Jindalcare
I find it a bit amusing that the two Republican politicians I invariably see described as “smart” — Eric Cantor and Bobby Jindal — both hail from major stereotypically smart ethnic groups. So I’ve been asking conservative friends and acquaintances if there’s actual evidence that Cantor is smart aside from the fact that he’s Jewish. They all assure me there is.
Jindal, though, is bringing the evidence the hard way by proposing a substantial reform to Medicaid that, if it works, could be a model for further things to come. Per Ezra Klein’s description:
The details remain a bit sketchy, but the basic idea seems to be that he’ll move Medicaid patients — and a fair number of the uninsured — into managed care plans that would receive a fixed rate per patient (the rate would vary with health status). That would eliminate the perverse incentives of fee-for-service care, presumably. But in order to ensure high quality outcomes, there would be financial incentives if physicians met certain performance criteria. Medical homes and more coordinated care would be a major part of the transition.
This is quite different from the current conservative vogue for slapdash efforts at “consumer-driven” health care and is aimed, instead, at delivering better health care to people by, to coin a phrase, experimenting with socialism. This is easier to do, ideologically, for a conservative because Medicaid is obviously already a government program so simply shifting its structure in a more socialistic direction doesn’t carry the stigma that creating a new socialistic program would. But if it can be implemented and it performs well, that could clearly lay the groundwork for future expansions of program eligibility, for structural reform to Medicare, for parallel reforms in other states, etc. It’s not a plan that offers the prospect of the sort of short-term system-wide reform that most health care advocates are looking for, but if a workable plan can be developed it has a ton of long-term promise and is compatible with the kind of things progressive reformers are trying to do at the federal level.
On the other hand, Igor Volsky observes that the somewhat vague description is also compatible with some pretty bad scenarios depending on how exactly this outline gets filled in.
59 Responses to “Jindalcare”
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November 15th, 2008 at 11:16 am
both hail from major stereotypically smart ethnic groups.
Funny, I wouldn’t say Indians in the UK are considered extraordinarily smart as a group - industrious social climbers, yes, but not smart as in “jews are very smart”.
November 15th, 2008 at 11:22 am
I used to be a social worker. Graphic artist now. I had a private psychotherapy practice in the evenings, and during the day, I got drawn into the managed care industry (long story - involves high salaries and bad choices.)
But don’t HMOs and Managed Care work that way now, in some models? We called it (I don’t know why) a “capitated” network. A group of providers that were given a flat fee per patient. That way, if no patients showed up at their offices, they got to keep the money. Or if those doctors gave poor, minimal care, they got to keep most of the money. If they gave full and compassionate care, they would wind up spending what they’d been given per patient on various aspects of patient services.
Or something like that, is how it worked.
So that version of it is old news, and bad news, because it rewards doctors for withholding care, or constructing barriers to it, like long waits to be seen.
Maybe they’ve updated it in ways I’m not aware of. I don’t trust it.
-cf
November 15th, 2008 at 11:39 am
I believe they’ve severely curtailed a patient’s right to sue for inadequate care under Managed Care.
That’s got to produce a good result.
November 15th, 2008 at 11:41 am
“…plans that would receive a fixed rate per patient (the rate would vary with health status). That would eliminate the perverse incentives of fee-for-service care, presumably.”
Fee-for-service reimbursement is why auto mechanics have a reputation for doing work that isn’t needed. It’s the same in medicine - procedures done that aren’t needed, “ping-ponging” (the continuous referrals back and forth between doctors), and countless other ways of gaming the system to maximize reimbursement.
November 15th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Steve Sailer had a long piece earlier this year about Indian IQ’s, along with a couple follow-ups. One could argue about the reliability of the data, and about some of the methodologies used, but the conclusion was that caste, religion and geography all play significant parts, to the point that it’s unrealistic to think in terms of a single national average. Generally speaking, when it comes to IQ: high caste>low caste>Dalit (Untouchable); Hindu>Sikh>Muslim; South India>North India. Members of the Brahmin caste from South India may rival Ashkenazi Jews as the world’s highest-IQ ethnic group.
It may be no coincidence that South Indian Brahmins make up a disproportionate share of Indian immigrants in America.
November 15th, 2008 at 11:57 am
I don’t trust a Republican bringing tidings of good news
to help people at large. Especially someone who
changed his relisgious affiliation
at a young age just so he could succeed
in politics.
November 15th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
assigning the differences in IQ to caste is
a very stupid idea. And it is wrong.
In India, caste has been a proxy for economic status
for a very long time.
November 15th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Eric “Nancy Pelosi Hurt My Feelings” Cantor is smart? Really?
November 15th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Peter,
Jindal isn’t a South Indian Brahmin, I believe he’s a Punjabi from the freeholding farmer caste, but I could be wrong. (For what it’s worth, I’m mostly of South Indian Brahmin descent).
