Sunday, May 24, 2009

McKinsey's PC Extravaganza

"The most ambitious US presidency in living memory hardly needs to extend its list of tasks, you might think. Yet the country's long-term economic prospects turn on something that is all to easy to neglect, just as it has been in the past. The US is failing calamitously in primary and secondary education. The average quality of its workforce is falling, and its schools are adding to the problem rather than mitigating it. ... The trouble is, fixing the schools is not something that a crisis ever forces you to do. The consequences of a third-rate education system creep up on you and, experience shows, can be tolerated indefinitely. Many vested interests prefer it that way. ... Just how badly is the US school system failing? A new study by McKinsey bravely attempts to come up with some numbers--and its estimates, though arrived at conservatively, are pretty startling. ... Forty years ago, the report points out, the US was a leader in high-school graduation rates. Today it ranks 18th out of 24 industrial countries. As recently as 1995, the US was tied for first place in college graduation rates. Ten years later it had slipped to 14th, and only partly because other countries had improved in absolute terms. ... Drawing on work by Stanford's Eric Hanushek, the McKinsey team estimates the economic consequences of this educational deficit. If the US had raised its educational performance between 1983 and 1998 to that of countries such as South Korea and Finland, its output last year would have been $1,399bn-$2,300bn ... higher--a gain of about 9 to 16 per cent of gross domestic product. In other words, the education deficit imposes the equivalent of a permanent depression on the US", my emphasis, Clive Crook at the FT, 11 May 2009.

"Vested interests"? Like the "school teacher-expert-diversity consultant" complex? Does an "education deficit" impose "the equivalent of a permanent depression on the US", or our post-1965 immigration policies? This is another McKinsey farce. Bravely? Come on. Pretty startling, to whom? McKinsey could have asked me. I could have told it. I distinctly recollect McKinsey was the most IQ-obessesed of all potential Chicago MBA employers when I was there. How did McKinsey not see what I see, i.e., post-1965 US demographic changes caused in large part, the output gap? I refer to my 1 September 2008 post: http://skepticaltexascpa.blogspot.com/2008/09/dead-elephant-in-living-room.html. Properly understood, there is no achievement gap, my 18 September 2008 post: http://skepticaltexascpa.blogspot.com/2008/09/todays-sat.html. As to the output shortfall, La Griffe du Lion is years ahead of McKinsey, with his January 2005, "Cognitive Decline: The Irreducible Legacy of Open Borders", link: http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/imm.htm. La Griffe writes, "Prodigy's Laws of Immigration. 1. A Western country may be approximated as a nation composed of two distinct populations, one indigenous, the other third-world, differing in mean IQ by approximately one standard deviation. ... 3. Per capita GDP, declines linearly with the third-world immigrant population fraction. 4. Each percentage point increase in the third-world immigrant population, will eventually cause the per capita GDP of a Western nation to drop by approximately 0.76 percent of its zero-immigrant value". If 1960 the US was 88.5% white. We had a few Asians, let's assume the NAM population was 10%. Now assume it's 27%, a 17% increase since 1960. Now multiply, .17 x .76 = .129. McKinsey gives us 9 to 16 per cent. Not knowing McKinsey's base year, I'll stand with this. Coincidence? We don't think so. I bet, if he's so inclined, Steve Sailer (SS), top blogger in this area, could take McKinsey's study apart in a few hours. Finland is of special interest. SS wrote about it on 1 March 2008, link: http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2008/03/01/wsj-wonders-why-is-finland-so-finlandy/

McKinsey, you should be ashamed of yourself. Again. As IQ-obsessed as you were and probably still are, what's your excuse? You want more HHS consulting contracts?

McKinsey please note James Fulford's 21 May 2009 post, http://vdare.com/fulford/090521_fulford_file.htm. In referring to a book by Richard Lynn, Fulford writes, "IQ has consequences". What is it McKinsey doesn't understand? It has consequences for "crime, ... immigration policy, education, and all kinds of other things". Even foreign policy! Yes!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

McKinsey says we're falling behind...

Shock... yup... we've codified mediocrity and diversity and nice soft feelings...

I guess conditions will toughen everyone up...

What's McKinsey got to say about that?

High IQ = predator?

Independent Accountant said...

