An interesting post from Lion about Ivy leagues and the ‘elite’
By in large, the Ivy Leagues of today (versus the quotas of the early 20th century), in addition to MIT and Caltech, are meritocracies that grant admission to only the best and the brightest out of a huge (and growing) pool of candidates. This is especially so with MIT that historically catered to middle class families with brilliant children who had no hope of going to an Ivy League due to the quotas and tuition. With the exception of handful of possible affirmative action cases and legacies, dull students seldom get through.
Seems like Ivy League bashing has become common nowadays, maybe due to personal economic difficulties or other factors. In this strong yet speculative economy where people are getting rich overnight with stocks and apps, many people feel left out, and so they are looking for targets to blame such as graduates from prestigious schools who tend to earn more money, in addition to other targets of leftist populist rage like the fed, Washington, Wall St., wealthy technology capitalists, investment bankers, Bay Area real estate, and web 2.0. Other Ivy league bashers graduated from lesser-known colleges and in this cutthroat, hyper-competitive economy cannot find good-paying work, so they resent the Ivy League graduates who seldom have this problem.
Today’s viral story: MIT Researcher: My Uber Drive Was Proof That ‘Good, Secure, Fulfilling Jobs Are Declining’ The fact so many people, many whom are not economists, are discussing this story is more evidence we’re in a smartist era. Not only that, but also the super-smart subjects of the story Uber and the MIT researcher. Had ‘Uber’ been replaced with ‘bus’ and ‘MIT Researcher’ with ‘construction worker’, no one would care. It’s not like 40 years ago when sports and Hollywood were the centerpieces of American discourse. As America, especially the millennial generation, has gotten smarter and better educated, they want to be a part of the economic process and the national discussion, rather than mere bystanders. Second, this story is viral because it completely covers the quadrantsphere, for you cannot discuss the employment situation without delving into race, IQ, and eduction. As indicated by data such as record high consumer spending, quarter after quarter of blow-out profits & earnings, huge exports, and perpetually rising stock prices, the economy is doing pretty well, but many people are failing to participate, languishing in low paying service sector jobs or dropping out of the labor force altogether.
With so many people falling between the cracks in what has otherwise been a strong economic recovery and wealth creation boom, today, Social Darwinism is alive and well. Many people are falling between the cracks not because we’re not doing enough to help them, but because they simply aren’t smart enough to participate in the recovery.
Credentialism and competition in the American labor markets is not going away, and this trend will only accelerate. To expect that record high profits and surging stocks will make good-paying jobs more abundant or put the masses of un-credentialed, room temperature IQ people to work is wishful thinking.
Some solutions proposed by this blog:
1. Eugenics to control entitlement spending, by discouraging the reproduction of low IQ individuals – many of whom are among the long-term unemployed, have few useful marketable skills nor the ability to learn then, and are recipients of welfare.
2. Through a partnership with social media companies and the government, another solution is paying the unemployed to engage in economically productive social media engagement such as uploading pictures to Facebook, tweeting, taking selfies with Snapchat, clicking Google ads, or playing the Kim Kardashian app. If you look at the record multi-billion dollar revenue and market caps of some of these companies, a lot of economic value is being created with activities that many would otherwise deem as trivial. The advantage of this program is that the work is very easy and can be done anywhere there is an internet connection. Because these private companies are paying the government for product placement, it doesn’t have to cost tax payers anything. Similar private partnerships can be established with public schools to give viable career paths for low-IQ students.
3. STEM Bailout – like a basic income, but only individuals with a STEM degree and or an IQ above a certain threshold would be eligible.