Ok. I finished. I'm still processing the book in my mind, but I'm going to at least try to sum up what I think the point was.

The book did NOT go where I thought it was going to go and I feel a little perplexed. There were a lot of statistics and graphs, but not about some things that I think needed to be included for Murray to make a cohesive argument.

The founding fathers of America felt that our constitution could only successfully govern a virtuous people... and important virtues include honesty / integrity, industriousness, marriage, and being religious (even though the founding fathers weren't that religious themselves.)

Murray shows how a sense of community and trusting that other people are honest, fair and worth trusting increases happiness. He also shows how marriage, meaningful work and religion all do the same.

He thinks these are important to a well-functioning society, and that these are important reasons why America was great and unique and what we need to get back to if we are to keep ourselves from turning into more of a "welfare state".

(He is a Libertarian and sees the end in sight for welfare states like in Europe. He predicts science will show us exactly why 2 parent homes are so good for children... that human beings are wired to need meaningful work and responsibility for outcomes (meaning social safety nets hinder this) etc.)


Now...

The new upper class (the top 5%) is the "creative class" that rose in power due to cognitive ability. The power is likely to stay with this new class because IQ was responsible for their rise to power, and since IQ is hereditary, these families aren't likely to lose their status in 3 generations (as was the stereotype about rich and powerful families in the past.)

Each generation of upper class children is getting further removed from the reality of life as it is for most Americans. He made a very good case for how past generations of those in power were not as far removed from what the average American experienced and that they even interacted with regular Americans. Now, the upper class have segregated themselves and children born into that class don't really even come into contact with "normal" Americans. So the people in power are becoming more and more out of touch.

The new upper class values the same virtues Murray says the founding fathers did. He shows that since the 1960's the new upper class has kept a fairly high rate of marriage, has low crime rates in the places they tend to live, has a low rate of arrests, participates more in civic activities and is more likely to be religious.

The lower class has gone way downhill... A huge number of mothers cohabitate and give birth out of wedlock. The men are useless and don't work very much.... People in these communities are far less likely to engage in any sort of community activity than they were in the 60s. They are all less happy because of this, apparently.

He goes on to show that his thesis applies to all Americans in the lower and new upper class, not just whites, too.

(I wish he would have spent more time describing what the outcomes for the next generation of babies in the lower class he describes will be. He barely touched upon the poor outcomes for children of single mothers and such.)

Anyway, he makes a point for all of this and then basically says that the new upper class is weak. They don't LEAD by example, but rather they are very politically correct and preach a culture of "niceness" where you aren't allowed to say if you think one way of living is better than another.

He thinks the upper class needs to preach what it practices and lead by example, or we're going to go the way of most great nations....

Other nations fall when the leaders lose confidence in themselves, adopt the "vulgar" customs of the lower classes (as the upper class has been doing... and you can see that if you look at the media and such which they control and create) and basically implode.

He figures that if the new upper class doesn't start caring about what is happening to the rest of America, that our policies will just keep moving the direction they have been (toward more of a welfare state) and that will be the end of what made our nation great.



Last edited by islandofapples; 02/19/12 08:27 PM.