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Chinese Company Seeks US Workers With 125 IQ
CWmike writes "A Chinese IT outsourcing company that has started hiring new US computer science graduates to work in Shanghai requires prospective job candidates to demonstrate an IQ of 125 or above on a test it administers to sort out job applicants. In doing so, Bleum Inc. is following a hiring practice it applies to college recruits in China. But a new Chinese college graduate must score an IQ of 140 on the company's test. The lower IQ threshold for new US graduates reflects the fact that the pool of US talent available to the company is smaller than the pool of Chinese talent, Bleum said."
It's quite interesting how you can already predict how the world will change in the upcoming 10-20 years. The Chinese have the workforce (and hence more persons with high IQ), they're used to work hard for a living, and realistic economy. They don't let banks cheat and collapse the country like in the US where everyone must get the latest HDTV, big cars and just spend money on non-important items and entertainment. That is how US has been doing for many many years and loaning more and more money along the way.
with barely 120 points wouldn't have a chance in that company.
IQ is highly overrated
In practice, it's almost useless...
Google tests are (way) better than IQ, but guess what Google found out: the best performers are the ones who have the lowest scores on their interviews.
IQ is not concerned with
- the candidate knows about the job
- the candidate has good (enough) people skills
- the candidate showers, shaves, etc
Guess they shouldn't bother and go straight here then http://www.kids-iq-tests.com/famous-people.html
how long until
This is just another entrance test to sort out candidates. It is not an "IQ" test unless we us the term "IQ" as a general test.
Basing emplyment on IQ is pointless as it doesn't actually predict "real-world" performance. This is similar to college only accepting students with a score in the top 1% on the ACT/SAT - they can do well on a test, but that doesn't mean they are a good student.
Sent from my iPhone 5
http://www.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/06/29/china.rent.white.people/index.html
What's next -- tall, smart, white people?
blond, slender, blue eyes, and so on.
Wait, they didn't give the link to the test for instant IQ verification...
So they hire people in the US to outsource work from the US? I always thought outsourcing works, because people in China (or wherever) get paid less than in the countries the work comes from. To bad the article doesn't state, how much they pay...
Maybe the CIA and SETI should merge.
S.I.A.
CYA
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
The usual notion in the US is that US workers are more innovative, smart, and are worth significantly more than workers in other countries. Slashdotters constantly seem to think that a $80K developer in the US is much better the $10K developer in India for example. This is especially surprising because the average slashdotter is doing the same crap that the average developer in India is doing.
In some cases (where IQ's much higher), the worker may come up with solutions radically faster. But otherwise, it is all incremental. Hence it makes sense to link pay to IQ (at the start) and pay to IQ and results as time passes.
This is also true in other fields, banking, medicine etc. Hopefully, the internet will help reduce the disparity in wages.
I think the article missed the reason they are hiring US people. "To speak English"
They aren't hiring people from the US to do CS jobs, they are hiring them to train their mainland China employees on how to communicate in English on the specific topic (computer science) that otherwise would be completely lost on regular "GREAT ENGLISH JOBS IN CHINA TESOL" type of people who may know English but know little about computer science.
I am saying that the only reason Feynman scored that low is that he brought his smart-alec attitude into the test. Kinda like the guy who fails the eye test because the letters he is reading are from the fine-print company address below the last line on the chart.
the iq test tests very narrow ranges of iq, such as topological intelligence, the ability to manipulate 3D shapes in your head
but it has zero ability to measure something like social intelligence, the ability to manipulate people
i don't know that the ability to play 12 games of chess at the same time in your head is as valuable as the bedrock ability to communicate well, especially in the realm of business. the iq test certainly has its uses, but i think people ascribe way too much significance to it when determining someone's worth. someone with a very high traditional iq score can be quite useless in a business sense. the idea of something being useful is a relative term of course: you can be quite useful to an asocial pursuit that could very well be important to mankind in abstract ways with a traditional high iq
however, in your average business environment, the ability to simply and effectively communicate is a basic need, and pretty much trumps every other area of intelligence, since a business is nothing more than an efficient social organization. the more efficient a business is socially, the more efficient a business is economically, all else being equal. someone who gets well below 100 on a traditional iq test can be quite charismatic, persuasive, and capable of leading people. while someone who scores well above 100 on a traditional iq test can be unresponsive, aloof, distant, and confusing. so for the specific case of a business environment, a high traditional iq would seem not very useful at all
the ability to lead people is perhaps the most important iq of all possible areas of human intelligence, especially in business, but there is no test for it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Intelligence != General Knowledge and awareness
By the same principle, no person with an IQ over 100 would be willing to work in the United States, which is obviously not true. Maybe you overestimate the prevalence of humanists..
