Deborah Orr: the poor are stupid

[Fruitloop]

I am confused now, I thought a meritocracy was desirable by people like you louis ?

Or another question, what constitutes fairness and equality in contemporary Britain?

The problem is, you have a supposed meritocracy that is based on only one kind of merit, which is supposedly intellectual development but is actually your ability to have parents that pay for flash schools, push you through elite universities and into the right social circles to get you into the top professions.

I mean I am a non-manual worker, in that I get by on what I can do in my head not with my hands, but I don't feel like I am superior to, or should be rewarded on a different scale to, nurses, builders, firemen or whatever.

 

[Spion]

Cash-poor perhaps, but if they own means of production worth more than a brass razoo then they are not poor in the sense that proletatians are poor.

I guess that depends what's happening to the economy. Plenty of capitalists were ruined in the last great depression. Plenty more could be in the next.

(Also, just for accuracy's sake, the vast bulk of the world's productive-property owners are peasants, AFAIK. Even in the UK we can find those who own their own means of production - eg, window cleaners - who earn far less than some proletarians - eg gas fitter, oil workers etc)

 

[teuchter]

What Orr fails to say is that people, strong or weak, clever or dim, fast or slow are deserving of having their needs met simply by dint of being people.

I think she recognises this -

If they are not looked after by their family, then the less bright, it is surely safe to assume, are often excluded from society because of their inability to make intelligent choices. Our refusal to look sympathetically on lack of intelligence as a real encumbrance in the modern world – or sometimes even to admit that it exists – is unfair on those who labour under that disadvantage.

The point, as I read it, is that by ignoring the correlation between intellectual capacity and poverty (and it does seem to be a real taboo subject - as the initial responses on this thread demonstrate) people can lose out.

You may be right that she fails to offer much in the way of solutions, but I think that the general point she makes is a valid one, and something that should be talked about more. In a rational and sensitive way, naturally.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

People like you only means I have read your opinions on a couple of threads now.

So you are not in favour of a meritocracy.

I am not sure I am either, I mean why should someone perhaps born with a higher IQ than mine suddenly be worth so much more in salary terms?

Leaving aside the measurement of intellectual ability by IQ test (it's been done to death elsewhere on these boards) I agree that rewards shouldn't be based on abilities traded in a market place. My preference is for rewards based on socially agreed needs.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

 

[teuchter]

I think you may be missing the gist of her argument. that some rich people are thick and that some poor people are thick is completely undisputed, but really what is she actually saying? Basically she's saying it's about time that we accepted that people are mostly poor and fat and generally lumpen is because they're thick.

I don't think that is actually what she is saying. I think you maybe want her to be saying that, in order that you can be all outraged about it.

 

[northernhord]

So my university professors are middle class.

Not really, professors pay doesnt match the hours they put in imo

 

[Fruitloop]

I guess that depends what's happening to the economy. Plenty of capitalists were ruined in the last great depression. Plenty more could be in the next.

(Also, just for accuracy's sake, the vast bulk of the world's productive-property owners are peasants, AFAIK. Even in the UK we can find those who own their own means of production - eg, window cleaners - who earn far less than some proletarians - eg gas fitter, oil workers etc)

They are petty bourgeois, not capitalists. Capitalists own other people's means of production to the point where they don't need to labour for themselves, wherease if someone is primarily a worker who owns their own MOP like a window-cleaner then they are petty bourgeois. Although these days a lot of the traditionally petty bourgeois professions have been taken over by corporate capital.

 

[weltweit]

... I agree that rewards shouldn't be based on abilities traded in a market place. My preference is for rewards based on socially agreed needs. ..

Oh, I am not sure I can ditch the market so completely, I have not done so badly by it .. (perhaps that is selfish)

I assume then that the sum of £200,000 for regular articles in the Telegraph by the esteemed floppy haired Boris makes your blood boil.

Yet it is strangely alluring also, would that I could, but I could not spot a split infinitive if it was waved in my face ! such a job is obviously never going to be mine!

 

[Fruitloop]

The point, as I read it, is that by ignoring the correlation between intellectual capacity and poverty (and it does seem to be a real taboo subject - as the initial responses on this thread demonstrate) people can lose out.

You may be right that she fails to offer much in the way of solutions, but I think that the general point she makes is a valid one, and something that should be talked about more. In a rational and sensitive way, naturally.