Gregor,
Jindal converted for the same reason as me, because he came to believe that Christianity was true. I see no reason to believe it was for political gain, and your attempt to imply that is despicable. If Jindal had converted solely for political gain he could have become a lukewarm Methodist, rather than an ultramontane Catholic.
Gogo,
I don’t know whether there are caste differences in IQ. I hope there are not, but as far as i know the jury is still out. That said, caste isn’t “just” a proxy for economic status. Castes have been almost endogamous for several thousand years, and that endogamy has been enforced by a variety of brutal legal, political and social sanctions. So it isn’t impossible that caste can be a marker for heredity as well as environment.
November 15th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
If Jindal had converted solely for political gain he could have become a lukewarm Methodist, rather than an ultramontane Catholic.
Clearly you don’t live in south Louisiana.
November 15th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
But if it can be implemented and it performs well, that could clearly lay the groundwork for future expansions of program eligibility, for structural reform to Medicare, for parallel reforms in other states, etc.
He’s not really laying the groundwork for anything, except maybe the concept that a Republican can actually come up with a serious policy prescription.
Both Medicare and MediCal (California’s Medicaid) have had capitated options for more than a decade. They have not turned out to be the solution to much of anything — mostly related to how they were implemented.
Jindal’s might if it’s done right. He has the advantage of a network of state owned hospitals that care for the vast majority of the medicaid/uninsured in the state. He could end up with a state run system that’s a near replica of Kaiser Permanente.
November 15th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Smart people do not take part in exorcisms.
November 15th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Hey hector if you can speculate about his motivations for
rejecting one of the most inclusive ( and
for those who want it, the most intellectually
satisfying) religions
in the world for Christianity, so can I.
November 15th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Having aggressively stupid opinions is one of the perks of being smart. “Exorcism is NUTS, you idiot” does nothing to convince a guy who can probably write long erudite essays defending his loony beliefs.
November 15th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
http://www.vdare.com/rushton/070926_indians.htm
Indians Aren’t That Intelligent (On Average)
By Professor J. Philippe Rushton
In this article, I summarize the evidence for an average IQ of 85 in the group designated South Asian/North African. The people of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, the Gulf States, the Near East, Turkey and North Africa have an IQ just below the world average of 90. This is much higher than the IQ of 70 found for Black Africans, but it is also much lower than the IQ of 100 found for Europeans.
As VDARE.COM readers will know, IQ tests were constructed in Western Europe and North America and standardized with an average IQ of 100. The “normal” range goes from “dull” (IQ around 85) to “bright” (IQ around 115). IQs of 70 suggest handicap, while IQs of 130 and above predict giftedness.
There are large inequalities in average IQ scores between groups. Herrnstein and Murray’s (1994) The Bell Curve reported that the average IQ for “African” Americans is lower than those for “Latino”, “White”, “East Asian”, and “Jewish” Americans (IQs = 85, 89, 103, 106, and 115, respectively, pp. 273-278).
In the 1970s the IQ debate became worldwide when British psychologist Richard Lynn showed that compared to a White IQ average of 100, East Asians average about 105 and sub-Saharan Africans around 70.
By 2006, Lynn had tabulated 620 IQ studies in 133 different countries. He clustered the countries into the ten genetic groupings identified by L. L. Cavalli-Sforza et al. in their mammoth 1994 History and Geography of Human Genes. The world average IQ had to be calibrated downwards to 90, as shown in the map.
World Distribution of IQ Scores of Indigenous (pre European migration)
Peoples (Adapted from Lynn, 2006).
East Asians (Chinese, Japanese and Koreans) obtain the highest mean IQ at 105. Europeans follow with an IQ of 100. Some ways below these are the Inuit or Eskimos (IQ 91), South East Asians (IQ 87), Native American Indians (IQ 87), Pacific Islanders (IQ 85), and South Asians and North Africans (IQ 84). Well below these are the sub-Saharan Africans (IQ 67), the Australian Aborigines (IQ 62), the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert, and the Pygmies of the Congo rain forests (IQ 54).
Even a few years ago, news of drastically lower mean IQs for any population group—as low as 70 to 85 in Africa—would have been considered not only an absurdity, but also an injustice. Yet new empirical work continues to show a world IQ average of 90. It continues to show that mean IQs of 70 are found routinely in sub-Saharan Africa and that mean IQs of 70 to 90 are typical of many other regions of the world. Outside of European and East Asian populations, an average IQ as high as 100 is seldom found.
IQ scores are valuable, of course, because of their utility in forecasting. IQ differences between people typically show up by 3 years and remain consistent over the course of life. IQ scores usefully predict the capacity to learn and also to reason logically and flexibly. They can also effectively predict work behavior, child abuse, crime and delinquency, health, accident proneness, and civic responsibility.
The Bell Curve documented that IQ scores predict equally well for all groups. For example, Blacks with IQs of 114 have an equal (or better) chance of graduating from college than Whites and Latinos with the same IQs—68%, 50%, and 49%, respectively, and also of getting top jobs (likely a result of affirmative action programs).