Infinite time means everything that can happen, will. You being you is absolutely incidental. You do not exist.
Their banking industry is largely (if not all the way) corrupt. They take the savings of the people (who do indeed have a high savings rate), and then loan them out to largely state-owned enterprises. Who gets the money is largely politically directed, and has little to do with how likely it is the loan will be paid back.
Eventually those savers are going to want their money back, and it won't be there. So, it would be accurate to say that Chinese banks haven't collapsed their economy yet.
So, in the US, all the wasteful spending and foolish loans go to consumers. In China, they go towards state-owned businesses. I'm not sure one way or the other is better.
SirWired
If you are dumb enough not to know better I understand, but an intelligent person can surely see past the paycheck.
Or maybe they're smart enough to realize that as long as they follow the rules they'll be fine and don't care about the human rights violations otherwise?
Or perhaps they're hoping to do their own little bit to change the way things work by actually going there. See the issues for themselves, while earning a paycheck so they don't screw up their finances or have to do the tourist thing.
Smart doesn't automatically equal ethical, or even 'progressive'.
I don't read AC A human right
Or on the other hand, one of the most intelligent people of his day only scored 120 because the test does not reflect intelligence, not in any meaningful/comparative sense. You can quite easily study for an IQ test, repeat a lot of the same types of problems before the test for a while and you easily score much better than if you walked in unprepared.
IQ is not a measure of ability. Period.
The higher IQ scores in China just show that Chinese are better test-takers, nothing more.
yay!
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
As a psychometrician, I can only say that any mental measurement professional would certainly argue that a single measurement is rarely enough evidence to make a high stakes decision. That is the reason that most college admissions are based on multiple criteria (e.g., weighted grades based on your school, etc.). For hiring decisions, it's probably safe to assume that most employers use certain minimum criteria for a large pool of applicants, but other factors such as experience (past performance), references and personal interview(s) are used to cull that pool further.
Or at least the ability to write more interesting and useful posts. Seriously, what is with shit like this and why does it get moderated up? Are you trying to make a statement of some kind? Then make it, don't sit there and be obtuse about it. Or are you just trying to make yourself appear smart by "predicting" something that is quite obvious?
Seriously, this is worthless. You have something to say on using IQ tests, say it. Don't try and be obtuse as though that somehow makes your post more interesting.
What nonsense! Races will never disappear. There are blacks, whites and yellow. It's a fact. There are stupid people and smart people. It's a fact. Live with it.
Naa, it's just an marketing move, they know those 2 conditions are impossible to conciliate: US citizen and IQ over 125 ... pleeeese.
Country A has a population of x.
Country B has a population of x*4.
Which country will have a larger pool of job applicants with an IQ above 140?
My IQ is 126, which makes me happy to be a part of the new overlords! Bow down before me you inferior clods!
Is your IQ over 125? Good! You have shown sufficient intelligence that can help you pilfer company secrets, embezzle funds, lie to us about why you missed work, lie to us about what you did with your expense account and in general cause us trouble because you are so darned smart! IQ will never measure - character, honesty, motivation, drive, creativity and countless other attributes.
Sig Registration Form 34c_766(a) submitted to Ministry of Signature Management. Approval pending.
Affirmative action for white dudes! Where can I sign up?
Races will never disappear.
Erm, okay. I assume you misinterpreted "division by race" rather obtusely as "existence of races" rather than discrimination due to race. But you're fairly wrong anyway: we're interbreeding more than ever; to the extent that distinct races can be defined, they're disappearing.
There are stupid people and smart people. It's a fact.
The error is fixing people on a line, or fixing people in any way by some small set of parameters. There's nothing wrong with asserting, say, "my daughter has severe mental retardation" (which is another way of saying "my daughter is stupid") or "Feynman, despite his low IQ score, was smart".
0/2. And simplistic attitudes as you've expressed emphasise the danger.
