"Suggesting that the reader might imagine living in a lower-class, multiracial city neighbourhood, he writes: 'Most of the children in the bottom of the class in your child’s school are minorities.' Well, in Britain that just isn’t true. The children at the bottom of that class are likely to be white working-class boys. They are doing worse than Asians, Chinese or Afro-Caribbean children. Although Murray is writing about America, he is making an assertion about innate racial differences in intelligence. He protests that it isn’t the product of a 'racist imagination' but represents 'lived experience.' But it doesn’t, at least in Britain. So is it a generalisation based on racist assumptions? This matters because Murray has been tarred and feathered for years as a racist and eugenicist.... Murray is correct when he writes that the new ideologies of the far-left are akin to the Red Guards of Mao’s Cultural Revolution — 'and they are coming for all of us.' However, insulting and cancelling him merely inflates his martyr status while failing to subject his arguments to cool and rational dissection, as [Thomas] Sowell has done so fairly. Murray wrote Facing Reality out of alarm that ethnicity was becoming central to identity and social organisation. The reality he has to face is that his own theorising does precisely that."
From "Race claims need examining with a cool eye/Theorising about the abilities of different ethnic groups risks fuelling divisive identity politics" by Melanie Phillips (London Times).
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38 comments:
"One sentence in the new book by the American political scientist Charles Murray, Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America, leapt out at me."
The game is two truths and a lie.
"The children at the bottom of that class are likely to be white working-class boys. They are doing worse than Asians, Chinese or Afro-Caribbean children. Although Murray is writing about America, he is making an assertion about innate racial differences in intelligence."
This is not a contradiction. Melanie Phillips is implicitly assuming that there is no bell curve within races and/or that this bell curve would have to be the same in all countries.
His assertion is that intelligence is heritable; that the children of black astrophysicists are far likelier to be of higher intelligence than that of white sewer-scrubbers, all else being equal.
Either she doesn't understand what he's saying or she's lying about it, but either way it is a misrepresentation.
PS: In America whites on average under perform "Asians" (in America, "Indians") and Chinese. It would not surprise me if they underperformed the children of first generation Afro Carribean immigrants too, when you consider that immigrants are not random samples of their home countries' distributions.
"'Most of the children in the bottom of the class in your child’s school are minorities.'"
But not Chinese or other Asian "minorities".
"Well, in Britain that just isn’t true."
UK Parliament says: Black pupils have the lowest pass rate for GCSE English and maths combined "
Rank order is Chinese, Asian, Mixed, White, Other, Black; the same as in the US.
They are doing worse than Asians, Chinese or Afro-Caribbean children.
I was sad to see this come from the pen of Melanie Phillips, who really should know better.
"Asian", Chinese, and Afro-Caribbean (or African immigrant) children do as well or as better than whites in the US, too.
The question is what's the problem with American blacks, and Ms Phillips knows this. The numbers for scholastic achievement for American blacks are horrible, and horrible they remain, after decades of well-intentioned effort.
As for British white working class kids, I think many of their issues can be summed up in one word: alcohol. Not just fetal alcohol syndrome, but the social carnage caused by ubiquitous alcohol consumption, which falls heavily in Britain on the lower class "native" British population, since the immigrants don't have old traditions of heavy social drinking.**
e.g. the major part alcohol plays in the sex lives of younger Brits.
I've got the book in my Kindle, but have not gotten to it yet. So I cannot comment on his book, but her take is something I'll look at when I do read the book. Murray has been very brave digging into demographics, trends, and actual data regarding different ethnic groups of people. He lays his work out there for discussion and I've seen him take serious questioning that he does not shy away from. He seems to enjoy the debate much more than some, and certainly much more than being shut down entirely.
And Melanie Phillips wrote the prescient book, Londonistan back in 2006. I can't believe it's been 15 years. But she foresaw the Islamization of not only England, but Europe. It's not normal immigration when those coming in actually hate your culture, have no intention of learning your culture, and remain apart from it, eventually growing exactly what they left behind, but this time with government sponsors and money.