In their book IQ and Global Inequality, Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen show that national IQ scores correlate well (0.68) with per capita income and rate of economic development. They further show that national IQs correlate well with a number of other social phenomena, such as adult literacy (0.64), tertiary education (0.75), life expectancy (0.77), and democratization (0.57).
Thus, IQ scores apparently explain why some countries are rich and others poor. They also explain why economic prosperity varies from one sub-group to another within countries.
Back to the Indians.
Classical anthropology often placed South Asians and North Africans in the same taxonomic group as Europeans and designated them both as Caucasoids. But modern genetic studies, such as those by L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, show the South Asians/North Africans are a surprisingly distinct “genetic cluster”. They can be distinguished from Europeans to their north as well as from sub-Saharan Africans to their south and the other Asian groups to their east.
The evidence that the average IQ of the North Africans/South Asians is as low as 85 is extensive. Lynn reviewed 37 IQ studies from 16 countries such as India, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq and found an IQ range of from 77 to 96 with a median of 84. He reviewed 13 studies of immigrants from those countries in the UK and Australia and found a median IQ of 89. He reviewed 18 further studies of South Asians and North Africans in Continental Europe and found a median IQ of 84. He reviewed 9 studies of South Asians in Africa, Fiji, Malaysia, and Mauritius and found a median IQ of 88. Finally, Lynn reviewed 13 studies of select South Asian and North African high school and university students and found a median IQ of 92, eight points higher than that of general population samples.
Lynn’s finding of an average South Asian IQ of 85 has been corroborated by Jan te Nijenhuis and colleagues in Holland, who analyzed thousands of respondents including nationally representative samples. They found an average IQ of 81 for first generation Turks and Moroccans living in the Netherlands. They found an IQ of 88 for the second generation, who spoke Dutch and had been educated in the Dutch school system. They published their results in the 2004 European Journal of Personality.
Another finding of a low South Asian IQ came from a review of studies on the Gypsies (or Roma as they are now often called). This South Asian population migrated to southeastern Europe from northwest India between the 9th and 14th centuries and currently number between 4 and 10 million. Their average IQ in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, based on a review of 10 studies by Petr Bakalar, is below 80. His review was published in the 2004 Mankind Quarterly.
I too have confirmed the very low IQ for the Roma. This was in a study carried out in and around Belgrade, in Serbia. My colleagues and I individually tested 323 16- to 66-year-olds over a two-year period in three separate communities using the Raven’s Matrices, a widely-used, culture-reduced, non-verbal test of general intelligence, and four other tests usually given to children. On these tests, we found the Roma averaged at the level of Serbian 10-year-olds. (Our study was published in the January 2007 issue of Intelligence.)
I considered the question of whether the South Asian-European group difference is due to the genes or culture. My colleagues and I were able to do this because of the large amount of data available on the Raven’s test from twins raised together and apart, as well as from high school and university samples of East Asians, Europeans, South Asians, Coloreds, and Blacks in South Africa.
We used standard procedures to calculate the heritabilities for each of the puzzles on the Raven’s test. Heritabilities are the proportion of variance accounted for by genetic factors. Since identical twins share 100% of their genes and fraternal twins share only 50%, doubling the difference between their correlations provides one simple estimate of heritability. In the case of identical twins raised apart, their similarity provides a direct estimate of heritability, because they share no upbringing environment.
In 55 comparisons, including three independent samples of South Asians, we consistently found the European-South Asian group difference was more pronounced on the more heritable test items. We found this relationship held even after statistically controlling for possible confounds. (These results were published in the July 2007 Proceedings of the Royal Society of London.)
Our study indicates the remarkable cross-cultural generalizability of test scores. South Asians, Europeans, East Asians, and Africans all appear to have the same combination of genetic and non-genetic influence on cognitive ability. Puzzles found relatively easy (or difficult) by one group are found relatively easy (or difficult) by the others. There is no evidence of any population-specific cultural effect.
Of course, all the differences described are averages. There are bell-shaped distributions around each average. The full range of behaviors, good and bad, is found in every group. No group has a monopoly on virtue or vice, wisdom or folly, capacity or incapacity.
VDARE.COM readers have heard about this research through my reviews of Lynn’s 2006 book Race Differences in Intelligence (here), and his other 2006 book (with Tatu Vanhanen), IQ and Global Inequality (here). They may also have read about my research on university students in South Africa, which corroborated the low IQ of 70 for sub-Saharan Africans (here). Further, they may have read the essay I wrote reviewing the evidence that the East Asian-White-Black IQ differences were 50 to 80% genetic (here). They may also have read Steve Sailer’s review of one of Lynn’s IQ books (April 23, 2006) and his subsequent discussion of Charles Murray’s essay on the remarkably high Jewish average IQ (here).
