities these days, and similarly inflicts huge financial stress upon most of the families of those students who do attend and also (via horrible loan burdens) upon the students themselves after they graduate.

As near as I can tell, there's absolutely no reason for those universities to be so expensive---none of their *legitimate* costs have risen so dramatically over the last couple of decades, while their endowments have grown almost exponentially. During this same period, technological advances should have lowered costs, not raised them.

I'd guess that they've just hired an endlessly growing army of mostly useless/parasitic administrators and other non-academic personnel, whose elimination would probably cut costs by about 75% AND also improve the actual quality of education and research. Offhand, it seems a lot like America's equally stupid health care system.

I'm curious what other commenters might think of this analysis.

Posted by RKU | April 3, 2008 12:14 PM

It also reflects the lack of jobs in small "college" towns as well.

Posted by Woo jae | April 3, 2008 2:40 PM

It also reflects the lack of jobs in small "college" towns as well.

Posted by Woo jae | April 3, 2008 2:41 PM

JonF,

"I don't actually believe it does mean anything. For one thing, very few people are actually tested for IQ, and the figure is not usually publicly disclosed, so it isn't actually used for anything in the real world on any significant scale."

Try the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, which includes millions of data points. The data are statistically significant. You sound like a flat-Earther in your willful ignorance about this.

"You still didn't answer my question."

I actually did, but anyhow...

"We're talking about millions of people and you have yet to show me why those people are not a true random set. Was there something about the slave-taking process that selected only certain types?"

It took people of African decent, who have significantly lower IQs, on average than other groups.

"And what the effects of the introduction European genes into that population subsequently (most Blacks in this country have one or more white ancestors)."

The average white admixture of African Americans has been estimated at 15%-20%. Considering that the average IQ of African Americans is significantly higher than that of sub-Saharan Africans, those European genes may have increased the average intelligence of African Americans (certainly other factors such as improved nutrition have as well).

"As for immigrants, it would seem to me that even today packing up and moving to a foreign country requires a certain amount of ambition and drive"

Do you not understand the difference between having elementary school dropouts walk across your southern border versus implementing an immigration system that selects for immigrants with advanced degrees?

Posted by Fred | April 3, 2008 2:58 PM

Hey, YY, maybe you should visit Singapore sometime.

Posted by Quietus | April 3, 2008 9:22 PM

Re: Do you not understand the difference between having elementary school dropouts walk across your southern border versus implementing an immigration system that selects for immigrants with advanced degrees?

Anyone willing to pull up stakes and start life in a foreign country is someone with a certain amount of risk-taking, optimism and adventurousness in their soul. So what if they aren't quantum physicists? Book-learning isn't everything, even today. Nor should human beings be judged by their education any more than by other external attributes and accidents of life. There is a whole category of people my mother used to refer to as "Educated fools"-- people with lots and lots of higher education and not a whit of common sense.
And meanwhile, I know unambitious Americans who are such sticks-in-the-mud that they won't even relocate to a new state where they face none of the hurdles and difficulties that a foreign immigrant does.
By the way, how many of our European ancestors were junior Einsteins? There were a helluva lot of illiterates in that population too (probably far more than today). Read what respectable people had to say about the Irish once upon a time.

Re: You sound like a flat-Earther in your willful ignorance about this.

No Fred, I simply reject Lamrackian biology.

Posted by JonF | April 3, 2008 9:46 PM

I'm with JonF on this one. I have long thought that the process of getting into our country illegally filters for initiative, determination, and risk taking. These, on balance, are good traits to add to our country.

Though I have also long said that one of the scariest personality types is someone who is stupid or has poor judgement, but has plenty of initiative.

It's never really "all good."

Posted by Keith | April 5, 2008 1:34 AM