"Well, in Britain that just isn’t true"
Right. But then, he wrote a book about "Two Truths about Race in AMERICA."
Then you could look globally--comparatively check IQ tests, PISA, etc. etc. More truths, none pleasant.
By the way, sorry for the second comment Althouse, Murray is not "Theorising" about group differences, he mainly reports data, and more data, all very mainstream, all very consistent, over decades.
Of course, he also wrote a whole separate book about the problems of the American white working class, Coming Apart. Does he have any good-faith lefty critics?
In order to be persuaded by the argument that England has a dumber white working class than the US and a smarter non-white population than the US, we would have to understand and account for the selection process by which the non-white populations got to the US and to England, and by which persistent white working class academic failure in England persists (including a look at who reproduces under what support+incentives). So I don't find this quoted material conclusive on its own, although Murray must address it (surely he has?). Perhaps Murray should avoid overbroad "minorities" introductory shorthand, or perhaps we should read on to see how it is expanded.
To be clear, genetic differences do predict outcome differences between groups with large genetic differences in relevant parts of the genome for the outcome. That's a fact. Identifying genetic differences between "white" and "minority" while abstracting away everything else is foolish (especially obvious: it's implied that we're not talking about known high-iq minority genetic lineages when we're debating alleged mistreatment of 'minorities')
The point that Melanie Phillips makes about white, working class boys in Britain is interesting, but it also tinged with class snobbery. Do boys in Pakistani enclaves in northern mill towns really outperform the local yobs? Well, maybe, but it seems a bit unlikely. And if so, I think you can put it down to culture.
Murray's points are based on cognitive testing results in the USA that have consistently shown that Asians, whites, Hispanics, and blacks perform in that order across time and geography in the US. I think we have a lot of cultural impact there, too. Contemplate the rap lyrics of your choice and ask yourself how they compare to Shakespeare or Abraham Lincoln. But read Frederick Douglass, and ask yourself the same question. Douglass, born a slave, is right in there.
We are much better off considering people as individuals. And since people are intermarrying at a frantic pace in the US and Britain, all these racial distinctions shouldn't mean much in 30 to 50 years--unless people want them to. Barack Obama is just as much white as he is black--and he was raised culturally white. David Garow's book makes it clear that Obama chose to identify as black as an adult.
Per https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/uk-population-by-ethnicity/national-and-regional-populations/population-of-england-and-wales/latest
80.6 percent of the population of England and Wales is white
7.5 percent is asian ethnic groups
3.3 percent is black ethnic groups
2.2 percent is mixed/multiple ethnic groups
1.0 percent is other
The U.S hasn't been over 80 percent white since 1990.
I saw Glenn Loury and John McWhorter's bloggingheads on Murray's new book. *Without reading it* I do feel like Murray has finally jumped the shark. After a lifetime of insisting that he is agnostic on these issues, in the end he comes out with a book explicitly about racial differences in IQ. I don't know why he did that and I kinda wish he hadn't. Who is it going to help? The important points were made already in The Bell Curve, without beating on them.
Facing Reality is a piece of intellectual trash nicely updating and combining racism and eugenics - two of the worst ideologies of the Twentieth Century - in a new shiny synthesis ready for a new career of social destruction in a new century.
The alleged hereditary low IQ of African-Americans was an intellectual artifact produced by a group (Cyril Burt, Arthur Jensen, HJ Eysenck, Richard Lynn, JP Rushton et al) who pretended to be separate workers in the field but who were actually members of the the English and American eugenics societies and funded by the Pioneer Fund. in the 1990's Charles Murray gathered their research up into a book called The Bell Curve and tried to use it to make the case that African-Americans could not make it in an advanced technological society due to this hereditary IQ deficit and hence members of the group inclined to turn to crime. The "solution" was contraception - which would lower the group numbers. There are books which refuted the statistics Murray used and they may be consulted for the general outline of the way in which this book can be challenged for the basic intellectual outline is the same.