Given the euphoria current about the Indian economy—the fastest growing of any large polity after China—and all the adulation for Indian high tech types, the news that, in aggregate, India is so weakly positioned is going to be difficult for some to accept.
However, as Steve Sailer noted in his April 23, 2006 VDARE.COM essay on Richard Lynn’s book, the results regarding the IQ difference between China and India are remarkably consistent across time.
I suppose the answer to the apparent anomaly of so many well-known high IQ Indians must be:
0.5% of a population of 1.1 billion is a lot;
the variation in IQ scores in the Indian sub-continent may be greater than elsewhere; and
a steep inflection in economic growth from a depressed level is not incompatible with an ultimate inability to match western production levels.
The finding that the North African/South Asian grouping differs in cognitive ability from Europe has important political implications. Many South Asians are Muslim and form part of what Harvard historian Samuel P. Huntington (1998) referred to as the “Clash of Civilizations”. The evidence shows that the European-South Asian IQ difference is substantially heritable, which means as a practical matter intractable. What the West can expect from these countries has to adjust to this reality.
Immigration policy too, must be adjusted. Mass immigration from the region is very likely to lower the average IQ of the receiving Western countries, and consequently be dysfunctional. (Conversely, the incentives for the relatively few high IQ people from these countries to emigrate are likely to be extremely high. Living in a low IQ milieu is not efficient for them.)
We must accept that gene-based individual and group differences constitute normal variation within the human condition. The differences reflect heritable g, the general factor of intelligence, rather than culturally specific ways of thinking. As the trend toward a more global economy continues, average group differences in cognitive performance are likely to become more salient, both within and across countries.
We can pretend this reality does not exist. But it is not going away.
http://www.vdare.com/rushton/070926_indians.htm
November 15th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Indians, on average, aren’t very smart.
See: http://www.vdare.com/rushton/070926_indians.htm
November 15th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Even if Bob Jindal didn’t go around performing exorcisms, I wouldn’t trust a Republican with health care reform. Come on, do we really think they care about sick people who aren’t rich?
November 15th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
May I ask what convinced you?
November 15th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Re: I wouldn’t trust a Republican with health care reform.
Romney and Schwartzeneggar have both made a stab at universalizing healthcare in their states. In Florida Charlie Crist got a low-cost (albeit bare bones) health insurance plan enacted. Some Republicans are trustworthy in this area. Governors generally. Once a Republican goes national they seem to end up losing any common sense on the topic. Heck, John McCain once opined that we needed universal healthcare. So did Bob Dole in his pre-preisdential running days.
November 15th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Sounds pretty similar to the Oregon Health Plan, which has been using managed care to finance eligibilty expansions for Medicaid since the 1990s. Nothing too new in the idea that I can see, other than the “financial incentives” for physicians. Unfortunately, those incentives will probably damage the already thin trust Medicaid members have for the system, which they (rightfully) see as designed to keep them from getting care as much as providing access to it.
In Oregon, medicaid managed care has pretty much collapsed, with most plans opting entirely out of the system now — their financial models are built on a risk sharing pool that does not work with the poorer, sicker Medicaid population, and they don’t feel like they can make any money. There is pretty much just one managed care plan taking Medicaid now, and if you do manage to get in it’s almost impossible to find a doctor who accepts new Medicaid patients into their panel.
November 15th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Cantor strikes me as an idiot. But then again, I just listen to the guy and don’t think about his ethnicity. Silly me.
Jindal, on the other hand, is smart. He went to Harvard or something right? But I don’t like his plan at all. The HMO plan only gives doctors incentives to not see patients. That’s why it takes three months to see a doctor. If the doctor sees a patient, he incurs expenses and gets paid, but if he doesn’t see a patient, he doesn’t incur expenses and he gets paid. So the doctor has every reason to not see patients.
November 15th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Putting Medicaid patients into HMOs or PPOs is not new, see above comments or with a few seconds Googling “medicaid hmo” lots of stuff including this from 1998
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9500E6D81F31F934A2575AC0A96E958260
Jim Says: Jindal, on the other hand, is smart. He went to Harvard or something right?
And Dubya graduated from Yale and got an MBA from Harvard…
November 15th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Re: May I ask what convinced you?
Off the top of my head:
1) The cosmological argument for a First Cause
The realization that only the Christian tradition gives a solid grounding for the moral beliefs that I believe to be true, and all other world religions, in some way, fell short in the matter of moral teaching
2) The ontological argument for a Perfect Being
3) The realization that the entire enterprise of reasoning and understanding the world presupposes that it obeys laws, and that presupposes a Lawgiver
4) The realization that the existence of radical evil in the world necessitates a Devil, and the existence of a Devil necessitates a God
5) Personal mystical experiences that tallied remarkably with the images described by St. John of Patmos
6) The experience of reading the Gospels and realizing that the figure described in them was unique, with no equivalent in any other figure, either historical or fictional
7) The realization that Jesus cannot be viewed as simply a teacher, or a wise man. Either he was God Incarnate, or he was
a loathsome and monstrously prideful pretender to that title.
