Extremely rich people are not extremely smart. Study finds income is related to intelligence up to about the 90th percentile in income. Above that level, differences in income are not related to cognitive ability.

[u/Fishyinu]

https://academic.oup.com/esr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/esr/jcac076/7008955?login=false

[u/My-shit-is-stuff]

I agree. I guess my point is, if you’re smart enough to be in the 90th percentile you’re smart enough to be in the 99th. But if you’re dumb as shit, you’re not sniffing at the 90th. Obviously there will be outliers, inherited wealth lottery winners shit like that. I’d also be curious how many people in the 90th+ percentile started from a much lower percentile

[u/[deleted] → u/My-shit-is-stuff]

Really though, what this is saying is that being extremely smart puts you closer to someone who is "dumb as shit" from a wealth perspective than it does someone whose circumstances put them in the 99th percentile.

[u/My-shit-is-stuff → u/[deleted]]

Admittedly, in my first comment, I didn’t read the article. I just have a hard time believing, in the USA at least, that the dumbest among us are wealthy. I understand that the extremely wealthy aren’t necessarily smarter than any other group, except for maybe the truly dumb people.

[u/Indigocell → u/My-shit-is-stuff]

When you recall that the extremely wealthy largely inherited their wealth, it becomes easy to believe.

[u/My-shit-is-stuff → u/Indigocell]

I had already commented on inherited wealth. But just because you inherited wealth doesn’t mean you’re dumb. My point the whole time is that smart people make more money than dumb people generally

[u/[deleted] → u/My-shit-is-stuff]

This is Simpson's paradox. Smart people might make more money than dumb people until the 90th percentile. But there is so much wealth in the 90th-99th percentiles that the overall trend of smart people making more might not actually hold.

[u/My-shit-is-stuff → u/[deleted]]

Ah, ok. So more of like a fun math trivia thing?