n recent years, science and economic theory have learned several crucial points about the link between great wealth and low IQ. First, great wealth seems to diminish intelligence or IQ. And along the same lines, one of the important studies recently showed that very stupid people tend to be inordinately proud of their stupidity. The Dunning-Kruger Effect. The lower the IQ, the more the pride, and the louder and more persistent the braggadocio. Did someone say Tea Party?This explains a lot.
The Dunning Kruger Effect also works in reverse. Very clever, skilled persons tend to be disconcertingly modest. Especially about their own talents. This does not seem to be false modesty. Rather, it appears to plague one with self-doubt.
But for the moment, let's return to the correlation between IQ and Wealth.
It is the major thesis' of the 2002 book, IQ And The Wealth of Nations, by Richard Lynn, available at Amazon, that a higher IQ is one of the main keys to earning great wealth. But there's a big fat irony which then comes into play. Having once accumulated this great wealth, one's IQ begins to diminish. That's right. The engine that got you there begins to fall apart. And that is where the Dunning-Kruger effect enters. John Cleese puts it in his own special way :: "Truly stupid people will never know they are stupid." Why is it, do you suppose, that a truly stupid man never knows, and never will, that he is stupid, ox-like, and foolish in his pride.
Take your average Republican; a neo-con of today, for example.
I rest my case.
One thing which scares wealthy people, is that given a superior education and every opportunity, nobody can say with the least certainty from whence the next Einstein will arise. If history is at all reliable, genius tends to arise out of poverty, just as easily, indeed, the advantage tends to reside with poverty, rather than privilege.