9) The conviction that the Gospels, and other early writings of the life of Jesus and the Apostles, read like history and not mythology
10) The testimony of those throughout the last two millennia who have personally encountered Christ
11) The realization that Christ could account for the origin of other religions, but no other religion can provide a satisfactory account for Christ
I mean, look, history and cosmology makes sense to me in light of the idea that, in 1 AD, “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” Without that unifying idea, it’s all a jumbled mass of facts, opinions, and dim glimpses of reality.
As for exorcisms, look, Jindal was wrong to try one, since he wasn’t a priest. I don’t think exorcisms happen very often, and I don’t expect to ever see one, and in any given case I would be likely to try other explanations first. But we do know that exorcisms can occur in theory, and have occurred in the past. The Gospels are perfectly clear that Jesus performed many of them, as did the Apostles.
I believe that I can also prove that God must necessarily be a Trinity on the basis of pure reason, without recourse to revelation, but ask me if you’re interested in the proof.
November 15th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Hector, you misuse the word “proof”.
November 15th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
I’d say as a group that Republican office holders are smarter than Democratic office holders. You have to be smart to be a crook and not get caught. You don’t have to be smart to take advantage of inertia.
November 15th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
How can anyone who has seen Chris Matthews repeatedly demonstrate what a complete moron Cantor is by asking him simple historical questions (which Cantor was unable to answer) think that he is smart? Seriously?
November 15th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
That plan, as described here, is not new. This is how MA delivers Medicaid coverage to more than 40% of its Medicaid population. It is more expensive than basic fee-for-service in many cases, but patient outcomes are better and quality is far easier to track.
November 15th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
Jindal supports the Third World invasion of the U.S. — especially H1Bs from India to drive down the wages of White Americans.
He is no friend to conservatives.
Jindal also isn’t very bright:
http://www.vdare.com/rushton/070926_indians.htm
November 15th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
Conservative,
Bite me. My ancestors had a written language and literary tradition when your ancestors were painting themselves blue and hunting the aurochs.
November 15th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Regardless of the IQs of average Indians in India, Matt is correct that most Indians in the US are correctly perceived to be highly intelligent.
When you pull in only around 100k/yr of the best and brightest from a pool of 1.1 billion, then you are pulling in the best .01% of that population.
November 15th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
Matt and Ezra need to spend a little time brushing up on what Medicaid really looks like in this country. It seems to me Jindal is running a decade behind Texas (and many other states.) Try this:
http://www.hhsc.state.tx.us/medicaid/mc/mc_home.html
And then spend little time brushing up on the local twists and turns. Here’s Harris County Hospital District:
http://170.57.224.10/index.htm
Weird url, but Harris County has it’s own eligibility system that sits underneath Medicaid. Managed Medicaid forced the public sector hosptitals in Texas to re-form as HMOs to bid on the local Medicaid contract. Crazy concept. This was done in the late ’90s as a way of cutting costs, and was not exactly done to benefit the poor of Texas or providers. It’s a way of pushing costs to local taxing authorities.
Harris county has the most uninsured in the country, 1.3 million people. If you are a poor adult and do not qualify for Medicaid (and exactly zero do in Texas unless parent, pregnant or disabled)you end up on a local plan. HCHD covers undocumented workers, to their credit out of local tax revenue. Undocumented minors are covered by Medicaid for emergency coverage, but the District picks up the rest on their programs.
Then take a look at all the other local systems in Dallas, San Antonio, El Paso, Austin, Fort Worth. These have become local Medicaid HMOs with large local programs to cover the millions who fall through the cracks in Texas.
November 15th, 2008 at 11:29 pm
The Census finds that Indian-Americans have very high average levels of educational attainment and income, suggesting high average IQs. Most Indian-Americans are descended from legal immigrants. Typically, at least somebody in the family qualified to immigrate due to strong skills. So, Indian-Americans tend to be very select compared to Indians in India.
Not surprisingly, Indians in America are skewed strongly toward the upper castes, with South Indian Brahmins being dramatically over-represented in places like Silicon Valley compared to their small fraction of the overall population of India. Conversely, while there are 160 million Dalits (Untouchables) in India, there are virtually none in America.
Other Indian diaspora communities around the world have different origins (e.g., as agricultural laborers) and tend to have different levels of achievement — i.e., the Ashkenazi-level attainments seen among American-Indians are not the norm among Indians in places like Fiji or Trinidad.
November 16th, 2008 at 12:19 am
Other Indian diaspora communities around the world have different origins (e.g., as agricultural laborers) and tend to have different levels of achievement — i.e., the Ashkenazi-level attainments seen among American-Indians are not the norm among Indians in places like Fiji or Trinidad.
