Do you think the IQ required to be successful in America is increasing?

Some of the smartest kids I knew in high school are bums now. I think the biggest part is that those guys were geeky, lazy kids who literally sat on a computer all day. What employers and admissions officers look for is a mix of everything: Intelligence, hard-work, experience, extra-curriculars, charisma, and even physical attractiveness. I’d say the “jack-of-all-trades” kind of person has the highest success rate in the US.

No.  I know plenty of million plus wealthy people who never finished their middle school education, came here to America without a dollar to their name, and built a life of success through hard work.  One of the cool things that attracts me to Taxation as a career is that you can setup your own tax practice and live a comfortable livelihood.  People will always come to you asking questions on taxes.  The guy I go to, is always open 7 days a week and there's someone in the office at all times (customer).  He owns a 2m+ dollar house down the block (North Park/Kensington area), and very well known in the community.  The rest are automotive/nail salon/barbers/restaurants/offices type owners who grew their success from working to saving, then using the saving to become a business owner - all WITHOUT a college education.

Haven’t bothered to look up any study on IQ vs wealth, much less how that has trended over the past decade or projections on how those might change in the future. More so because who cares? It’s not like I can change my IQ after finding out the outcome. Doesn’t concern me, so driving on.

But to entertain OP’s question, I think it depends on how massive of a success we’re talking about. Looking at the Forbes networth list, you can expect many of them will have supreme intelligence regardless of their education, especially if they got there in one generation. If we look at a broader, run of the mill success, the results will be more random. I’m excluding celebrities and athletes from this discussion as they have a range of specific skills at the very top end of human achievement that warrant their comp, and IQ is only one aspect (star quarterback’s pattern recognition skills? I wouldn’t challenge him). Law firm partner with $10mm networth arguably has a high IQ (and many other factors required to succeed at that level). A guy in the basement playing games all day who happened to think Bitcoin was cool 10 years ago might also be worth $10mm. I have no way of knowing what his IQ is. That life changing purchase is most likely luck. Today there are just many more ways to get richer faster simply by being in the right place at the right time. This is hard to prove but there just are. New assets all of a sudden gain capital in flow out of nowhere, often seemingly and decidedly for irrational reasons. The other factor to consider is willingness to take risk arguably has gone higher, likely driven by a paradoxical combination of abundance of cash (think government assistance programs through covid, cheap credit available in developed nations) yet a deep sense of desperation to survive/make a life changing decision (think about inflation on cost of living, lack of employment, mounting debt, seeing age-peers succeeding by a start up, etc.). I wouldn’t be surprised that these factors are correlated with folks taking on more risks - which invariably drives randomness of success. 
 

To get back to OP’s point on whether the IQ requires to achieve success has gone higher - I’d say probably yes if you’re thinking about roles/paths that require high IQs to succeed. Competition has become more intense. But for more general level of high networth - call it $1-$10mm - it’s hard to say, because the number of ways to get there has increased and in my opinion people have become more risk-loving compared to counterparts in earlier generations.

Doesn't matter. If you have a great  body and face, you will be 2x further than anyone else in America, socially and professionally. 

IQ, is most definitely a thing in the fact that there are stupid people and smart people.  You can more or less guess who is whom by the decisions and choices that people make.  

The human brain, and I'm in no way having an original thought, is like a computer.  You can have hard drive, RAM, processor chip, and Graphics card.  Certain combinations are better suited for different tasks.

Carlos1111

With wages failing to match inflation, the number of jobs that are able to provide for the needs of the average American are shrinking and those that are able to provide are becoming increasingly competitive. Do you think this will be an irreversible trend and what happens when the majority of Americans are unable to afford to make ends meet?

EQ, more than IQ but not in every situation.

I was about to mention something about EQ vs. IQ. I have no statisctical basis for any of this but anecdotally if you look at the Kardashians, the Paul Brothers, Tik Tok stars,fart jar girl, etc. this seems to me like EQ (not in the traditional sense of being able to relate to people; but rather giving people what they want). I think the long-term prospects of preserving wealth are likely precarious but maybe we should all just get into PWM and target Tik Tok stars...

