James Pethokoukis at Faster, Please!: A 2016 economists survey found a whopping zero percent disagreeing with the idea that allowing “many more immigrants with advanced degrees in science and engineering” would make America richer over time. The US has a limited number of such workers because only a small fraction of the population has a very high IQ, observes economist Alex Tabarrok:
The US might be able to place only say 100,000 high-IQ workers in high-IQ professions, if we are lucky. It’s very difficult to run a high-IQ civilization of 330 million on just 100,000 high-IQ workers—the pyramid of ability extends only so far. … [We] also need to draw on high-IQ workers throughout the world—which explains why some of the linchpins of our civilization end up in places like Eindhoven or Taiwan…
If the Biden administration wants more advanced chip manufacturing to be located in the US, the American labor force will require many more very smart workers. I would also point to a new report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that warns America’s broken immigration system is threatening its global leadership in research.
(Of course, we should do more to identify and cultivate the smarties born here. In a new Wall Street Journal essay, Charles Murray highlights research that shows that even among the smartest of the smart, higher test scores correlate with greater STEM achievements in adulthood. A study following gifted youth found those in the top quarter of the top one percent were significantly more likely to earn advanced degrees, patents, and publish in STEM fields. This suggests that focusing on at least the top 0.5 percent of ability to identify potential major STEM contributors, about 650,000 working-age Americans. “Finding and developing one of our rarest and most precious human resources” is a worthy and important goal, Murray writes.)
More here.
