I think that Charles Murray has hold of the wrong end of the stick in his op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, “The Roots of STEM Excellence”. Much of the op-ed is devoted to identifying young people capable of learning science, technology, and mathematics early by standardized testing and admitting them to top tier institutions of higher learning based on that. Here’s a snippet:

In the 1970s, Johns Hopkins psychologist Julian Stanley established the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth by administering the SAT to 12- and 13-year-olds. Some 2,000 of the participants have been followed throughout their careers.

Measures of productivity varied substantially within the top percentile, equivalent to an IQ of 135 or higher. Those in the top quartile of the top 1%, equivalent to IQs of 142 and higher, were more than twice as likely to earn a doctorate or be awarded a patent as those in the bottom quartile and more than four times as likely to publish an article on a STEM topic in a refereed journal. There was no plateau. Greater measured cognitive ability was correlated with greater adult accomplishment throughout the range.

These results suggest that we should be thinking in terms of at least the top half of the top percentile of ability when defining the set of people who have the potential to make major contributions in a STEM field. The U.S. has around 130 million people of prime working age: 25 to 54. For any given talent, therefore, about 650,000 are in the top half of the top percentile of ability. That’s a lot of people.

The task is to identify those with STEM talent when they are young. The good news is that standardized tests expressly designed to measure cognitive ability are an efficient way to do so. They are accurate, inexpensive, resistant to coaching and demonstrably unbiased against minorities, women or the poor. Those conclusions about the best cognitive tests are among the most exhaustively examined and replicated findings in all social science.

The bad news is that admissions offices of elite universities ignore this evidence.

I’ll present my reactions in the form of a number of bullet points followed by an anecdote or two.

• IQ testing does measure something real
• There is a correlation between the cognitive ability represented by IQ and the ability to learn science and mathematics
• There used to be a good correlation between SAT scores and IQ. That correlation no longer appears quite as strong.
• There are abilities other than IQ which are more closely correlated with success (however measured) in life than IQ
• There is a weak correlation between income and IQ
• Compensation, like most other prices, is determined based on supply and demand
• The rate at which jobs for physicists is increasing is less than the rate at which the population is, even the population of people with the cognitive abilities to be good physicists, and that has been true for 50 years
• Lawyers and physicians tend to have IQs above normal but by less than three standard deviations
• There aren’t a lot of jobs in mathematics and the sciences that pay enough to lead a middle class lifestyle

The smartest guy I know (he has an IQ four standard deviations above normal) is a brilliant mathematician. He has a doctorate in mathematics and an IQ four standard deviations above normal. After trying for years he finally gave up getting a tenure track position teaching in a university and became a computer programmer. One of the smartest guys I know is a successful creative writer. Before that he held minimum wage jobs. I don’t think these anecdotes are out of the ordinary. Extremely smart people tend not to be lawyers, physicians, or in finance. They find those positions too boring or require interpersonal skills other than those they have.

There are several things we could do to encourage “excellence in STEM” but we aren’t doing them. One of the most important is ensuring that the people capable of excelling at STEM earn enough to make it worth their while.

I rarely quote posts at Cato but I found this one by Jeffrey Miron, which largely consists of a lengthy quote from a previous Cato post, worth noting. It’s about the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017:

In brief, the corporate income tax changes generated substantial benefits, but several claims about these benefits (only a minimal reduction in revenue, with a large increase in wages) were significant exaggerations.

This passage is particularly interesting:

Second, taxes matter for corporate investment. Firms facing larger corporate tax cuts invested more than firms facing smaller cuts. Three empirical approaches indicate that the tax cuts increased total tangible corporate investment by 8–14 percent. This response was far too small to offset the forgone tax revenue.

which is almost exactly what I’ve been saying for the last six years. To remind you I supported cutting the corporate tax cuts on efficiency and competitive grounds. The economically most efficient corporate tax rate is zero. Claims about “corporations paying their fair share” is political posturing rather than sound economic policy. However, I have thought that the revenue losses from the cuts in the corporate tax rate needed to be made up by increases in not just personal income tax rates but revenue from personal income taxes. That was irresponsible.

