Does Being Rich Make You Stupid?
False consciousness goes upscale.
Dudley Moore in “Arthur” (1981).
It’s widely believed that in order to get rich you have to be smart, but that does not appear to be correct. Granted, income is somewhat dependent on education level; one must acquire certain skills, most readily available at colleges and universities, to exceed U.S. median net compensation ($43,222.81). Even there, however, one must remember that Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg all dropped out of college.
But a 2007 study by Boston University economist Jay Zagorsky concluded that IQ bore no relationship to net worth, and only a weak relationship to income:
The title [of this study] asks, “Do you have to be smart to be rich?”If IQ test scores are an accurate measure of intelligence and if intelligence is relatively fixed from teen years to adulthood then the results indicate the answer is no…. Since intelligence is not a factor for explaining wealth, individuals with low intelligence should not believe they are handicapped in achieving financial success, nor should high intelligence people believe they have an advantage.
The next-level question is whether being rich makes you stupid. Zagorsky didn’t address that question, but he did find that people with exceptionally high IQs have an elevated risk of financial distress. In effect, being super-smart makes you stupid. Elon Musk, call your office! (See my December 2023 piece, “How Corporate America’s Obsession With Creativity Wrecked the World and Brought Us Elon Musk,” a review of Samuel W. Franklin’s underappreciated book, The Cult of Creativity: A Surprisingly Recent History.)
I believe that being rich does indeed make you stupid. This is most obviously true of those who inherit great wealth, a growing problem as inheritance plays an ever-larger role in U.S. wealth accumulation. But it’s also true of the self-made rich. My fieldwork consists of observing the behavior of the plutocrat class as President Donald Trump pitches the United States economy into the crapper. That’s the topic of my latest New Republic piece. You can read my findings here.
I think being rich makes things easier. Afford in money&time for college&grad school.
The Trump MAGA worships is a fictional character. The real Trump had behavioral problems. To paraphrase John Fugelsang, Trump is what you get when parents never say “no”. Ppl from “Apprentice” days insist Trump is functionally illiterate.
Rich, even upper middle classes see themselves as superior human beings despite no real evidence of that. Just more available opportunity.
"Does Being Rich Make You Stupid?" No more than being stupid makes you rich. Just look at Donald Trump for proof of that. I'll go one step further on that for Trump. Being really stupid can make you really rich, but being a moron can make you richest.