I suspect that the number of US applicants is smaller because: a much smaller percentage of US citizens want to work in Shanghai than Chinese nationals. Given that they lowered the qualifying score for Americans means they want Americans. Sorta says something positive about Americans in general.
Maybe not so new, the old ones will still be in the same place.
IQ is an interesting measure but research into correlation with ability to perform at certain jobs is appropriately lacking.
What makes you believe this? IQ research has been ongoing for 100 years.
It would seem to me, that anybody from Western Cultures that has an IQ over 100 would not want to live/work in a country like China because of its history of Human Rights violations and general intolerance for anti-state viewpoints.
If you are dumb enough not to know better I understand, but an intelligent person can surely see past the paycheck.
Why do you assume that all intelligent people are against human rights violations? The existence of the Evil Genius is at least credible. High IQ doesn't automatically make you a nice person.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Feynman was an unconventional thinker is so very many ways. That was where a large part of his brilliance came from. He did not work in the world of numbers and equations, despite being a theoretical physicist. He was an examples kind of guy. He always had to have a physical example running in his head of a theory, and was always challenging people to provide them for him. As such he often found errors they could not, as he was mapping the problem in a completely different way.
It was his unconventional methods that made him so very brilliant, that lead him to his Nobel research. It was also part of why he was so good at teaching. He could explain things to undergrads that most people could only explain to others with advanced knowledge. He could do that because he saw through all the equations and such to the real essence of what the theory was, and he could come up with examples because that was what he did anyhow.
That an IQ test can't measure that well is a failing of the test, not of Feynman. The IQ test is one mold for how people can be smart, one particular way. He didn't fit that. So while the test rated him above average, because he was just so smart overall, it could not truly measure the depths of his genius.
It is a good lesson: Don't put too much stock in a single test. Tests test for particular things, they are not generalizable to everything.
As an analog, take a blood test for liver function. A simple test can be done to determine if your liver works right (just takes blood now, they don't need urine anymore as well). It does so reliably and well. However, that's all it does. Passing a LFT doesn't mean you are in good health, it means your liver is doing its job. It doesn't even mean your liver is undamaged, it just means that to whatever extent it has been damaged, it is still currently capable of filtering as needed.
The test is useful, but you must understand its limits for it to be so.
there are people with
1. high traditional iq, high social iq,
2. high traditional iq, low social iq,
3. low traditional iq, high social iq,
4. low traditional iq, low social iq
your inability to conceptualize more than one axis in the formulation of your comment doesn't speak very well for your iq, any iq
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
work hard for a living, and realistic economy. They don't let banks cheat and collapse the country
Yet.
Less than half a century ago China was essentially an agrarian economy. It relied on rice harvests to determine whether the population survived or starved (and they did sometimes starve). It is only since Mao's death that they have started to develop. Give them another half century and they'll be just as dumb, fat and happy as the average american is today - complete with all the problems, corruption, consumption and bullying foreign policy backed by their massive economic and military might.
However, in 50 years the world will be a far hungrier place - not necessarily in terms of food, but raw materials, water, energy (9+billion to share it between). So this all presumes they don't nuke themselves back to the stone age with a civil war
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
as the article states, the company that is using the IQ test is using it as a primary screening test before moving to other test which include skill tests. unfortunately IQ test results doesn't measure intelligence as much as it does measure the ability to take/pass a test. true intelligence, creative problem solving, innovative solutions, and the ability to work under stress can't be measured in a test, it can only be determined in the field over a period of time.
outsourcing IT to china is attractive because of the high number of motivated chinese competing for a small pool of jobs means the ability to pick the cream of the crop(and pay low wages), however chinese culture does not necessarily stimulate those things that are important to develop innovative mental growth: individuality, self importance, creativity expression... these are very western ideals, and it's very likely that the hiring of US workers by an IT offshore company is multi-faceted: native english speaker for call escalation, cultural and language exchange for chinese workers, and the access to out of the box thinking(culturally a very american thing).
three can keep a secret, if two are dead - benjamin franklin
I'm sure the Chinese company is screening on other things than just IQ. I've met plenty of people over the years who claim to be geniuses, but you don't see it reflected anywhere in their lives. Intelligence alone doesn't make a good worker.
The Chinese don't want to learn to speak English, they want to learn to speak American.