But correlation is not causation! Poor people are smaller and die younger as well, can we conclude that people are poor because they are short and don't live as long?

 

[weltweit]

Not really, professors pay doesnt match the hours they put in imo

Neither did mine, but I am middle class.

But then unlike my professor friends my parents were middle class so I have no guilt in being it also. Their roots apparently were working class and perhaps because of this they refuse to accept that they might now by dint of salary and lifestyle be middle class themselves.

 

[DotCommunist]

Neither did mine, but I am middle class.

But then unlike my professor friends my parents were middle class so I have no guilt in being it also. Their roots apparently were working class and perhaps because of this they refuse to accept that they might now by dint of salary and lifestyle be middle class themselves.

of course the real way to test is: do they drizzle balsamic vinegar?

 

[weltweit]

of course the real way to test is: do they drizzle balsamic vinegar?

absolutely, and they consume extra virgin olive oil like it was going out of fashion !!

 

[teuchter]

But correlation is not causation! Poor people are smaller and die younger as well, can we conclude that people are poor because they are short and don't live as long?

Thank you for pointing this out but I do have the intellectual capacity to understand the difference between correlation and causation.

If we are to note a correlation between poverty and life expectancy, then we do some investigation to see if we can find out why. In that particular example I think it has been fairly well established that poverty tends to lead to shorter life expectancy and not the other way around.

Having noted that there is a correlation between intellectual capacity and poverty, then shouldn't we investigate and talk about why this is, rather than making it a taboo subject and putting our fingers in our ears? I think that is one of the points the article is trying to make.

 

[_angel_]

Thank you for pointing this out but I do have the intellectual capacity to understand the difference between correlation and causation.

If we are to note a correlation between poverty and life expectancy, then we do some investigation to see if we can find out why. In that particular example I think it has been fairly well established that poverty tends to lead to shorter life expectancy and not the other way around.

Having noted that there is a correlation between intellectual capacity and poverty, then shouldn't we investigate and talk about why this is, rather than making it a taboo subject and putting our fingers in our ears? I think that is one of the points the article is trying to make.

I don't believe there is a correlation between intellectual capacity and poverty.

Passing exams isn't necessarily an indicator of intelligence. Don't even get me started on IQ tests.

 

[treelover]

leaving aside the merits of her article, one can't imagine the Indie ever writing about the taboo of race and IQ(and no i don;t support the bell curve, etc, just pointing out how it is becoming open season on the poor, even on the liberal left)

 

[Fruitloop]

Thank you for pointing this out but I do have the intellectual capacity to understand the difference between correlation and causation.

If we are to note a correlation between poverty and life expectancy, then we do some investigation to see if we can find out why. In that particular example I think it has been fairly well established that poverty tends to lead to shorter life expectancy and not the other way around.

Having noted that there is a correlation between intellectual capacity and poverty, then shouldn't we investigate and talk about why this is, rather than making it a taboo subject and putting our fingers in our ears? I think that is one of the points the article is trying to make.

It's not a taboo subject except in the sense that discussing whether the Urals are in fact made of ham is a taboo subject; it's not discussed because it's bollocks. She offers no evidence that there is a correlation, but simply assumes it is so. In fact that's not the worst thing she assumes, had she been satisfied with justifying middle-class privilege in terms of their capacity for intellectual endeavour (stock-trading, sortilegy and the like) that would have been one untrue but also unremarkeable thing, but actually her reasoning is far worse: the poor are not prone to suffering disproportionately from the various social problems because they are poor and have limited options, but because they are too stupid to make reasonable decisions for themselves. They, and not the social system that invariably keeps the vast majority of them poor, are to blame because they do not choose what middle-class twats view as being the best thing for them, which is of course to get on with a life of hard work for shitty rewards without complaining or making a mess.

 

[Spion]

I don't believe there is a correlation between intellectual capacity and poverty.

How do you define intellectual capacity?

 

[_angel_]

leaving aside the merits of her article, one can't imagine the Indie ever writing about the taboo of race and IQ(and no i don;t support the bell curve, etc, just pointing out how it is becoming open season on the poor, even on the liberal left)

Well, of course. So much more convenient, as a recession (allegedly) looms to blame people for their own misfortune. Could never be anyone else's fault.

 

[_angel_]

How do you define intellectual capacity?

