America’s “IQ Alienation”

In recent years, social stratification has become the biggest topic of discussion in U.S. internal affairs, and an important one for this year’s presidential election. The widening gap occurs not only in terms of money and wealth, but also in educational levels, habits and customs, family make-up and value orientations. This polarization not only reflects the increasing irreconcilability of the two major parties (Democratic and Republican), it also demonstrates the conflicts taking place within these parties.

In the year that Obama took office, I made a comment that he was facing the “Grapes of Wrath” of the new century: the pauperization of the blue-collar middle class. The Washington Post stressed recently that the unemployment rate in the U.S. has exceeded 8 percent for three consecutive years, a situation that has rarely been seen since the Great Depression. In addition, the living standards of the general public have been in decline for the past three years — the most extreme drop since the US government began maintaining survey records half a century ago. The tea party movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement display clearly the present burning anger of American society.

What are the reasons for the stratification of American society and the decline of the middle class? What specific remedies are there for it? Everyone has a different stand, depending on their politics. For liberals, the reason is globalization. While the transnational capital controlled by the upper class is brimming with profits, American blue-collar jobs are moving overseas in large numbers. Further, the decline of union movements and the surge in expenses for tertiary education have caused the blue-collar class to lose economic status and social opportunities. This is why (liberals argue) the government must implement tax reforms that will increase social equity and class mobility for the middle and lower classes.

For conservatives, the root of the problem is the continual increase of government intervention in society and the economy. The welfare doctrine of robbing the rich to give to the poor nurtures a heart of laziness and reliance on the one hand, and reduces the wealth creation capability and motivation of the individual on the other. Hence, the conservatives’ solution is to reduce the size of the government and its welfare expenditures, thereby enhancing individual competition and recovering America’s initial vigor.

In his new book, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010,” Charles Murray, a well-known conservative author, summarizes alternative reasons for America’s social stratification — reasons that have elicited the widespread reaction of elitist media, from The New York Times to The Washington Post.

Murray argues that the fundamental cause of America’s growing social gap in the last few decades is “IQ alienation,” which cannot be attributed to human action. This is because the driving factor of America’s post-industrial society is the “creative economy”; or, in the words of The Washington Post, “The economic value of brain power in the market continues to rise” (Murray quoted Bill Gates’ famous words: “Software is an IQ business”). Thus, the relationship between IQ and social success and status becomes stronger. Because IQ is predominately hereditary (40-80 percent), highly educated men and women with high IQs marry one another and produce the next generation of intellectuals, causing U.S. society’s stratification to become a solidified hereditary phenomenon.

Murray’s new book is an expansion of “The Bell Curve,” a book he co-authored in 1994 with the late Richard Herrnstein, an expert in psychology at Harvard University. “The Bell Curve,” which represents the IQ’s distribution curve, expounds and verifies that IQ levels explain the presently increasing social alienation. In the new century, intellectuals receive the best education, find the best jobs and earn the most money. Marriages among intellectuals produce a new generation of intellectuals, leading to the formation of the so-called “cognitive elite.” Additionally, the book ranks different ethnic groups in the U.S. according to their average IQs — from low to high: Blacks, Hispanics, Whites, Asians and Jews — giving rise to widespread criticism of the work’s political correctness.

By limiting the scope of his writing to white Americans this time around, Murray has not only avoided racial disputes, but has also made his conclusion even more persuasive. His new work not only expounds and verifies that social stratification in America is increasingly dependent on individual IQ, but goes further and highlights that, within white society, the blue-collar class, which possesses relatively lower IQs, is regressing in four major American traditional virtues — work ethic, family fidelity, social responsibility and religious faith. Blue-collar whites who did not receive good education have not only declined in their work ethic, but their divorce rates are soaring, too. Childbirth out of wedlock is rising, and participation in religion and community involvement is also clearly weakening. Conversely, well-educated elites with high IQs are preserving America’s traditional values of diligence, family wholeness and social responsibility.

Murray’s argument has become a great challenge to both the American left and right. For the left, Murray’s exposition challenges the idea that reduced social mobility for the lower classes is due to a lack of education, suggesting instead that those at the bottom are not equipped with the intelligence to succeed in educational competition. Survey data indicates that dropping out of high school or college is mainly due to levels of intelligence rather than socioeconomic factors. A large number of studies further reveal that the extent to which intellect is influenced by acquired factors is very small. This means that no matter how much money the government spends, it can only hope to provide limited relief, rather than a remedy that would give these people a chance to succeed.

For the political right, reducing government intervention and enabling individual competitiveness only serves to further increase the importance of individual intellect in the post-industrial knowledge economy, thereby intensifying social alienation derived from differences in IQ. Even Murray himself, who should fore-go his insincere rallying of knowledge elites and befriend the blue-collar class, is not able to offer any solution to the phenomenon of social alienation, which is growing increasingly severe.