But, of course time has gone on and Murray is far too clever to merely repeat an argument in the Twenty-First century which he lost in the Twentieth Century. Here's the point. Eugenics is a theory which can change both its intended victim group and the social policy by which it intends to affect the demography of that group. What never changes is the intention to lower substantially the numbers of some human group. Twenty-First century eugenics is using new techniques of genome analysis to comb through newly available Big Data social science collections for new ways to designate its victims and its chosen tool is "Polygenic risk scores." These scores allegedly predict risk of bad social outcomes - e.g., failure in school, a life of crime, - based on the presence of certain genetic variants or combinations thereof. They are somewhat like the Chinese social credit system except that they are a openly a hereditary analysis. When then Murray tries to show that a group has a hereditary low IQ or a hereditary tendency toward criminal behavior he is slotting them into a dangerous place in the polygenic risk system should this system become a basis of social policy. At present the only group considered to have badness built into its heredity and a need for a social policy to correct that badness is the Europeans and their descendants. But if this mindset is established, I venture to predict it will suddenly and quickly switch its color and then using Murray's book as justification and polygenic risk scores as means, proceed to awfulness.
I can't read the article, so I can only comment of the title.
Theorizing about the abilities of different racial groups risks fueling divisive identity politics.
Excuse, me? Don't we already HAVE divisive identity politics? Isn't fueled mostly by one side preventing theorizing?
It would be refreshing to have cool and rational dissection. Let Murry's theorizing be put to the test, air it out, let the facts fall. Then maybe with real information we could address the actual causes of disparity among groups. We would have the chance to apply proper remedies to the problems at hand rather than blaming it ON racism. If one group is lagging, find out why and change the approach to make them more successful Don't bury your head in the sand and blame one thing or one group without evidence.
I think the left NEEDS these divisive disparities. It is the fuel that funds their fiduciary endeavors.
My basic argument against Murray's statistics is not the same as that of Melanie Phillips because, in the big Dem cities of the US, Murray's statistics hold. I explain these statistics in this way. A very large section of the black community has been miseducated in the public schools in the big Dem cities for the last fifty years of Dem control. These schools actually cause an IQ drop (see for example, Roland G. Fryer Jr. and Steven D. Levitt in UNDERSTANDING THE BLACK-WHITE TEST SCORE GAP IN THE FIRST TWO YEARS OF SCHOOL.) In any case, they do not educate as shown by levels of proficiency on state-wide tests in these schools. Moreover, for the last two years these schools have been effectively closed and yet students in them have been promoted to higher grades. How can these miseducated students do the grade appropriate work? And, anyhow even no work is required 40% of the males in these schools still do not get a high school degree. So: the poorly educated drop to the bottom of our society and, miserable there, become "disproportionately" likely to commit crimes. That explains the statistics.
In Britain, 'Asians' are Indians and Pakistanis, etc. They, along with Chinese and Japanese, will never be in the bottom academically.
'Minority' is far too broad a category. In both the U.S. and Britain, you have to break out blacks from everybody else to see a big difference.
IQ and academic performance don't always correlate. When I went to middle school and high school, many of the kids in the gifted program did not have great grades. A lot of them were the 'burnouts' who smoked cigarettes and weed during breaks.
I think that had a lot to do with boredom...there were no AP classes then, and the regular classes were pretty easy.
Is "working class" a social construct, or an actually population-genetically distinct caste with limited outbreeding? It may be we can identify genetic subpopulations that don't differ in whiteness but do in temperament and talent.
The children at the bottom of that class are likely to be white working-class boys. They are doing worse than Asians, Chinese or Afro-Caribbean children.
I think this is accurate once you limit to students from poor families (e.g. I've seen this result when the UK sample is limited to those entitled to a free school meal/FSM). This isn't a particularly surprising result. Immigrants and their children are often "poor," even if they come from comparatively privileged stock in their home countries. And even less surprising if the composition of the non-White population, as pointed out by Gabriel above, is nonrandom. E.g. in the US, I think Nigerian Americans may still have the highest educational attainment among all US ethnic groups. This isn't necessarily reflective of Nigeria.