Though I believe they’re still a market dominant minority in Fiji, generally more prosperous than the native Melanesians.
Indians in New York also show the effects of different origins. While most Indians in the area trace their ancestry directly back to India, especially in Queens there are a number whose families went first from India to Guyana, often as farm laborers, then later from Guyana to America. These Indo-Guyanese tend to lag their direct-from-India counterparts in terms of education and income.
November 16th, 2008 at 12:22 am
Take it from a life-long Louisiana Democrat, this guy Jindal is smart and has a lot of potential. He first came to our attention when he worked for Gov. Mike Foster doing health care-related work while he was only twenty-something. Since then he’s been a US representative and only recently was elected governor. So far as governor he’s impressed us by pushing an ethics reform package through the legislature - not an easy thing to do in this state. I would never vote for him because of his pro-Bush, “pro-family” philosophy. But I’m cautiously optimistic that he’ll do good things for LA.
November 16th, 2008 at 1:04 am
The VDARE article mentioned by someone numerous times
above is reminiscent of Hitler’s supposed
embarrassment that the Indians too were descendants
of Aryans.
November 16th, 2008 at 1:33 am
Do all of the people on the right who want to make Jindal into some sort of wunderkind realize what he’s proposing, or do they fall under the banner of liking him because he’s on the right and is trying to do something, anything, in the way of health care reform?
November 16th, 2008 at 1:47 am
Jindal putting forth a Medicare reform that might possibly be smart is in no way an indication that he personally is smart, of course. We have no way to know whether it was his idea, and apparently, very little way to know whether it’s actually a good idea.
I’m especially unimpressed by anything which promotes more ‘managed care’.
November 16th, 2008 at 7:59 am
Re: I’m especially unimpressed by anything which promotes more ‘managed care’.
Managed care would not be a bad idea if it were implemented the way it was originally designed. The problems arise when you have managed care plus a for-profit insurer. Non-profit managed care generally works pretty well.
November 16th, 2008 at 9:17 am
I am not in any doubt as to Jindal’s level of intelligence - with or without regard to ethnic background.
However, I do think that promoting to high national office yet another pusher of teaching the Creationist view of biology in schools (reference to a bill in the Louisiana legislature) is a very bad idea.
Intelligence applied to anti-intelligent ends magnifies the negative result - it does not vitiate it.
November 16th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Gregory:
Get your facts straight. First, there was only Ayran blood among the Brahmin in N. India — a VERY long time ago. Second, this is so diluted now - through miscegenation - that it is dead.
Cavalli-Sforza proved this:
“Classical anthropology often placed South Asians and North Africans in the same taxonomic group as Europeans and designated them both as Caucasoids. But modern genetic studies, such as those by L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, show the South Asians/North Africans are a surprisingly distinct “genetic cluster”. They can be distinguished from Europeans to their north as well as from sub-Saharan Africans to their south and the other Asian groups to their east.”
http://www.vdare.com/rushton/070926_indians.htm
November 16th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Jindal is hostile to “Hispanics” - granted that’s a staple of the GOP.
As such, the prospect of this guy becoming US President, or even Vice President, scares the heck out of me!
He reminds me of the Indians I encounter across California, who are ALWAYS bashing “Mexicans” and telling me how superior Indians are. I suspect the reason so many feel free to do this is because I am tall with pale white skin - and they don’t think I am of Mexican-American.
While it’s true that Barack Obama won North Carolina, Virginia and possibly even Missouri. It’s also true that “Hispanic” voters provided his winning margin in Florida, New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada.
Granted by 2012, if America is in the grips on great depression 2, the political landscape will be vastly changed. Even if it’s not, it will be difficult for Barack Obama to repeat his victories in states like North Carolina, Virginia and Missouri.
It will be almost impossible for a GOP candidate to win without FLORIDA!
Let alone New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado!
With a little luck, “Hispanics” could also become the swing vote in Texas and Arizona as well, though frankly, I think that may take a little longer.
California, of course, is reliably blue - since Pete Wilson
Bottom line; US “Hispanics” will be wary of any Jindal candidacy given that’s he’s hostile to us. That means he would lose New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada at a minimum. Reliably GOP Cuban-American voters form an ever smaller portion of Florida voters. In fact, they are now outnumbered by other Latino nationalities. Hence, Jindal would probably lose Florida as well - given that “Hispanics”provided Barack Obama with his margin of victory in Florida.
November 16th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Re: “Get your facts straight. First, there was only Ayran blood among the Brahmin in N. India — a VERY long time ago. Second, this is so diluted now - through miscegenation - that it is dead.
Cavalli-Sforza proved this:
“Classical anthropology often placed South Asians and North Africans in the same taxonomic group as Europeans and designated them both as Caucasoids. But modern genetic studies, such as those by L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, show the South Asians/North Africans are a surprisingly distinct “genetic cluster”. They can be distinguished from Europeans to their north as well as from sub-Saharan Africans to their south and the other Asian groups to their east.”
http://www.vdare.com/rushton/070926_indians.htm”
Yes, Jindal is skeptical of Mexicans, but wants to increase H1B visas from India.
