Purple Policies, Part 2

From Charles Murray: The Trouble With Kids Today

Again, my underlying point is simple. IQ has a substantial direct correlation with measures of success in life, and it is also correlated with a variety of other characteristics that promote success—perseverance, deferred gratification, good parenting, and the aspects of personality that are variously called “emotional intelligence” or “grit.” The correlations are not large, but many modest individual correlations produce large differences in life outcomes when the means of two groups are separated by as large a gap as separates both parents and children of America’s working and upper-middle classes.

Charles Murray is right about the inescapable role IQ plays in socioeconomic outcomes, especially in the post-2008 economy, and how people are falling behind because of low IQs in an economy that increasingly rewards intellect.

The left says the solution is more education spending – for everyone, regardless of IQ. The left believes that equal education and socioeconomic outcomes can be attained if enough taxpayer money is thrown at the problem, with the role of biology being nonexistent. The right, on the other hand, wants to get the government out of the picture, but since public education is probably here to stay, the best approach is to reform it through ‘purple policies‘ to optimize America’s most important resource, cognitive capital. Instead of the futile leftist endeavor of trying to create equal outcomes, let’s create equal opportunities so that America’s gifted children can live to their full potential within the meritocracy. If we’re going to have pubic services, let’s make sure resources are allocated optimally instead of indiscriminately.