More generally, though, she's just trying to wish away the problem, which helps no one, and is -- as I understand it -- Murray's point.
When a book critic starts out with "In Britain this just isn't true", then the critic is duty bound to have her facts straight. And she didn't get the facts right.
I'm not going to argue that "race" is linked to intelligence--it may be to an extent, it may not. But school performance is much more linked to culture, as well as to economics.
One absolutely reliable marker for the overall performance of students in a school or school district here in the USA is the percentage of children eligible for a free or reduced price lunch. When that percentage goes up, academic performance goes down. The lower end of the economic scale is associated with single parent families and or with families that are dysfunctional for one reason or another. Culture matters when it comes to education. A supportive family environment, and an ethnic or racial culture that values education and demands their child or children strive in school will produce students with excellent academic achievement.
Up above, YoungHegelian said... "As for British white working class kids, I think many of their issues can be summed up in one word: alcohol." There is much to be said for this. Including among many low performers in the USA, among all races. And I'm certain maternal drug use during pregnancy also contributes. I'm certain everyone here has heard the term "crack baby."
And how does government contribute to this problem rather than solving it? Easy- by following policies knnown not to work for the problems they're employed against, like, for example, locking the population down, which created one million new alcoholics in Great Britain, as if they didn't already have enough. And what do alcoholics of child bearing age have? Children with fetal alcohol syndrome...And if I remember correctly, Ann has blogged about mothers here in the USA increasing their wine consumption during the covidiocy. And that would only be among the wine set, more upper class mothers. Beer, vodka, and gin consumption among those of child bearing age is also up. Yep, lockdown and social isolation just so healthy for all of us... Dr. Fauci, Dictator Cuomo, and dementia addled Co-president Biden have told us so.
And there are articles in scholarly journals about it.
Studying psychology in the Sixties, we were instructed in all the ways that the statistics didn't actually mean what it looked as if they meant.
Point is, the stats were there. And some dated back to WW I.
Wildswan is grasping at straws. The differences in scores nationwide and worldwide are not an artifact of a few testers and results from terrible urban schools. In districts where all races have been together K-12, there is still an almost 1SD difference down for AA's and almost a full SD up for Jews. Everywhere. This has been true for decades, through good schools and bad, pre- and post- Civil Rights Act. The same arguments keep getting trotted out, disproven, then rise again like some game of whack-a-mole. I was taught them myself in the 1970s at W&M, with the assurance that this is what all the good people now knew, in contrast to those racist knuckle-draggers who still believed myths.
Murray insists that some of this is genetic, but also insists that some of it must, simply must be environmental, despite the weak support for that. He is not considered a radical, but something of a squish in the HBD community, because he follows data, and follows data, and follows data - and then backs out at the last moment from conclusions he doesn't like.
if in a household the parent(s) are not able/qualified to help with homework the child is indeed in trouble >>>> may be the parents should be given the test also.
"Although Murray is writing about America, he is making an assertion about innate racial differences in intelligence."
No, he doesn't address causes (innate or otherwise) but only current, observable performance, by various racial groups. His most recent book makes two basic claims: that different races in America “have different violent crime rates and different means and distributions of cognitive ability.” This book, like his earlier ones (Human Diversity, Bell Curve, Coming Apart, Losing Ground), collects the proof for both propositions, neither of which is factually controversial. He says he wrote this book because he is scared that the focus on race-gender-sex in lefty/academic/CRT circles as the only explanation for divergent social outcomes will end up destroying the Enlightenment project, by which he means (essentially) classical liberalism and its focus on the individual. If those forces are successful, he fears a more Hobbesian world (e.g., Bosnian or Rwandan style ethnic animosities) will replace the old Enlightenment one he cherishes.
