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Dear God, has she really got this so badly wrong?

Money may be able to buy you happiness, but it can’t buy you brains. A study published in January found that billionaires aren’t any smarter than the rest of us – indeed, those in the top 1% of earners scored lower on cognitive ability tests than those who earned slightly less.

This is according to researchers who analysed data from 59,000 Swedish men, then tracked their lives for more than a decade. They found a strong connection between how smart someone was and how much they earned – until they reached a salary of 600,000 kronor (£46,700) a year. After that, factors such as luck, background and personality became more important.

“Along an important dimension of merit – cognitive ability – we find no evidence that those with top jobs that pay extraordinary wages are more deserving than those who earn only half those wages,” the researchers noted.

Unless your primary hobby is licking billionaires’ boots, I am sure none of this is particularly surprising. Indeed, you need only look at Elon Musk’s Twitter feed to realise that being obscenely rich doesn’t automatically equate to being incredibly intelligent.

She’s trying to equate wages with entrepreneurial wealth?

Blimey.

28 thoughts on “Dear God, has she really got this so badly wrong?”

  1. Eggheads tend to go into egghead occupations where they are allowed to play with incredible toys slicing genomes and atoms and blowing up rockets on launch pads etcetera where they would actually pay to be allowed to do that.

  2. Well I suppose being catty about Musk makes a change from Trump.

    Bearing in mind yesterdays news it suggests this article was written a while ago, ready to be hauled out whenever nothing better was available.

  3. Bloke in the Fourth Reich

    Someone making the “smarts should be only determiner of pay” argument isn’t smart enough to realise the impact on her own pay packet would be negative.

  4. In the 21st century there is a definite link between cretinous stupidity and politics…
    Thankfully, we have a loss making daily publication to provide endless evidence.

  5. They found a strong connection between how smart someone was and how much they earned – until they reached a salary of 600,000 kronor (£46,700) a year. After that, factors such as luck, background and personality became more important.

    I choose to interpret this as meaning most of my income is due to my revealing outfits.

  6. Presenting the new Guardian Netflix collaboration. Set in the 1940s “Only fools and Horses” the prequel

    Uncle Albert (E): “This time next year Robert (O) we’ll be biwyunaires!”

  7. being obscenely rich doesn’t automatically equate to being incredibly intelligent.

    Says the person far less rich than that idiot Musk!

    If it is so easy, why has our reporter not done better?

    I don’t think Musk is cleverer than me. But I’m not stupid enough to believe that I have what he has.

  8. Depends what metric you’re using to measure cognitive ability. You could use tests designed by clever scientists. Or you could count how much money the subject’s made. My guess, the latter test will be more accurate than the first.

  9. In other words, income depends on intelligence until you reach my level. After that, it’s all due to luck, family background, and sheer bastardry.

  10. The missing factor is the ability of clever people to do and think stupid things. If you stop doing stupid things some measure of success WILL follow. However bright people can convince themselves of stupid things far beyond the ability of the less intelligent. Those people become guardian columnists.

  11. I don’t think Musk is cleverer than me.

    Me neither, Chester.

    I once got the Countdown Conundrum, what has Elon Musk ever done?

    Also, if he’s so smart, why is he called “Elon” (what is this, Battlestar Galactica?) instead of “Steve”?

  12. What’s missing from their thinking is effort, commitment. If you read about film directors or successful chefs, they are seriously committed to what they do. Robert Rodriguez did clinical trials to raise money to make a film. Werner Herzog forged a filming permit so he wouldn’t have to wait days. Spielberg spent his whole childhood making films, or doing jobs to earn money to make films.

    I’ve worked with smart people who were lazy. Really liked spending time in the pub, going to football. Didn’t care if they failed.

  13. They will also be using intellectual ability to equal ‘smart’ which is most definitely not the same thing. There are people with multiple degrees and Phds who can hardly tie their shoe laces together. Are they really ‘smart’? I would argue that true intelligence has many facets, not just pure intellect and as such it requires a high level of all the facets to be considered at the top of the tree.

  14. But does any nation, except perhaps the USA, assume that the cleverest must be the richest and the richest the cleverest?

    Finding error in a proposition that almost nobody believes is a pretty stupid way of spending your life. At least Mr Musk is more sensible than that.

  15. The Meissen Bison

    Steve: Also, if he’s so smart, why is he called “Elon” (what is this, Battlestar Galactica?) instead of “Steve”?

    Blame a dyslexic registrar who wrongly transcribed Leon. Grrr.

  16. What’s missing from their thinking is effort, commitment.

    Well, sorta… It is missing but not because they forgot, but because they discount it. I guarantee you this thick bint genuinely believes she works as hard as any billionaire.