I also think that we need considerably more business investment than at present but for that to happen much more narrowly targeted policies would be required. I doubt that the wealth taxes being proposed by some would accomplish that.

The graph above from the St. Louis Federal Reserve illustrates the annual percent change in real gross domestic product. The way I read it with the exception of recessions (including the brief COVID-related recession) it’s noisy but it has been essentially flat.

That is exactly what you’d expect as services become an increasing component of the economy. Unless those providing services provide more of those services or the number of service-providers increases, there is unlikely to be a lot of GDP growth.

The news story of the day, of course, is the six young Israelis killed by Hamas. James Joyner has a post on the subject at Outside the Beltway:

Hamas terrorists murdered these hostages. Quite obviously, it is they who bear full responsibility.

Could Netanyahu have secured their return in exchange for ending the war effort? Maybe. But his negotiating partners committed the largest terrorist attack in Israeli history and the largest on a per capita basis in the modern era. On what basis can one negotiate in good faith with them? There is no politically saleable outcome in which Yahya Sinwar and architects of the October 7 massacre remain at large.

My heart goes out to the families of these young people.

If you have a solution for the situation in Gaza, please produce it. I’m at a loss. I think that practically everyone here in the United States is imagining a different Israel and a different Gaza than the ones that actually exist.

I haven’t commented on this in the past but there is something that has visibly changed here in Chicago over the last several months. There are beggars at almost every major intersection. They are overwhelmingly Hispanic and most are children.

I’m sure that everyone has their own explanation for it but here’s mine. I think these are kids who’ve been brought into this country by coyotes, in some cases masquerading as parents. Now the coyotes are insisting that they be paid back.

At Foreign Affairs Stephen Biddle, as puzzled about Ukraine’s strategic objectives as I, counsels against overestimating the effects of deep strikes into Russian territory:

Of course, conducting more extensive deep strikes would help Ukraine. Damaging factories or infrastructure inside Russia might help boost Ukrainian morale, for example, as a small U.S. bombing raid against Tokyo in 1942 did for American morale in World War II. But now, as then, the capability will not transform the military situation on the ground.

With that in mind, Kyiv’s partners should now ask whether the modest military benefits are worth the escalatory risk. The answer will turn on assessments of the likelihood of expanding the conflict and on the risk tolerance of Western governments and publics. The latter is ultimately a value judgment; military analysis alone cannot dictate where to draw the line. What it can do is forecast the battlefield consequences of policy decisions. If the West lifts its restraints on Ukrainian deep strike capability, the consequences are unlikely to include a decisive change in the trajectory of the war.

I can’t help but wonder whether shoring up the motivation of Ukraine’s western supporters might not be Ukraine’s strategic objective in deep strikes into Russian territory.

Well, I was wrong. Recently, I asserted that by and large Democrats don’t believe in markets. As it turns out a recent poll conducted by the U. S. Chamber of Commerce found that Americans, generally, have an overwhelming belief in markets and Democrats in particular believe in markets 2-1:

In a new poll conducted on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a majority of American voters reported they are concerned about state governments micromanaging private business in a way that could hurt taxpayers. Fifty-four percent (54%) of all voters indicate they are more concerned about government micromanaging private business versus allowing business to make decisions they think are best for their customers — even if they don’t align with the personal views of the respondents (46%).

“This poll underscores the growing disconnect between the American electorate’s support for the free market and efforts by government officials to micromanage business decisions,” said U.S. Chamber Executive Vice President, Chief Policy Officer, and Head of Strategic Advocacy, Neil Bradley. “The costs of greater political interference in the free market will be borne by taxpayers as these efforts increase the cost of government and reduce wages for workers.”

Naturally, that fills me with questions. What do they mean by “free markets”? What do they mean by “overreach”? How do you define “micromanage”? I think this definition of the free enterprise system from Jeffrey A. Tucker is at the Brownstone Institute is a pretty good one:

…the system of voluntary and contractual exchange of otherwise contestable and privately owned property titles that permits capital accumulation, eschews top-down planning, and defers to social processes over state planning

I suspect that both “overreach” and “micromanage” are meaningless. What is overreach to me may not be overreach to you. Same with micromanagement.