Few reviewers are interested in dealing with what Murray has to say, and even less in the evidence he cites for those propositions -- he is, after all, toxic in most academic circles, an environment where it could be detrimental to one's career even to admit reading a Murray book. I have my doubts that the potential conflicts Murray sees on the horizon are realistic -- Americans, after all, are far more pragmatic than Murray gives them credit for and (with the notable exception of the Civil War) have never shown much willingness to abandon the middle and divide into extremes. This is, mostly, a live-and-let-live society. I think the best argument for taking Murray seriously is that, unless the facts are faced openly, there's no possibility of addressing the realities that he describes (and decries). He doesn't offer any real solutions to the problems he outlines, and to do so he would have to deal with causes and not just current performance. But at least he is willing to outline the problems as they are and say that we need to face up to the unpleasant realities, when so many others are babbling on about counterfactual nonsense.
Look at Australian traditional people. They have fantastic spatial memory. Can't afford to forget where you left the last waterhole. It's also true of those not living in the outback chasing the elusive 'roo for lunch. So the researchers try to make it cultural anyway. As if the abo family goes out to the country every Saturday for spot of orienteering.
But if it's heritable....what else might be?
So it's cultural, by golly.
I don't understand why this is so difficult to understand. This is simply the side effect of meritocracy. Smart tend to marry smart and smart people tend to have less children. Unless willfully skewed, legal immigration tends to attract on average smarter people irrespective of race. Regarding Blacks in America, I suspect that upper class Blacks mirror their White contemporaries in marriage and in numbers of children.
Gee, doesn't it help at all that Murray adds the REAL danger is that resentful white males could rediscover their white Identity and morph into a new KKK or something?
The guy can't catch a break.
Murray says that crime is related to race. In last two years in the Dem woke cities crime rates have suddenly gone up sharply following upon defund the police policies. The genetics hasn't changed; what's changed is a social policy. This shows that social policies affect crime rates. Twenty five years ago Giuliani changed social policies and brought crime rates down. So crime rates are affected by social policies. The schools have been following a certain trend in educational theory for the last fifty years. This theory is driving down culture and IQ but in a more steady way. We know this because right in the middle of the the areas with the worst performing schools there are charter schools and Catholic schools whose students from the same area as the worst of the worst do immeasurably better once they escape the standard educational regime.
Not one of those who take Murray's point of view has ever said that we ought to change the educational theory at work in the schools. They do usually object to the current defund the police movement but they seem to keep their understanding of that social policy in a different silo from the one where they keep their ideas on IQ. You got to learn mixing to understand this world.
Lastly, Murray says that the principles of the Declaration are not universal and do not apply to all; that they are some kind of tribal thought of the Anglo-Saxons. The Founders thought that those principles were precisely what was universal. So you follow Murray and you dump on the Founders and the black community. But - good news - John C Calhoun would welcome you to the country founded on his principles. And - so would China in its quest for a Han Chinese destiny. so there's that.
Once Koe Creation has "educated" a generation of American white boys, they will fare just as poorly as their British counterparts.
wildswan said...
Murray says that crime is related to race. In last two years in the Dem woke cities crime rates have suddenly gone up sharply following upon defund the police policies. The genetics hasn't changed; what's changed is a social policy. This shows that social policies affect crime rates.
.....
Crime is therefore clearly social construct - displaying what kind of infrastructure drives the risk-reward calculation between production and looting
I would mainly fault Murray's insistence on using the term RACE as an intelligible concept for rational discourse between intelligent people.
once (the anti-concept) RACE is introduced there is no escaping tribal style thinking in terms of group identity.
anti-concept
right in the middle of the the areas with the worst performing schools there are charter schools and Catholic schools whose students from the same area as the worst of the worst do immeasurably better once they escape the standard educational regime.
That is simply not true. Some times kids do better, but not immeasurably so. And almost all of the difference seems to be caused by the fact that young people who go to charter and Catholic schools are in general smarter and come from families which value schooling more.