Try LinkedIN for an example, see just how foreigners, like me, speak English but use it "wrong" to blend in. There is more to learning a language then learning the words.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
No one has ever measured Einstein's IQ or many of those people on that list. Also, IQs over 140 are nonsense - meaningless. Also, it doesn't say what test or scale was used.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
This is my ass, you may kiss it.
It also proves just how silly IQ is, because I know for certain I am not among the elite. How did I score so high? I like puzzles. I do IQ tests for fun... hey, this is slashdot, what did you expect. A hobby of collecting race cars or scoring chicks?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Rather foolish of them, IQ just measures baseline brain power, not knowledge nor real ability to apply it
Met more than a few members of MENSA that most of us would describe as “idiots” and failures at life
And conversely many people with just average (or even slightly below average IQ) who are some of the most “intelligent” people you will ever meet
how many presidents have we had with a PhD?
answer:
one. Woodrow Wilson
yes, Barack Obama is someone with a high traditional iq and a high social iq
but as GW Bush demonstrates that you can be well below 100 on both social iq and traditional iq and still become president. you just need to score high on the nepotism iq test and the oil money iq test
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
IQ has very little to do with success.. Take me, for instance. I tested at 156 at age 16, scored in the top 1% for all the standardized tests, and my peers basically assumed I'd be a billionaire today. Turns out though that I'm lazy and have a bad attitude, which prevents me from getting ahead.
I really oppose IQ tests. They gives kids with high scores unrealistic expectations and a sense of entitlement. I would have probably been a lot better off if I had grown up thinking I have to work hard just like everybody else.
It may be true, but it's also irrelevant. Just because IQ tests aren't a general test of irrelevant, doesn't mean that they are therefore completely useless tests that test nothing.
They certainly test some logical skills. The criticism is that this isn't the be all and end all of "intelligence". That doesn't mean the test can't be used by a company wanting to test a candidate's logical skills.
Consider, a job interview is hardly a good test of "intelligence". Does that make job interviews useless as a means of assessing potential employees?
So they (the chinese) want to do IQ tests, big deal. I guess it's just the way they do things over there. I'm fine with that since I'm good at seeing patterns and filling in missing numbers. But that and $5 gets me a burger at McWhatever.
But here in the "west" we are now scared of IQ for some reason, I guess we dont want to hurt the feelings of people that do badly, so instead we do personality tests such as variations of Myers-Briggs instead. I can't belive I'm the only person forced to fill in a few of those as you have applied for various jobs. I have been given these for the last two or three jobs I had and applied for. Your basic "rate yourself on a scale bollocks" tests and then we (me and the HR queen) talk abit about it later on. So it's this instead of "complete the following sequence", "fill in the missing gaps" or "how many squares are there in this picture".
Are personality tests really that much or even better then some old fashion IQ test (a very diluted term)? I think the HR department just wants a piece of paper that you didn't send them that they can somehow use to quantify things into a little number.
mod parent insightful.
this is exactly what this company is doing: test people for IQ, and hire or not hire based on IQ. the parent says that this is a stupid strategy, and he is right.
If you are hiring people to do a specific job, you test their ability to do that specific job, and the IQ is not a good replacement.
and the danger is that the IQ might be turned into a general way of categorising people, when it doesn't actually say that much about a person.
new sig
For once (and based on most of my CS colleagues this will be a one time thing) these guys will learn what it is like to be the "pretty girl." Hired on their looks (American), expected to be there, act as eye candy and overall not be expected to perform as well as the guys who were hired for their brains....
Not sure about china, however in US, each real dollar (as in someone's savings) can be loaned up to a thousand folds. As in if you save 1$, banks get to loan 1000$ of money out of thin air.
There is an interesting documentary on youtube, Money as Debt that explains this in more detail http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVkFb26u9g8
with no worker safety / people being worked to death. People being worked over china working time limits. People being killed and having the factory make it look like it was a suicide. Sounds like the old days in the usa.
The existence of the Evil Genius is at least credible. High IQ doesn't automatically make you a nice person.
I give you Karl Rove...Dick Cheney...Roger Ailes...etc. etc. etc.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Sound like the MS tests / certification.
You can pass the test and not be able to do the work while some who did not take the test / fails the test can do the work real well.
