The establishment's theory of race differences in socially valued metrics is that this is due to "systemic racism", a kind of Marxist conspiracy theory where the dominant group (Whites) keeps other peoples down.
There are clear testable predictions from this theory. In places where racist, White people have more power, outcomes for non-Whites, especially Blacks and Hispanics should be worse. Recall that the US demographics by county look like this.
Of course, Republicans are racist in this theory.
Thus, the theory predicts that in these areas of the USA, Blacks and Hispanics should be particularly worse off compared to Whites. But the exact opposite is actually true. The race gaps are smaller, not larger, in Whiter and more Republican areas.
The above figures are for test score gaps, but the same holds true if we look at social status gaps. Here's some maps of race gaps in social status.
So we need another way to explain the variation in social status gaps. Well, it's easy. Test scores -- academic achievement that mainly reflecting intelligence -- explain why race gaps are smaller and larger in various locations. Meritocracy works.
It gets even worse for the theory. It turns out the effect of White population share and Republican vote share are interactive. The areas with the smallest race gaps are the ones with the largest White populations and the largest Republican vote shares combined!
There we have it. The Marxist conspiracy theory that is the go-to explanation of race relations fails when we look at county-level variation across the United States. The predictions it makes are exactly opposite of reality. If anything, it seems Republican Whites are good for minorities.
If you want more details, read my new blog post:
New study out: Systemic Racism Does Not Explain Variation in Race Gaps on Cognitive Tests
Does democracy or self-governance do something to your personality or values? Maybe yes says this clever study of Switzerland.
In ... 1218 the last ruler of Zähringen dies, leaving no heir, so the lands revert to imperial rule and gain some kind of self-governance.
It appears, these areas are still to this day higher in cooperative attitudes and voting turnout. It can't be explained in terms of crude sociological factors, and due to the geographical diversity, one can also employ fixed effects, none of which remove the pattern.
Even extreme luck from natural resources does not outweigh psychology in explaining variation in wealth. Take Nauru, the fattest country in the world, 95% are overweight and 70%+ are obese.
In the 1970s, they mined bird poo (guano) and sold it so that their country was the wealthiest in the world GDP per capita (population about 10k Polynesians). The plan was to put the money into a national trust fund, like Norway does. The interests from this massive wealth would enable them to basically finance a welfare state perpetually. However, it was not to be due to "mismanagement and corruption". Today they are about as poor as they were to begin with. Rags to riches to rags.
Richard Lynn published a posthumous papers on race differences in schizophrenia. The worldwide pattern in races living in Western countries appear to follow their relative intelligence levels. Highest in Blacks, elevated in various other groups, Amerindians/Hispanics, Aboriginies, Maori, MENAP and so on. East Asians seem to be slightly lower, but little data.
Africans (Blacks) vs. Europeans (Whites) higher no matter if they live in USA, UK, or Sweden.
Everybody knows some topics or questions are taboo, but which ones? Do people agree? Decided to find out. We asked 500 Americans online to rate the tabooness of 29 questions, and this was the result.
Race and IQ was the winner, even beating incest, pedophilia, gay germs etc.
The results were almost entirely consistent across all subgroups: age, sex, politics, race, science knowledge. The correlations for taboo ratings across groups were >.90, close to 1.00 without sampling error.
Though note that some grounds find everything more taboo than others.
Why did we look into this? Well, back in 2021, I made fun of this paper. And now we have the published demonstration the taboo hierarchy.
Socialism attracts losers. This is also true for immigration socialism.
Attaining a reasonable outcome -- no more costs from foreigners in the country -- requires drastic measures. Even reducing 'refugees' by 90% is not enough.
To understand the fiscal effects of immigration you have to start with a plot like this one. From the perspective of the government, people below 25 are net negatives, between 25 and 75, they are net positive, and then negative again.
The reasons for this are straightforward. Below 25's cost the state money in terms of childcare and education and don't yet make much money, and thus don't pay much in income tax. Old people cost money in retirement, old peoples homes, and healthcare.
The current net fiscal effect of an immigration group thus depends on its age distribution to a large extent. Maybe a group is currently positive because it is of working age, but that is short-term thinking. You must apply a lifetime perspective -- longtermism.