Twenty years ago there was legitimate hope that charters could find new ways to teach and significantly raise achievement in poor children. Alas, that hope has not been realized.
Believing that poor school performance and "the gap" are caused by bad educational theory is wishful thinking, like believing that "the gap" is caused by white privilege.
wild chicken said...
Gee, doesn't it help at all that Murray adds the REAL danger is that resentful white males could rediscover their white Identity and morph into a new KKK or something?
The guy can't catch a break.
IMHO, that's the whole point of Critical Race Theory. According to the survey charts at Gallup, there's been a downward trend in race relations since 2013, that hasn't hit bottom yet.
Think about it for a moment- what happens if whites actually start looking at themselves as whites rather than Americans? Democrats will get what they've wanted since 1865- a USA split along racial lines.
@ wildspace - Ah, I see. You have the usual confusion about what "genetic" means. Of course our behavior is affected by our environments. Our laws and customs have real effects. But the same environmental actions did not change that the racial difference in crime or education remained intact. That is the substrate of core behavior that Murray is talking about.
As I think you are misunderstanding Murray, genetics, and environment in a way that is popular but unsupported, I think you should take your arguments to one of those sites where experts carry on those discussions. I recommend Greg Cochran's West Hunter and using the search feature on these topics,
'Most of the children in the bottom of the class in your child’s school are minorities.' Well, in Britain that just isn’t true. The children at the bottom of that class are likely to be white working-class boys. They are doing worse than Asians, Chinese or Afro-Caribbean children. Although Murray is writing about America, he is making an assertion about innate racial differences in intelligence.
No, he's making an assertion about the actual "racial" differences in intelligence in America.
In America, we have many on the Left claiming that "Math is racist" because "whites" and "Asians" do better at math than "blacks" and "Hispanics". Murray is responding to them, and pointing out the problem isn't with math, the problem is with the people failing to understand it.
Now, the writer comes from a field where racist instructors can simple grade their "black" and "Hispanic" students easier than the others, and there's no objective standard to prove them wrong.
But in math that isn't the case.
So she can have fun stuffing her head into the ground and shouting "I see nothing, nothing!"
Or she can agree with Murray that in America the problem isn't racist, the problem is that the ones receiving poor grades / scores are being scored poorly because they perform poorly, not because of racism
"His assertion is that intelligence is heritable"
Eurasians interbred with Neanderthals, Africans did not. Eurasians migrated to all parts of Europe, Asia and the Americas. Africans did not. Food for thought.
IMO the world could use a sight fewer of many categories of people.
I asked wildswan, long ago and sincerely, to explain how birth control "distorts" populations.
She(?) had a long list of countries whose demographics were "distorted," but he(?) never explained how the determination of 'distortion' was made.
Personally, outside of a few years in college when I bought the whole all animals are equal theory, I've never doubted that human groups--as defined by humans themselves, among themselves--varied greatly in abilities and proclivities.
There are many scholars, BTW, (one such is Kermit Roosevelt) who argue that the Founders were making narrow and quite focused claims about civil equality within a well-understood Enlightenment framework, NOT staking out a claim to universal equality, and especially not committing themselves to utopian schemes based on a theory of universal human equality.
From Joseph:
Your readers must be unaware of the fact that Melanie Phillips is a VERY conservative writer. I think her concerns about Murray are well stated and worth considering. I've read Murray and I've heard many interviews with him. He's articulate and likable, and I had come to the conclusion that he has been misrepresented in the press. I was listening to a recent interview he did with Andrew Sullivan, however, and he said something that led me to some of the same concerns Phillips has. I don't really think he's racist, but I wonder if he's losing his edge and risks the accusation. Or, perhaps age has led him to be less careful and reveal his real nature.
wildswan said...
My basic argument against Murray's statistics is not the same as that of Melanie Phillips because, in the big Dem cities of the US, Murray's statistics hold. I explain these statistics in this way. A very large section of the black community has been miseducated in the public schools in the big Dem cities for the last fifty years of Dem control.