IQ didn't use to be so nebulous. I can remember when it was a simple formula: knowledge / chronological age = your intelligence quotient. Using such a rudimentary formula IQ was simple the measure of your rate of learning, which was assumed to be directly proportional to your potential learning rate.
Now IQ is measured in many different ways and qualified with numerous adjectives so that we know what type of smarts we're trying to measure or that we're good at. Social IQ, or Spacial IQ for example. Now if you tell someone you have an IQ of 146 you might be telling them any number of things and without further qualifications they might think you more or less capable than you really are.
Now, if the Chinese business here is using the first and simplest IQ test I mentioned they may just be trying to determine how fast the individual being questioned can learn. That seems like a reasonable criterion for a foreign company to asses international employees on given the learning curve associated with the changes inevitable in cross-cultural employment. Not the only criteria mind, but an important one.
All the comments about IQ not being directly related to success or job performance may well be true, for careers and jobs that don't require high intelligence. But there jobs that require high intelligence to be successful, and what I mean by that is there are jobs where the work environment changes rapidly and one needs to be able to process these changes and adapt quickly and excellently to be able to thrive. This trend towards accelerated change and adaption in the workplace will continue to develop and be in-part an ongoing challenge to employers looking to remain agile and competitive in markets where they have to compete against lumbering large corporations.
Intelligent people see through these false measures, and gets punished by mob and bosses for doing so, and thus registered as unproductive.
Programming and surgery is better when it is short and correct. Surgery is better if the patient gets better. Putting water on fires is better the better it stops the fire. The amount earned versus risk is the performance for a trader.
And the company is better if the bosses understand this, but they seldom do.
Kim0+
There is no such thing as intelligence, only interest. - Richard Feynman (IIRC)
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The biggest idiots I know are in Mensa. Just a bunch of incompetent morons who like taking IQ tests.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
I would think that any Chinese citizen who knew their country's recent history would keep the fact that they had a high IQ to themselves.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Thanks for that link, that was a very interesting article.
Do premier athletes have higher IQ's than regular athletes? Does a great composer have a higher IQ than a regular composer? Does a kid who fits the cylindrical block into the round hole have a higher IQ than the kid who uses his dad's saw to make the round hole into a square in order to fit the cube through it? The point is that when you have a bunch of geniouses together you need to have an incredibly good manager to keep the egos' in line. Just look at Xerox; they arguably had one of the best collections of top-knotch CS talent in the 70's, but it was their manager who kept everything humming along. Also it's interesting to note that Xerox didn't capitalize on much if anything that came out of their little experiment; though their work laid the foundation for much of modern computing. The point is that everyone has ideas, and there are always people smart enough to realize those ideas...just maybe not the person with the idea. I would argue that being humble, persistent, exploring, and smiling denote intelligence more than a known subset of the moment.
My rule of thumb is, if the highly intelligent person is applying for a job, they're probably against human rights violations. If they are offering a job, they're probably for human rights violations.
It comes down to whether you're the violator or the violatee.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Probably few complain about being accorded too high a score.
As the parent says: "IQ tests still predict performance very well in many jobs. It's both fantastic and fantastically politically unacceptable". This is so well known as to be beyond any credible dispute. As an overall predictor of success, IQ is known to be quite good. Here's a nice summary. Note that the correlation between IQ and professional success is even stronger than the correlation in height between parents and children.
If China uses this policy widely, over a long period of time, it will be interesting to watch the media try to spin it. Such a test must somehow be evil, because there will undoubtedly be disparities in the gender and/or race and/or background of the people who pass the test. Yet everyone will know - whether or not they dare say it - that the test is purely economic: get the best people for the money.
The elephant in the room: what everyone knows but no one will admit. Shades of The Bell Curve.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
My strategic management professor showed us some random statistics on the first day and one I saw was the number of honor students China claimed greatly outnumbered the total number of students the US has altogether.
Kind of a downer to think about but I like to think the typical chinese tends to have a little more devotion to the greater good of all people where the west has a fuck-'em-got-mine attitude. I just hope they apply their knowledge to curing cancer or building my flying car rather than coming up with new and innovative ways of screwing people over.
China developed an exchange with the US because way back nixon and kissinger decided that helping china develop would be an effective counter to them working with the USSR. they exploited the differences to keep those two nations divided. The offshoot was that to do that they allowed the destruction of manufacturing in the US and transferred it to china, industry by industry. China needed that at the time to develop, because the currency they received they plowed back into the US (and europe) to buy stuff like machine tools, etc, all the things they needed to develop a manufacturing industry.
