If this is the case, then people with higher I.Q.’s should not make any more money than people with lower I.Q.’s – They did nothing to earn their I.Q.

It’s not about earning it… obviously you don’t earn your DNA. It’s about what your skills are worth to someone else. You don’t hire someone just because they are intelligent… you hire them because they offer value to you (and if that intelligence is part of what provides value to you, so be it).

Then I.Q. is a completely arbitrary, ascribed characteristic. It is the same as being born Black, or female.

If this is the case, then people with higher I.Q.’s should not make any more money than people with lower I.Q.’s – They did nothing to earn their I.Q.

And just for those who are thinking that people with higher I.Q.’s make the world better, Hittler had a very high I.Q.

On the other hand, I rather have a hospital with NO doctors than with no cleaning people.

Newsflash: wealthy people have higher IQs.

This article neither says, implies or proves that wealthy people have higher IQs.

In Regards to this question, there are numerous studies with conflicting conclusions. What would at first seem to make sense ( smarter people earn more) is not nearly as clear cut as we might expect.
My real world observations bare this out. After meeting and conversing with a few of my wealthier neighbors, who live in a development where the average house in over 5000 S/f, I have determined that earning potential is not necessarily related to intelligence.
Two of these people are contractors who could barely carry on a conversation and the third, who owns and runs an automation business, is a heck of a nice guy and certainly smart enough but definitely no Einstein.
One of the wealthiest people in the world lives three miles from me. He is the largest land owner in Pa and is worth over 3 billion dollars if I remember correctly. He drives around in a 1998 Toyota SUV.
He works 200 yards from my house, He arrives at 6am and leaves at 4PM every day. I’ve spoken with him a number of times. Nice guy but doesn’t seem any smarter than the average person I meet.

Who knows, maybe it’s me. Perhaps I’m just smarter than most people I meet.;)

There is more to intelligence than having money.

I’m the farthest thing from wealthy, but I have an IQ that is borderline genius. My brother, who is also not wealthy, is even smarter than I am. Our parents were poor and their parents before them were poor, etc. We haven’t broken the ‘wealth’ boundary because we started off with a lot less than the rich and that hasn’t ended yet. Maybe someday it will, but it is a constant struggle to make it in a world where money makes all the difference. Perhaps the morons who believe that they are smarter because they have bigger bank accounts should reconsider their stance on this issue. Wealth doesn’t equal intelligence. Opportunity might, but not wealth. Period.

The big gains…are largely in the category known as “similarities,” where you get questions such as “In what way are ‘dogs’ and ‘rabbits’ alike?” Today, we tend to give what, for the purposes of I.Q. tests, is the right answer: dogs and rabbits are both mammals. A nineteenth-century American would have said that “you use dogs to hunt rabbits.”

He provides another great example:

The psychologist Michael Cole and some colleagues once gave members of the Kpelle tribe, in Liberia, a version of the WISC similarities test: they took a basket of food, tools, containers, and clothing and asked the tribesmen to sort them into appropriate categories. To the frustration of the researchers, the Kpelle chose functional pairings. They put a potato and a knife together because a knife is used to cut a potato. “A wise man could only do such-and-such,” they explained. Finally, the researchers asked, “How would a fool do it?” The tribesmen immediately re-sorted the items into the “right” categories.

Anyhow, my point is that it may well be that high IQs don’t cause affluence, but affluence causes high IQs. Or, more likely still, they share a root cause. But I don’t know that it can necessarily be concluded that higher IQs cause wealth.

If you have 30 students in a class, some of those students will learn, and will apply what they have learned, more effectively and efficiently. Those are the ones that are effective information processors.

Others of that same classroom will be thinking it is a complete waste of time, and be dreaming of their favorite protest that they want to attend.

It is not that the rich cheat, it is that they are, long term, more effective at utilizing their opportunities. If they don’t, they don’t become rich. It’s that simple.

In life, you will have an incredibly small percentage of the people that are PRODUCERS. They are the ones that innovate, create, utilize, and process better than their peers.

That small percentage of people are, for lack of a better word, “civilization”. If they weren’t there, we would still be crouched around a cave (no fire), eating dinosaur droppings (no spears, so we wouldn’t be having dinosaur steaks, either.)

In other words, our life is enhanced GREATLY by the producers. In our affluence, we have allowed ourselves the luxury of non-producers. In a system without the wealth of the capitalist system, the non-producers would be living in squalor and a substandard subsistence…before they eventually starved to death because they wouldn’t work to feed themselves.

Now, these same people that are lucky to be alive, living off of the public dole, are complaining that they don’t understand and comprehend properly…and it is NOT their fault.

Cry me a river.

But don’t punish the producers because you don’t have the IQ to understand that your very existence is at the largesse of the producers. You are living off the table scraps of greatness, don’t complain that you are not seated at the same table.

That table is available to you, you just have to buy it, and put food on it. It won’t be given to you.

Doctor Malthus was right. However, capitalism has created so much wealth that Dr. Malthus has been postponed…temporarily.

I can understand the gut reaction that causes this sort of statement. However, a more educated population is in everyone’s best interest. When you look at the benefits to society I think the scale quickly tips to making it worthwhile to be interested in the education of others.

It’s not a gut reaction at all. It’s cold and calculating. Yes, I agree that an educated population is in society’s best interest. But I’m not society. I’m an individual, and as such I act in my own self interest. It’s not in my self interest to spend my money educating other people… the return on that is so small it’s imperceptible. So it comes down to how much money I’m willing to spend to make an imperceptible difference in society. None. Of course I don’t have a choice — it’s taken from me by force.

I went to a private school during my high school years and it was the richer students that were the dumbest, mainly because their wealth allowed them to get away with anything.

I myself am in college getting my associates before I head off to vet school, and I have to say that I think it is asinine that I have to take courses that have absolutely nothing to do with my major. The maths and sciences should be far more emphasized.