    You mention film directors, which reminds me of something related. A few years back Salma Hayek and a few other leading actresses were complaining about the lack of female directors and producers, insisting something must be done. Hayek is a millionaire, married to a billionaire, and with a host of millionaire chums. She’s in an ideal position to set up an endowment, raise, say, $50m from Hollywood and corporate types and use the money to fund education and work opportunities for women behind the camera. Maybe fund some low-budget movies.

    What did she actually do? Moan about it. A bit.

  17. Bloke In Scotland

    Of course, there is always the arguement that smart people look at the jobs higher up in the company and go Nah, not for me. At least that’s my excuse 🙂

  18. Elon challenged the narrative, ergo Elon is stupid. That’s the level of thinking here. Do they think nobody notices? If they’d been pointing out this alleged lack of smarts two years ago, I might have some time for the argument, but they were all over him like a rash when he was best known for Saving The World™ with his electric cars. Now, almost overnight since he started cleaning out the Augean stables of Twitter, he’s a brainless dimwit. Suuuuure…

    Time for another word from Mr. Jordan, I think.

    Bloke on M4: Good point, though. One thing you notice about these billionaire blokes is that they’re always working. I mean, okay, let’s all laugh at the mess Elon’s allegedly made of Twitter (not that I’ve noticed, but whatever). But he’s also launching more space rockets every month than the world’s governments manage in a year, and running a multinational car manufacturer. Most people would (and many do) struggle to do one of those.

  19. Wages are not wealth.

    Where I work lots of people are paid lots of money (low 6 figures to mid 7 figures). Everyone is smart, everyone works hard. What makes the difference is political understanding, a tolerance for ambiguity, and an ability to prioritise on the things that really count in the long run. That said those that prioritise on what matters in the short run are all retired.

  20. The other problem is that lots of smart people I’ve met have no common sense at all and for all their smarts believe some of the dumbest shit ever, like Marxism.

    So, I kinda agree with her basic finding. Intelligence will only get you so far, beyond that you’d better have something else, connections, family wealth, determination, etc.

  21. As written by a journalist. The only people who manage to make politicians look bright. As for Musk, anyone who watched the recent interview with a BBC journalists will realise that he is certainly brighter than your average hack.

  22. As for Musk, anyone who watched the recent interview with a BBC journalists will realise that he is certainly brighter than your average hack.

    That’s a pretty low bar though 😀

    Most BBC journalists seem like they’d fail a blood test.

  23. Intelligence means you are able to get what you want. Wealth means you have what other people want. Someone who is intelligent may want things which are non-rivalrous, such as a job they enjoy doing. Once you have that, there is no need to pursue wealth just for the sake of wealth. But, of course, the left never understands, despite the rhetoric to the contrary, that not everything is about money.

  24. One or more previous studies found income (or wealth – don’t recall) tracked IQ until the top IQ’s when the income/wealth fell off. Many of our brainiacs don’t toil for money. Richard Feynman is one of many examples. A Russian mathematician who is a recluse living very poorly economically solved one of the world’s famous previously unsolved math problems & won a $1M prize – he turned it down. “The Man Who Loved Only Numbers,” is the story of famous mathematician Paul Erdos who was one of the most prodigious author of math papers of all time. Not rich though. After all, he loved only numbers.

    I love these people & knew or corresponded with a few.

  25. Good lord, the article is bad enough but bugger me the COMMENTS!

    It’s like people don’t understand how people get wealthy. Anyone with any serious wealth has started a business. That doesn’t necessarily require intelligence in the academic sense, but it does require acumen, drive, appetite for risk and a bit of ruthlessness. You don’t need a PHD, a degree or even a high school education to do achieve success in business.

  26. Interesting she chose Elon Musk as an example to deride. His IQ is regarded as 155 which puts him in the top 0.012%

  27. @TBH… Dead right.

    One of my friends is, in the definition preferred by “The Grauniad”, “not intelligent” as he has no degrees, A levels, O levels, or as far as I’m aware GCSEs and was “ejected” from his (very) mediocre West-Midlands comp as soon as he reached 16… That said, he is one of the wealthiest business-people I know – all completely self-made. He has huge amounts of drive, application and energy – basically a workaholic with an ability to judge risk rather well, but above all he has a razor-sharp mind and is astonishingly quick-witted. I have no idea what his IQ is, but it’s going to be “resembling a West-Indian cricket-score”.

    I was going to say that he’d been let-down by the education system, but that’s probably not the case. If his intelligence had been recognised for what it was, instead of being viewed as disruptive, probably because he was bored out of his skull by the low standards expected at a sink comp, he’d almost certainly have ended up in academia…

    And a LOT worse off financially.

  28. How are 59000 Swedes representative of the wider population?

    How many Swedish billionaires are there?

    How can the graunoiad quote a study of white males without exploding in self-righteous condemnation of its inherent racism?

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