Indians by and large flock towards blacks - as East Indians are full of black blood through miscegenation.
November 16th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Christ on a crutch, what’s with all of the racist neanderthals coming out of the woodwork?
The “Aryan” blood in India is predominant among North Indians, who tend to be less educated than South Indians. I suppose that’s kind of a conundrum for the Sailerite race-mongers around here, or would be if they were smart enough to know what a conundrum was.
November 16th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
assigning the differences in IQ to caste is
a very stupid idea. And it is wrong.
In India, caste has been a proxy for economic status
for a very long time.
And economic status is a nearly universal proxy for innate ability, so I’m not sure how this is a valid criticism of previous comments. Interestingly, if you take SAT data from several years ago (maybe 1995, not sure), black Americans from households making over 70k/yr scored about 30 points lower than white Americans from households making less than 20k/yr. That phenomenon alone should dispel a economic status ==> outcomes causal link.
November 16th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Also, European-Ashkenazi Jews probably have an IQ of around 115, and the evidence suggests that this is a relatively recent phenomenon, probably within no more than the last 1500 to 1000 years. Steven Pinker, a Jewish, moderate Democrat, has endorsed the hypothesis that European Jewry became one big self-imposed eugenics program as a response to oppression in Europe for the last millenia.
So, if there has been little gene-flow between Europe and India over the last few thousand years, and that is almost certainly the case, then it’s quite likely that the populations have followed different evolutionary paths. Silly notions like “pure blood” are completely unrelated to whether or not innate abilities differ within and between population clusters.
Follow the evidence.
November 16th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Re: However, I do think that promoting to high national office yet another pusher of teaching the Creationist view of biology in schools
Jindal is not a Creationist* (Catholics tend not to be) the Louisiana ID bill was drafted by the legislature, and Jindal was completely MIA during the debate on it. He took some flak from the far Religious Right in LA as a result of his non-interest in it. He did sign the bill into law as it was part of a larger education package he approved of.
* All Christians (and Muslims, Jews etc) are creationists in the sense of believing that God created the universe and probably has had something to do with later development. But I assume we are using the term in the sense of “Biblical literalist creationist.” Ironically, ID doesn’t really fit that bill either since it no more comports well with Genesis than Darwin does.
November 16th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Re: And economic status is a nearly universal proxy for innate ability
Not really in India today, and _definitely_ not in old India, which was the point at issue. India has never in its history been a meritocracy. It’s moving in that direction today, but for most of its recorded history* Sudras and Dalits were not allowed to be educated, or to work in professions outside their caste boundaries, or to intermarry or socialize with a high-caste person. Hell, in the olden days many high-caste individuals would consider themselves polluted if a Dalit’s _shadow_ fell on them, and would rather let a Dalit die of thirst than drink from ‘their’ well. These rules, which rivaled the Jim Crow South**, were enforced not just by threats of horrible fates in the afterlife, but also by violence and murder.
Economic status _may_ reflect intelligence, to some extent, in modern Western societies (even there, it often reflects personality traits and a tendency towards avarice and ambition more than intelligence). But this definitely wasn’t true throughout most of history. This doesn’t mean that Dalits and Brahmins are necessarily equally intelligent. I hope they are, but if it isn’t the case then so be it. But it does mean that you can’t dismiss economic status as being thoroughly correlated with intelligence.
*Hindus will tell you that things were more liberal and meritocratic thousands of years ago, before the caste system got ossified. That’s certainly a possibility, and some Hindu sources seem to suggest that, but as far I know there is no recorded history from that long ago to settle the question.
**With the distinction of course that caste wasn’t based on a visible and immutable racial marker, and so there were a few castes that did move out of Untouchable status over time.
November 16th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
No true patriot of the West would ever vote for Jindal.
If you want to know the truth about East Indians and their relation to the West, read the “best conservative novel ever written”:
CAMP OF THE SAINTS
That’s all you need to know.
November 16th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
(even there, it often reflects personality traits and a tendency towards avarice and ambition more than intelligence).
This is patently false. Here is a story about a link between IQ and win-win thinking based on peer-reviewed, clinical research. I work in a service industry, self-employed, where most of my customers are way above middle-class, but not super-rich either. They are, almost to a person, extremely sociable, and made their money by bringing value to other people’s lives. The image of the conniving rich is largely a creation of media.
Also, for eugenic/dysgenic effects to have an impact you actually have to have some sort of selective pressure. If Dalits are kept from positions of achievement, regardless of individual talent, then there is no positive selection happening for high intelligence and ability. Such an individual would not have any fitness advantage over lesser talented individuals within the Dalit caste. On the other hand, for a positive selection to occur within the Brahman caste all that caste would need to do is implement a meritocracy within the caste but confine that meritocracy to that caste only.
