Yahoo
had a fascinating headline, “Ten Dumbest States”. What they did was rank states by the
proportion of population with Bachelor’s degrees. Hey, I have one of those, except that I
wasn’t a very good bachelor. Did better
after I was married. Apparently
Massachusetts was the “Smartest” with Colorado #2 and Maryland #3. Oklahoma was
9th dumbest but KY and WV were dumb and dumber or should I say
dumbest. The smartest states are mostly in New England and the dumbest are in
the South and Mid-South. And they show that median income bears a rough
correlation to smartness, while SAT scores don’t seem to correlate too
much. Why not IQ? Is it really right to say that some states
are dumb and some smart?
Why are we stopping at states? Why not countries? Britain and Germany I am sure have more
degreed and pedigreed people. Switzerland and Norway have higher incomes. And concerning test scores, USA is behind
Slovenia at about #28. But then I ask, when
America came into being, were its people a lot smarter than other
countries? I have my doubts. It’s worse, if you believe eugenically that
smart people have smart kids and vice versa.
America has taken the tack of advertising for the dumb.
“Give me your tired your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to
breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teaming
shore.
Send these the homeless,
tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden
door.”
How
then do we explain our success? Luck and
corrupt gain, like Obama claims in his books? Cheats, colonials and slave
owners? Or did American exceptionalism have to do with freedom? Perhaps we have taken the dumbest people in
the world, given them opportunities and the freedom to make something of it. Success resulted and we became a superpower. Again, this violates the Obama Doctrine of
Illegitimate Superpower.
Thus if we were true to our ideals,
we should rank the states not in smarts but freedoms. It occurs to me that New England is just so rule-bond
economically, that you have to have credentialization in order to get a good
job. You have to go to college to get a
decent job. It ranks very low in
entrepreneurship. After all, both MA and
CA we first to recognize the importance of personal computers, but Silicon Valley
wound up around San Fran Bay, not Boston Bay. And do Maryland and Colorado just represent
what happens when an area is recognized as a good place to lure skilled workers?
Maryland is close to credentialization of Emerald City. If you believe that Washington bureaucrats
are the smartest people on the planet, please raise you right hand and repeat
the Oath of the Veterans Administration led by the guy over there with the
coffee cup. And Colorado lures young people who want the recreation paradise
that just a few years earlier made the guys at the frat house go rapt. It wasn’t
cowboys and miners who got all those degrees.
So then if you asked for freedom,
what state? It surely looks a lot like
Texas or Oklahoma and a lot of states in flyover land. Few government regulations, low taxes, easy
to start a business. “We like living right and bein’ free” Merle Haggard sang, “Okie
from Muskogee”. Or maybe it’s Montana.
If we looked at which states produce the most new millionaires per
capita, Montana would win. Perhaps
freedom trumps a balmy climate and makes more opportunities.
Bottom line, I’m okay living in a
dumb state. Just as long as it’s free
and welcomes the tempest-tossed.
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