So, you agree the problem isn't racism, and that "affirmative action" will not correct it, yes?
Murray says that crime is related to race. In last two years in the Dem woke cities crime rates have suddenly gone up sharply following upon defund the police policies. The genetics hasn't changed; what's changed is a social policy.
That's irrelevant to the argument. Now, if the rise in crime was mostly caused by new "white" and "Asian" criminals, rather than more crime from the usual suspects, then you would have a point.
But I'm pretty sure that isn't the case.
I agree that "black" kids leaving inner city schools and going to Catholic schools get more educated. But so do kids of other skin colors.
Unless you have a "do this thing, and then all numbers rise, but the ones for the lower performers rise more, and every skin color ends up equal" you haven't negated Murray's argument.
(Note: I'm sure that with enough effort and control you can lower everyone's scores so they're more or less equal (heck, if you kill them all, then their scores are all precisely equal). So lowering to "equality" doesn't prove anything other than your system really sucks)
The reality is that every single attempt to "spend enough money on the public schools to raise black achievement" has utterly failed. See Kansas City for a relatively recent example. Yes, the inner city schools suck. That is why I've supported private school vouchers my entire politically aware life, because the destruction those schools wreak on those poor kids is hideous.
But they're not going to suddenly make everyone intellectually equal. They're not going to make everyone qualified to go to college, or, for that matter, want to go to college.
If you want a society with a decent life for anyone willing to make the effort, then we need a society where you're not required to go to college in order to have a good life
One of the points Murray has been making for a while is that an increasingly technology based society will only reward people who have the skills necessary to succeed in things like computer programming and its related fields. Most people in my generation came out of college 40 years ago and ended up in management, regardless of their area of study. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it's that productivity can be easily monitored from a remote location and that the traditional role of a supervisor or manager--keeping order, making sure employees arrive on time, etc.--can be taken care of by computers. In fact, the concept of being at your desk at a specific time can be undercut by reports that show you are meeting your work goals.
After I retired one of my co-workers was caught spending massive amounts of time away from his desk. He'd been doing it his entire career, and his bosses didn't feel like taking the time to watch him and document his abuses. Shortly after I left the company, it installed a program that logged employees off their computers after a defined period of inactivity. His bosses suddenly had the proof they needed that he just wasn't doing much. Other aspects of management, such as meetings, moved to Zoom and the amount of time wasted in these things could be seen by upper management.
Plenty of jobs that used to require the work of human beings can now be performed by computers. Character recognition allows forms to be mass processed by automated computer programs. Mistakes occur, but they're few enough in number that it's more cost effective to catch them and correct them after the fact.
In other words, jobs that used to fall within the description of "white collar" are now becoming automated in the same way manufacturing jobs have already been. Murray warned us about this phenomenon in the Bell Curve. His mistake was to say that certain ethnic groups would be better prepared to succeed than others. One group that won't do well: White folks who don't have the math skills and other abilities required for high level programming.
We're seeing the truth in some of Murray's assertions in the scandal of rising college costs for degrees that aren't marketable. A master's degree in clinical psych costs 125 grand for a job with an average salary in the mid-40s. Some jobs--nursing, for example--will still pay because demand is high in a growing field. What happens when all these boomers die and the health care field begins to shrink? Again, colleges are instructive here. They spent lots of money over the last 30 years because the number of college students stayed at a steady and high number, but the generation coming up now is fewer in number and will increasingly be rethinking whether a degree in English or social work, let alone an MBA, is worth the ridiculous cost. Colleges are downsizing, some are closing, all will soon see many of the buildings they spent a lot of money on sitting nearly empty.
I don't know what the solution is, and I don't really think Murray does, either. The cognitive elite will dominate an automated, technological society. An expensive college degree won't help, but if you become a plumber, builder, electrician, etc., you'll be OK. There will only be a need for so many of those folk, however. Where does that leave the rest of us?
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