I don’t claim to be an expert on Indian society and history, but from what I can see it looks as if there was a meritocracy within and confined to the Brahman caste but not one between castes. That situation alone, if extant, would provide the fitness landscape for divergences in innate ability.
November 16th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Asher,
Er, no. Standard Oil was a creation of the popular media? The robber barons? Those CEO’s who move factories overseas and leave their workforce destitute? Capitalism is _based_ on the idea of pursuing one’s self-interest, accumulating wealth, and by the accumulation of surplus value through investment. All of which run counter not just to traditional Christian values but to many of the world’s other moral traditions as well. You can call that many things, but you can’t call it ‘niceness’. As for ‘win-win’ thinking, that isn’t what I’m talking about. That’s reciprocal selfishness, not true charity. This is a world of finite resources, where win-win games are limited in their applicability. Sooner or later we have to choose between doing what’s right for ourselves, and what’s right for others. Capitalism rewards those who choose one way, and God rewards those who choose the other.
In another thread I mentioned that friend of mine who grew up on a Dominican sweet potato farm. His grandfather, who owned the farm, would take what the family needed each year, and then distribute the surplus among neighbors, the farm laborers, and people in the village. That’s the right thing to do in a moral, WWJD? sense. But it will never make you rich, and it didn’t make him rich.
November 16th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Jindal converted to the Catholic faith long before politics. He was accepted into Harvard medical school and Yale law school, but took a Rhodes scholarship. He wrote a paper on reforming healthcare that so impressed the governor of Louisiana he was appointed head of health and human services for the state of Louisiana while in his early 20s.
He is unabashedly pro-life, brilliant, well-spoken, young, energetic, and scrupulously honest. No terrorists, race-baiters, felons, or election-fraud internships in his past. He would eat BHO alive in a debate. No “uhhhs” when he talks. He the future of the Republican party. A return to real conservatism based in faith in God and moral principles. I can’t wait.
November 16th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Wisconsin handed its Medicaid population over to managed care under Tommy Thompson and it’s been a monumental failure. Bu then, even before that, most folks had reached the conclusion that HMOs and managed care were a failed experiment. Politicians are just too dumb to see it, I guess.
December 20th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
The Indian diaspora in Caribbean, Mauritius, Fiji
consists of agricultural laborer castes from North India
As such they have very low IQ
my guess at the Hispanic level
The Indian diaspora in UK
consists of 40% Jat Sikhs ( upper level north Indian peasants )
and 60% Patels ( upper level north Indian peasants and also low level merchants )
This diaspora is superior IQ to the caribbean hindu diaspora
The Hindu diaspora in USA
consists of 15% southern brahmins
5% northern brahmins
15 % southern merchants and landlords
and 25% northern peasants
and 40% northern merchants
Bobby Jindal is a Khatri, a very high level punjabi merchant caste, ranking almost at the punjabi brahmin caste
Some other Khatris are Sabeer Bhatia, Vinod Khosla,
Vinod Dham,
There is a world of difference in IQ between Bobby Jindal
and the Patels of the UK
Caste rank does not always corelate with wealth
India has a very low GINI coefficient
The poverty rate of Dalits is no more than twice the brahmin poverty rate
Meaning there are millions of poor brahmins
The merchant and landlord castes while middling in caste heirarchy tend to be very rich
Brahmins tend to be middle to lower middle class
Indian atomic team for the 1974
Smiling Buddha, Indian nuclear tests
The 1% southern brahmins are 67% of the Indian nuke team
BARC Team Lead: Raja Ramanna,
( Southern Brahmin )
Director of BARC
Team Second-in-Command: P.K. Iyengar
( Southern Brahmin )
(responsible for the actual manufacture of the device)
* Nuclear System Design Team
o Team lead: Rajagopala Chidambaram
( Southern Brahmin )
o Satinder Kumar Sikka
( Northern Merchant )
* Electronic Detonation System Team
o Team lead: Pranab Rebatiranjan Dastidar
( Northern Brahmin)
o Sekharipuram Narayana Aiyer Seshadri
( Southern Brahmin)
* Neutron Initiator Team
o Vasudev K. Iya
( Southern Brahmin)
o T.S. Murthy
( Southern Brahmin)
o C.V. Sundaram
( Southern Brahmin)
* Plutonium Core Fabrication Team
o Team lead: P.R. Roy
( Northern Merchant )
* System Integration Team
o Team lead: Jitendra Nath Soni
( Northern Merchant )
o Anil Kakodkar
( Southern Brahmin) ( also current head of India nuke program )
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2003 USA Immigrant Children IQ test
Digit span data (IQ equivalents) by U.S. immigrant group:
Europe 99, Northeast Asia 106, Southeast Asia 104, India 112, sub-Saharan African 89, Mexico 82, Central America/Caribbean 83, South America 86.
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