Anonymous"
You ask, "High IQ = predator"? What does this mean? Historically increased criminality is associated with lower IQ. I estimate American prisoners average IQ is about 80. We must bear in mind that many apparent criminals, like say Wall Street Managing Directors, are not in prison. Either because the prosecutors don't understand what they've done, or they own the prosecutors.

Anonymous said...

Yes IA... it's a reference to the work of Wall Street, the health industry, auditors, lawyers, politicians.... etc... anyplace that where intelligence is used to gain advantage over those less smart. This is not "production"... it is "predation".

Health care... where doctors pour unlimited treatment into a person soon to die while giving the family medical mumbo jumbo...bill till the breath stops.

Wall Street... where managing directors and others create dark markets where they "owned the house" and always win. Experts at gaming/obscuring.

Auditors... no need to recount their failings here.

Politicians... getting the votes... is that not a predatory activity the way is played now... can we name more than a small number of principled elected officials...uhmmm.

Jr Deputy Accountant said...

Pop,

I have heard that Ben Bernanke has an IQ of 112. 112! Using your numbers, this might make him a dangerous criminal. Then again, the Internet told me this so who knows if it is even valid.

Also, if most criminals clock in around 80, that isn't saying much since don't most Americans come in at around 95 - 105? Sad.

Being 151 myself, I understand that high IQ does not necessarily equal rational behavior nor common sense. Book smarts don't do you much good if you're as stupid as a sack of bricks thanks to an educational system built to coddle your moronic counterparts in the system. When I graduated high school in 1998, it was not uncommon for a large chunk of my graduating class to be taking Algebra for the first time that year - Algebra! At 18! I took it in 8th grade!

It was lucky for me that I even managed to graduate - the system began failing me in middle school. Despite the fact that I scored in the top 97% of all Wisconsin high school seniors that year on both my ACTs and SATs, I was considered "troubled" because I wouldn't buy into their busy work. Did they attempt to harness my restlessness and turn it into something productive and spectacular? Of course not. Only my English teacher understood what I was about and what I was doing, and even he lamented the public school system which had effectively stabbed my potential in the throat over and over and over until they were finally forced to spit me out into the real-world with absolutely no practical knowledge of what to expect. Thankfully I attended the School of Life for a few years and figured that part out. No busy work required.

The system only meets the idiots at *their* level. Those who demonstrate critical thinking are left behind when they are outnumbered by morons who need tending to. That's just how these things go.

Told you we're stupid. THIS above all else convinces me that we are doomed. The generation behind us is even worse, if you believe such a thing is possible.

HUH? LOL IDK! OMG ROFL! Who will win American Idol? drooooool.....

If you are the sort who believes in the global elite scheme to keep the sheep in line (I know *you* do), one might say here that their plan has backfired. Sheep must have *some* level of intelligence in order to perform more complicated tasks outside of the realm of brainless ones but they decided it would be easier to keep us in line if they zapped most of our brain power. Fine. But what does that mean for our future economy?

Well I think this little Socialist makeover we're experiencing is building up to that. Give them all government jobs, it's not like it requires a brain to pull *that* off.

Worse, protectionism will further seize up our borders, locking out the foreigners who might actually contribute to fill the gap where our own completely moronic 18 - 35 year olds fail.

This is a fail all-around and we are going to have a HUGE problem on our hands. We already do! My idiotic generation has taken over the work force, demanding more flexible hours and better pay and a pat on the head like we got in elementary school even when we failed miserably. "It's ok that you're totally stupid, Johnny, because you're still special."

Give me a break. Even if we DO see an economic recovery in the years forward (this dependent on the fate of the dollar and we all know how THAT is going), having so many useless, brain-dead, borderline retarded zombies in charge of this country's economic well-being (oh, talking about the workers, not the Fed/Treasury) cannot fare well.

Woo! Good times!

sorry for the novel of a comment but this REALLY pisses me off.

Jr

Anonymous said...

you're ignorant IA. the best intel says environment has a huge effect on IQ, up to a stdev in cases, and that poor people's IQs are materially lower essentially because of their stimulation-poor environments. why wouldn't we want to get the highest IQs out of our population possible? not to say the educational system can't be improved... that's the point. epigenetics, baby, get with the program