That's the whole point. In a million different ways.

 

[Spion]

That's the whole point. In a million different ways.

See, I'd call it intelligence, and add there are different forms of it, and that you may tend to find some forms more predominant in different social groups, because of upbringing and culture, intellectual intelligence being one form (that's in some senses denied to many people in society owing to access to education)

 

[treelover]

Well I have just read the article ands tbh it doesn't seem much more substantive than Orr airing her Lady Bountiful views on 'the poor' now held by much of the old liberal left, Hutton, Richards, etc as they go into late middle age and the need to write up a article to get paid this week, however taken with all the other 'noise' etc, the neo-victorian piece contributes to a increasing atmosphere of 'which is festering in these darkening times

 

[treelover]

Oh, and i notice in the articles comments all the Right Wing IQ Warriors are jumping for joy now the 'taboo' has been breached.

I like this comment though

If we lived in a true meritocracy an overblown PR man like David Cameron would never be considered worthy of the post of Prime Minister. Perhaps someone soon will design a computer simulator which will be able to tell us how particular individuals would have fared in their chosen careers without inherited wealth and the old school tie network. Then we might see true worth of a man and be less inclined to blame others less fortunate.

 

[Fruitloop]

There are some scary folks crawling out from under rocks in that comments section for sure. WTF is 'race replacement immigration' for example?

 

[teuchter]

How do you define intellectual capacity?

A starting point would be to define it (for the purposes of this argument) as an innate (i.e. rather than learned) aptitude for the kind of jobs that, these days, in this country, are well paid. Based on the premise that well-renumerated jobs now, compared to say fifty years ago, are less likely to be based around manual skills or physical strength or whatever.

I say innate because that is what sometimes seems to get ignored. I mean we all know that education and various other things can have a large influence on someone's ability to do something, but sometimes it seems like we aren't allowed to say that someone is just born with more or less of a natural ability to do something than another person. And then this kind of thinking gets extended into an education system that isn't allowed to tell people that actually, they really aren't very good at this or the other. And then we start sending lots of people to university, for example, who aren't really going to benefit from it and simultaneously devalue degrees to the point where they become virtually meaningless. And this all feeds into creating a bullshit-ocracy instead of a meritocracy as someone mentioned earlier in the thread.

 

[_angel_]

There are some scary folks crawling out from under rocks in that comments section for sure. WTF is 'race replacement immigration' for example?

How intelligent do you need to be to work in a call centre or man the till at Superdrug? The poor may be lazy and feckless, but stupidity is not to blame.

Abolish the Welfare State and they'll soon buck their ideas

Yes, abolish the nhs, pensions, child benefit. Being the number one nation for child poverty in the developed world isn't enough. Relative poverty isn't good enough, we want absolute poverty. Slums, kids starving on the street corner.

 

[weltweit]

... I like this comment though

Yes I like that comment also. I have never rated Cameron, I would not follow him if he was a middle manager in a mediocre company, let alone leader of one of our political parties and god forbid something more ..

 

[Fruitloop]

Intellectual capacity is determined by an aptitude for jobs that are well-paid? Holy moly.

 

[treelover]

@Teuchter I agree to an extent, what happens in other more social democratic countries is that they value other types of intelligence:, common sense, practical, emotional intelligence, etc, they also make sure that there are various types of education, such as vocational *'technical schools' which is also accorded as much respect as academic ones.However, again the choices may be circumscribed in that a poor kid from say a decaying post industrial city, perhaps because of a less supportive family unit may not get the life chances to develop in an academic sphere. All the evidence shows that for a child to develop 'academic' skills, etc one, with exceptions, generally needs a supportive and stable family background.

*not to be confused with the 1970's era inferior Secondary Moderns

 

[Fruitloop]

Yes, abolish the nhs, pensions, child benefit. Being the number one nation for child poverty in the developed world isn't enough. Relative poverty isn't good enough, we want absolute poverty. Slums, kids starving on the street corner.

Well, favela inhabitants tend to be quick-witted, well motivated and often heavily armed, but whether that's what Davo wants is a bit doubtful!

 

[bluestreak]

I don't think that is actually what she is saying. I think you maybe want her to be saying that, in order that you can be all outraged about it.

Possibly, possibly. But I think if she wasn't saying that, she'd have added some more stuff that took the idea beyond GCSE level critical thinking.