Yes. Certain races have higher intelligent populations, in general.
Why is California with a population of 38 million has slightly bigger economy than France with its 68 million population?
Because, it does not.
Makes sense?
In the first place, the entire GDP of the United States is heavily exaggerated. Take a look
here
Here’s an example, though, of how far from reality GDP has strayed. The reported number for 2003 was a GDP of $11 trillion, implying that $11 trillion of money-based, value-added economic transactions had occurred.
However, nothing of the sort happened.
First, that 11 trillion included $1.6 trillion of imputations, where it was assumed that economic value had been created but no actual transactions took place.
The largest of these imputations was the “value” that the owner of a house receives by not having to pay themselves rent. Get that? If you own your house free and clear, the government adds how much they think you should be paying yourself rent to live there and adds that amount to the GDP.
Another is the benefit you receive from the “free checking” provided by your bank, which is imputed to have a value, because if it weren’t free, then you’d have to pay for it. So that value is guesstimated and added to the GDP as well. Together, just these two imputations add up to over a trillion dollars of our reported GDP.
Next, the GDP has many elements that are hedonically adjusted. For instance, computers are hedonically adjusted to account for the idea that, because they are faster and more feature-rich than in past years, they must be more additive to our economic output.
So if a thousand dollar computer were sold, it would be recorded as contributing more than a thousand dollars to the GDP. Of course, that extra money is fictitious, in the sense that it never traded hands and doesn’t exist.
What’s interesting is that for the purposes of inflation measurements, hedonic adjustments are used to reduce the apparent price of computers, but for GDP calculations, hedonic adjustments are used to boost their apparent price. Hedonics, therefore, are used to maneuver prices higher or lower, depending on which outcome makes thing look more favorable.
So what were the total hedonic adjustments in 2003? An additional, whopping $2.3 trillion. Taken together, these mean that $3.9 trillion, or fully 35% of our reported GDP, was NOT BASED on transactions that you could witness, record, or touch. They were guessed at, modeled, or imputed, but they did not show up in any bank accounts, because no cash ever changed hands.
As an aside, when you hear people say things like “our debt to GDP is still quite low” or “income taxes as a percentage of GDP are historically low,” it’s important to remember that because GDP is artificially high, any ratio where GDP is the denominator will be artificially low.
Deduct 35% from US publicly stated GDP, you get its actual GDP. Assuming the same rate of imputation and hedonic adjustments for California, California had nominal GDP of "only" $1.599 trillion, nothing close to French level.
Even that level is exaggerated by the strong dollar. And that Americans take fewer vacations.
I've actually had ongoing discussions/debates with primarily my Chinese co-workers about a link between high GDP countries and being in colder climates. Part of the theory is if you live in a hot environment your productivity will be negatively impacted by the weather (assuming you don't live in an air-conditioned environment). Also in colder climates people tend to be more studious as going outside at certain times during the year for recreation/farming is not much of an option. This is reflected in both the US and China where the northerners are considered the "more intelligent" people and the southerners are considered the more "crafty and resourceful" people.
The bottomline question being "Is a country located near the equator at a such a disadvantage that they will not have the ability to achieve a top 10 economy?" Of course I tossed Singapore into the fray.
The reason doesn't have anything to do with race. It has to do with perceived benefit (BTW replacement levels are not even in the equation). What purpose would it serve to have 10 kids? I don't have a farm. I don't need extra hands. What do I need a big family for? 2 or 3 kids is fine. I can stay sane with that. We can all have a really nice standard of living without monetary worry (well until college comes around).
Singapore is populated by mostly Chinese who are more intelligent on average for some unknown reason than the Chinese in China proper. They are not the natives of Singapore. The native Malays of Singapore perform better than Malays probably anywhere else but they are still not as high performing as natives of cold weather regions. And nowadays, Singapore is in decline with many Singaporeans trying to escape and blaming their government for importing too many low quality foreigners into country and changing demographics.
Income ≠ intelligence.
Oil kingdoms enjoy high rentier incomes. It's little to do with intelligence. They dont even know how to explore and produce their own oil and gas fields to sell abroad.
Similarly you have the US which inflates GDP numbers with imputations and hedonics and the Brits who work like mad dogs with very little vacations. For example, the French have a productivity that is at least 25 percent greater than the Brits'. If both peoples worked equally as long, the French would earn 25 percent more.
But the French know how to enjoy life, partake in culture activities, there is no place quite like Monaco on Earth as the playground of the rich and from the riviera to the Alps, you have everything you need to enjoy life.
China is still very primitive, they have zero domestic origin aircraft carriers operational after all these years. For a country of 1300 million, that is primitiveness defined. Spain and Italy both have had their conventional powered aircraft carriers operational for very long now.
The bottom line is that IQ tests are only particularly useful in measuring how good people are at doing IQ tests.
It's not really a comprehensive measure of intelligence, and it never really claimed to be.
Correct.
Just like GDP, inflation, unemployment rate, GNP, GNI, GDI, FDI, ODI, forex reserves - none of which are comprehensive measures of financial or economic well being or strengths but still useful indicators. And you need to know where and how exactly that data could have been manipulated to make any sense of it.
Same goes for IQ tests, they have their validity moreso if you talk about population groups. Hindus are apples of American eyes yet not a single Hindou majority country anywhere on the planet is successful, is technologically and scientifically advanced, orderly and organized, prosperous and law abiding, with high life expectancies and low mortality rates and low crime and low levels of dirt and pollution.
Its true for Africans, for Arabs, for Kurds, Iranians, Turks, others from Central America to South East Asia. China is not much better but just like North Korea you have just terrible leadership and governance structure at play. Actually, North Korea is a bit unlucky because of its leadership's row with the Americans. IF that is sorted out, I believe they can quickly surpass South Korea to be a mini powerhouse in that region.
