Friday, April 06, 2007

He knows what he does

A little link/summary trickery from Andrew Sullivan --

Gifted Are the Poor

A scientific study finds that wealth is inversely correlated with intelligence in determining how best to spend a small amount of money.


Follow the link, which in turn has the option of another link -- and it's got nothing to do with intelligence. It's a lab experiment with a small group of people that relates to the differing incentives of rich and poor people to figure out patterns in return for tiny stakes -- 20p per run.

Guess what? Lower income people figure it out more quickly, because, as economists would hope, their marginal utility of income is higher.

The subtext here is Sullivan's commitment to the concept of a single dimensional innate and genetic characteristic called "IQ" -- which perhaps as a little Good Friday repentance, he decided to grant the poor a little more of.

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