One can assume that most readers of the Economist are in the elite, more or less... and elites have always been fond of expounding on how their status is justif

One can assume that most readers of the Economist are in the elite, more or less... and elites have always been fond of expounding on how their status is justified. When it was ok to say "God loves us better", that worked; now the elites justify their status with "scientific" reasoning that "proves" that they deserve their status because of some innate personal feature. Surprise, surprise. While my experience does not a scientific sample make, when I worked in a hardware store for two years (more or less doing my undergrad), I thought that the population was about as smart as the students I went to college with. However, the long term blue collar hardware store employees neither understood how to go to school, or how to mobilize education when they did get acquire some. So... I think there is sytemic, multi-generational differences in access to the training that allows you to succeed in the supposedly meritocratic society we would like to believe we live in. The difference in training is definitely manifest in "pure" cognitive ability, but if your parents don't read to you as an infant, push you to do your homework, or help you to go to college, OF COURSE you are going be dumber by the time you join the workforce as an "adult". Read Bourdieu.