Consider the growth in government as a percentage of national GDP over time:

In 2021 that had declined to 41% and by 2023 to 37%. I would suggest that for “believing in markets” to mean anything you must believe in an absolute limit to the percent of GDP represented by government at all levels.

Now consider these recent quotes from Surgeon General Vivek Murthy:

… policymakers should bolster support for child care financial assistance programs such as child care subsidies and child income tax credits; universal preschool; early childhood education programs such as Early Head Start and Head Start; programs that help nurture healthy family dynamics such as early childhood home visiting programs funded by the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program; and services and support for family caregivers like Healthy Start Programs and the Lifespan Respite Care Program.

and

Establish a national paid family and medical leave program and ensure all workers have paid sick time… Invest in social infrastructure at the local level to bring parents and caregivers together…
Address the economic and social barriers that contribute to the disproportionate impact of mental health conditions for certain parents and caregivers. Priorities should encompass poverty reduction, prevention of adverse childhood experiences, access to affordable neighborhood safety, and improving access to healthy food and affordable housing. Policymakers should also prioritize programs that support eligible households in gaining access to crucial services and supports, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Medicaid, Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) benefits, child care support, and home visits, among others…

My primary objection to the progressivism which in its present form includes a majority of Democrats is that it is not self-limiting.

That’s my challenge to the progressive Democratic leadership: how much should the government spend? What are the limits?

Still fuming about the ranking of presidents by the Presidential Greatness Project, economist Robert F. Graboyes has produced his own ratings of presidents at Bastiat’s Window:

Two recent BW posts (“Polls, Pols, and Poli-Sci” and “Presidential Prodigiousness Potpourri”) lambasted the Bizarro World of presidential rankings from the 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey.

Such ratings are bound to be fraught, influenced as they are by recency bias, ideology, partisan preference, and just plain personal taste. I suspect that some of Dr. Graboyes’s dissatisfaction stems from the peculiarly high ratings in the PGP of Clinton, Obama, and Biden along with the lower ratings of recent Republican presidents with Trump at the very bottom of the pack.

I actually prefer Dr. Graboyes’s “tier” system (top tier with at least one major, distinctive accomplishment; second tier in which the positive accomplishments outweigh the negative, etc.) to absolute ratings (first, second, third). His top tier presidents are Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, Polk, Lincoln, T. Roosevelt, FDR, Truman, Reagan) while his bottom tier consists of Pierce, Buchanan, A. Johnson, Wilson, Hoover, and Carter.

I think that both the PGP and Dr. Graboyes have more of an appetite for American Empire than I. Is it possible for the United States to be secure and promote international institutions without American hegemony? We’ll never know because that’s the policy we’ve been pursuing for the last 40 years. Maybe there’s a better description of our official policy of “military primacy in every theater” than “American hegemony” but that’s how it looks to me. The irony of such a policy is that neither of our political parties are willing to admit the implications of such a policy.

Anyhow I found the post interesting with some fun graphics. Produce your own rankings as you will. My pick for the greatest president of the post-war period would be Eisenhower and the worst Carter.

I have found Axios to be an increasingly interesting site. The graph at the top of this page was sampled from the linked post there. As the Democratic National Convention recedes into memory I think it’s worth thinking about what it all meant a bit.

I think it’s interesting and revealing that viewership of both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions have declined so much since 2008. They’re down about 40%.

I think there are multiple things going on. For one thing you can only claim historic milestones so many times before it all becomes so much noise. Barack Obama’s nomination was historic. So was Hillary Clinton’s but Sec. Clinton’s was nearly an anticlimax. The Clinton Administration had been almost 20 years before after all. The reality of the 2024 DNC despite all of the media hooplah was that Democrats couldn’t muster much more enthusiasm for watching it than they did in the middle of the pandemic.

I think it’s generational change and it’s not just politics. The viewership among young people for watching the Super Bowl has declined over the last 10 years. Televised national conventions may not be as effective a way of reaching people as they were in second half of the last century.

Axios suggests the conventions invite Internet influencers. I suspect the events themselves are less interesting than they used to be.

Pretty soon they’re going to be history.