That's *done* now, it is past tense. Times are changing. They can build anything, in mass quantities, cheap. Hence, they no longer "need" the US market, and they are gradually shifting to their internal billion and half people market and to nations where they get raw materials and energy sources from. It's not an overnight change deal, but that is the basic trend.
Of course I wish I knew before I went to university. Of course it made me appreciate what my uncle said about colleges. Since you're doing the teaching yourself anyway the differences between universities isn't the education, it's the name. (For what it's worth the only university who he though had a good enough name to be worth the money over a state school was Harvard.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
unfortunately IQ test results doesn't measure intelligence
Surely I'm not the only one to notice the irony of this remark.
C//
They hired tons of ivy graduates and PhDs for jobs that didnt necessarily require that level education. They dont give explicit IQ tests, but the silly job interviews are sort of like that.
"So tell me: what unique qualities do you think you can bring to the job of torturer?"
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
I guess those people are the cleaners?
The lower IQ threshold for new US graduates reflects the fact that the pool of US talent available to the company is smaller than the pool of Chinese talent, Bleum said.
Or the fact that the IQ test is intrinsically linked to culture, which is very different in China vs US.
Good luck with that!! Hahaha! Stupid Americans...
Oh oh oh. Let me try it too... hmmmm, err... ok...here it goes... what would Jesus do???
The young and bright are trying to get the fuck out of China? Why would anyone (other than a corp) go there for a job, specially an engineer with a good education and higher-than-average IQ?
How is this, in practice, any different from having qualifications that are strongly correlated to IQ? The average median IQ of an MD is above 120.
The only benefit that I can see is that someone with such qualifications would cost more. It's cheaper to just give an IQ test to a large pool of people, and hope you find a few candidates who have the measured intelligence that you want yet cannot demand the salaries that are typically correlated with a higher IQ.
The lower IQ threshold for new US graduates reflects the fact that the pool of US talent available to the company is smaller than the pool of Chinese talent, Bleum said.
... in Shanghai. Is this surprising?
There is a big difference between missing nonverbal signals, and being incapable of apprehending nonverbal communication. It's a grossly untrue stereotype that people of great cognitive ability lack emotional intelligence and street smarts (social intelligence). Such a discrepancy, savantism, is rare. That many autistic people are savants is another untrue stereotype. Asperger syndrome, one of the autism spectrum disorders, is more common. Like all ASDs, Asperger syndrome is a developmental disorder, not a proclivity.
We live in an age in which incidence of pervasive developmental disorders such as autism (including Asperger syndrome) is on a troubling rise. To help put it into perspective, the autistic population is greater than the population of people with IQs higher than 140. It's much easier to accept Asperger symptoms as "normal" when they occur in so many people.
So why are autism spectrum disorders more prevalent now? The prevailing theory is that autistic people have one of various genetic weaknesses that make them more susceptible to environmental toxins (such as mercury) that impair brain development. Industrialization exposes people to much higher levels of these toxins than in pre-industrial society. Bigger picture: this is sociobiological evolution in action. Social evolution precedes biological evolution. This is just one way in which the industrial lifestyle is affecting our species.
Will the starting pay and payscale be 125% of competing companies' to match?
:p
Also since when do jobs go to the smartest most qualified people?
What I mean is the fundamental of the US economy is a capitalist system, where value is determined by the market, people are free to price as they like, and personal profit is not only allowed but encouraged.
The details, yes, there have been many changes. The way the currency works has changed (though that is true the world over), the banking system, the amount and type of regulation, etc. However, fundamentally, it is a capitalist system and fundamentally it is a free country. Those seem to work well.
Command economies, not so much. They can work for a time, please remember the Soviet Union was a superpower. However the do not seem to work in the long term. They always break down.
Maybe China will be different, since they don't have a true command economy these days. However I'm just saying history shows that their system overall doesn't work, it fails at some point, and the US's system does. So saying "China will do great the US will crumble," is s stupid assertion to make unless you have detailed understanding of both systems and can build a logical argument as to why that is the case. History says you are wrong, so you need to be able to show what is different this time around.
