| I can't see what arguments you made as you've papered over everything. I've had to infer a lot. > Frankly it astonishes me that you don't accept that income is more correlated to intelligence today than it was when a large percentage of the population were slaves, or when people were legally bound to the land they lived on? That may be true. It is, however, irrelevant for three reasons:
1) intelligence is still not the dominant factor when it comes to income.
2) Even if intelligence were the dominant factor in predicting income, that wouldn't mean that poverty itself is caused by having too many stupid people.
3) The rate of genetic change due to any such program would be so slow as to be meaningless on the timeframes we need to measure the results in. I think needlessly bringing up genetics sunk the ability for people to consider your idea, which is actually fairly mainstream. Your idea bears consideration. Not because it would have much of an impact genetically, but because it could have an impact demographically. Since the largest predictor of income is your parents SES, decreasing the proportion of children born to low SES parents could itself have positive impacts as fewer children need to face the challenges of growing up poor. Indeed, many have argued that the legalization of abortion had exactly this type of effect: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/01/-what-e... Beyond just fewer kids growing up poor, propoganda/education supporting family planning and access to birth control/abortion can directly improve the future income potential of poor women.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/27/contraceptio... |