Luck>>>IQ. How many of us know very intelligent people who were too lazy to become "successful"... Luck is the biggest part IMO, but the harder and smarter you work, the luckier you will probably be. Also don't confuse smart and intelligent/IQ, very different

Simply, yes.  The average IQ required for simple service level jobs has risen significantly in the past 30 years.  So much so that it is alarming many anthropoligists who believe we are developing a segmented society where to even be able to hold a basic job one will need to have an IQ in the top 80 - 75%.  While yes that does include a large percentage of the people but the issue comes in when you have 20% of the population that has no hope to integrate into the broader society.  When you also combine that with the fact that the bottom 20% of the intelligence spectrum also makes up the majority of the violent criminals you can see how despairation caused by being unable to function in society can lead to a massive destabilization of the country. 

The inequality disparity in America will continue to sharpen and the chasm between the bottom and the top will widen. I do think that you have to smarter, quicker and faster to be successful in America than you had to before. With globalism and the internet, you'll be competing against the entire world. With advances in technology, you'll need to best Automation / AI. With China poised to take over as economic top-dog within the next decade, our slice of the GDP pie will shrink. I'll be raising my kids to wake up hungry because the world is not going to get any easier moving forward.

There’s a lot of topics to broach here but I also want to point out that there’s a lot of smart people who also overplay how smart they are.

Thomas Edison ripped off Tesla. Thomas Edison was an incredibly brilliant guy, but not quite the businessman who gets ideas from thin air and builds them 1,000 times into perfection like we all think about. Similar things can be said of todays equivalents. Elon Musk is brilliant, but he’s not in the weeds of designing cars and rockets and the creator of self driving like he tries to market himself to be. Again, undoubtedly brilliant guy but not to the level he portrays himself as. He’s not a superhero, he’s a human and we all have limited capacity in our brains. It’s biology (or neuroscience specifically).

IQ being a true measure of intelligence is a topic unto itself, wealth inequality is a topic unto itself, and what qualifies as “success” is a topic unto itself.

I agree with many other commenters here- once you reach a certain threshold of intelligence you experience the law of diminishing returns. If you combine a baseline intelligence with intense work ethic/ drive, and the right amount of leverage you can be successful.

I went to college with a guy who wanted to get into his dad’s business for truck driving management when he graduated. They had a beautiful house in Orange County, CA and his dad was clearing $500k a year. Son wanted to do the same thing. Managing a fleet of big rigs isn’t sexy, isn’t complicated financial engineering or coding up some specialty ML algo, but definitely got them the American dream. I don’t think they’re the exception either. Tons of restaurant franchisees, random businesses. Hell my dry cleaner lady lives in a gated community in a wealthy city because she owns like half the dry cleaners in that area. 

First, I'd definite what you mean by "successful"? do you mean, make ends met every month, have two houses, save something every month, have kids, pay for their college/wedding?

Second, short answer, I'd say yes, it does require a high IQ. Its like sports, does it take a higher level of athletic ability to go pro--> yes. Guys who ride the bench in pros now probably would have been All Stars 40,50 years ago. 

Real question is, also, what do we definite as IQ? Again, look at sports. Take the NBA, as they say, you need to be certain height to be good in the NBA, but you don't have to be the tallest (look at Steph Curry). Part of being an NBA player is not only being able to play in the games, but also handle the practice, training, lifestyle (saying no to booze, drugs, women that are right at your finger tips I'm sure). Same with work, they don't line up everyone at age 22 by IQ, and say the top 100 get to make X amount, the next 100 X-1 and so on.  For example, you may be extremely smart, but can you show up on time, deal with unruly bosses/co workers, take criticism, work when you're tired, not take all day. 

To be generally successful (stable income, general needs covered) I would say it's actually dropping, to be hypersuccessful the IQ is definitely rising. It's getting harder to break into the top 1% but easier to break into the top 20%

The relationship between IQ and income is somewhat correlated; in general, people with higher IQs make more money:

But the relationship between IQ and wealth is all over the map:

Correlations Of IQ With Income And Wealth - Sociological Images (thesocietypages.org)

I don't think people understand IQ very well (most of you guys must know it well) . It is more like a normal distribution of a group of people's intelligence. 100 is the mean in the distribution of a specific group of people, such as "20 years old US citizens in 2021). 15 is the standard deviation. 99.7% of the samples are captured in the gap between 55-145 IQs. 85-115 captures 68% and 70-130 captures 95%.

A man from an (undeveloped/less educated on average) region 100 years ago may have an IQ of 100, but almost certainly less intelligent than a man from an (developed/more educated on average) region 100 years later who also have an IQ of 100.

Welcome for any comment or criticism.