Professor Ed Dutton “The Jolly Heretic” has often quoted research indicating that our average IQ has been dropping for a long time, because our soft lives mean that foolish behaviour is not punished by Nature in terms of failure to survive and breed replacements.
But even today poor people have enough to do with the challenges in their daily lives and cannot afford luxury show-off beliefs. A life on benefits is no joke and even a small financial setback can throw a family into panic.
The middle class have much less excuse for stupid actions. Looking at the sort of people who adopt and protest fashionable causes that are ill-supported by logic one wonders how seemingly intelligent and well-educated people can behave so, and with such fanaticism.
Our population may be getting stupider on average but one wonders whether that element of the middle class that glues itself to roads, throws soup on paintings, marches in support of mass murderers, neuters itself or its children etc may be getting dafter faster than the underclass.
The Jolly Heretic tells me he is unaware of any research to show this but the suspicion remains.
Is there any longitudinal study of IQ by social class and sub-groupings?