The original poster clearly did not have such an understanding. It was just basic "US bad, other countries good," shit you see on /. from time to time.
Then who would work to create all the stuff everyone needs?
If everyone got paid the minimum needed to live on, no one would want to work for minimum wage. Which means that wages would have to be raised even for the simplest jobs. But that would make it more expensive to live on, so everybody would need to be paid more. And wages would have to be raised again...
A socially benevolent government works for rich countries because they import low cost raw materials and export high priced products and services. It wouldn't work worldwide, at least not until artificial intelligence has advanced enough to let machines do all the jobs that people find uninteresting.
I remember them covering how the banking system works in 8th-grade civics class. Did you miss that day?
Summary: Bank takes in deposit. Bank retains X% (currently 10% for a bank of more than a microscopic size) of the deposit, as required by their regulatory agency. Bank loans out remaining 90%. Which in turn is deposited by somebody else into another bank, rinse, repeat.
If the banks had 100% reserve requirements, exactly why would they ever want deposits? Because if they had 100% reserve, they'd have to recover their costs to maintain your account through fees, since they sure couldn't collect any interest.
And you could kiss CD's, Money Market accts., etc. goodbye. And when there is inflation, too bad if you want interest to help you keep up.
In addition, they'd have to raise all loaned amounts from private capital, which would make capital more scarce and expensive, leading to gravely stunted economic growth due to restricted capital flows. I can't imagine how high interest would be for say, a car loan, if my bank didn't have deposits to draw from.
Through the genius innovation of deposit insurance (which is funded by the banks themselves) runs on the bank caused by running out of reserves are prevented.
This is not some super-secret conspiracy by "the man". It's the very bedrock of modern banking and is only a secret to the uneducated and/or ignorant.
SirWired
You're looking at things from the wrong angle, and using the wrong metric for "success".
Our leaders are highly successful. It doesn't matter that things are a mess, because that's irrelevant. What matters is how successful the leaders are. Since they have lots of money and power, they're successful.
The same goes for Microsoft (from your follow-up post, complaining about their products being crap). It doesn't matter how good or bad their products are. Microsoft's leaders are millionaires and even billionaires. Bill Gates is one of the richest people in the world, and Steve Ballmer is way up there too. Why would they care if the stuff they make is garbage? As long as people buy it, and they're billionaires, and they're still a dominant company with the power and prestige that entails, they don't care. Only engineers care about how good products are.
Sociopaths that lead us now? They have no shame and no problem with their means, methods, and worst of all, results.
Exactly. Sociopaths make successful leaders, because they only care about themselves and don't mind lying or cheating to become successful. The people below them are too dumb to recognize them as such, and happily elect them or buy their crappy products, which in turn makes the sociopaths successful.
This doesn't mean anything. G.W. Bush has IQ of 129.
be obtuse about it ... Don't try and be obtuse
You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
But seriously, perhaps the word you're looking for is oblique, obscure, opaque, or my personal suggestion regarding GP's comment: douchy.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Most of the "famous people" IQ tests are bogus, and it only takes a "small bit" of intelligence to see that.
I have nothing to lose but my bindings.
i'm retarded. can i has?
Appricants must arso have a 9 inch crock.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
IQ != EQ
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
I'm sure the libertards are moving there in droves!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Lucky you posted the correction, I was trying to work out what the trick was.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Many a PHB was made that way.
Also, it is one of the reasons that USSR crumbled [citation needed?]. ;->
No I'm pretty sure I know what it means. It has multiple meanings, as do most words, but in the context I'm using it it means something that has linguistic ambiguity and is lacking in sensibility.
The study to which you refer does did not use a representative sample of the general population.
Ever heard of sarcasm? Talk about "whoosh!"...
Dude, that was completely obvious. I am not a master of subtle sarcasm. If your sarcasm detector is that broken, I can't help you.
(Only problem is, I do think that those that "burn out companies" actually DO espouse the viewpoint you were being sarcastic about).
That's my entire point. The way CEOs work these days, they build up the stock price as much as they can in the short term, cash out their stock options, and when the shit hits the fan they bail out with their golden parachutes. Home Depot under Nardelli is a case study in this. If the company's lucky (or just plain big enough to persist by inertia), it'll survive, and perhaps rise again, but there's zero stability in this, with tons of employees getting laid off in every downturn of the cycle of boom and bust.