Elon’s meme magic
There is a 1949 science fiction novel (Project Mars: A Technical Tale) about how to build a Mars colony, and it includes this part: Amazing, it was written by none…
Give women what they want: more babies
Central to the decline of the West and now almost all high income countries is that they have too low fertility. Just a reminder from the prior post: Why the…
On genocide and the worst modern ideology
Some time ago I read Bradley Campbell's The Geometry of Genocide: A Study in Pure Sociology. Like his other books, it's short, to the point, and well worth reading. First,…
Good immigrants, bad immigrants: Dutch edition
People have been posting results from this new Dutch study of immigration, so I thought I would cover it here to increase the reach. van de Beek, J., Hartog, J.,…
Selective migration and regression towards the mean
There is much discussion in these days about immigration to the West, and in particular, skilled migration to the United States. Critics of migration often point to regression towards the…
Somalis in the USA: also not a success
Western countries are experimenting with solutions to their population aging problem. For instance, one of the countries with the worst age pyramids is Germany: Since the welfare state is effectively…
Norwegian cognitive inequality and its social consequences
There's a new kickass study based on Norwegian register data: Bratsberg, B., Fjell, A. M. M., Rogeberg, O. J., Skirbekk, V. F., & Walhovd, K. B. (2024). Differences in early…
The myth of Danish Social Democrats being hard on immigration
One can find quite a number of news articles like this one in Politico from 2024: Or this one in Foreign Policy from 2021: Or this one in The Irish…
The ethnic meritocracy in the United Kingdom
Some of my colleagues have a new paper out: Te Nijenhuis, J., Pesta, B. J., & Fuerst, J. G. R. (n.d.). General mental ability testing and adverse impact in the…
Within vs. between group correlations
Let's think about causality and group-level comparisons. Here I mean any type of group, whether nations, sub-national divisions (states, regions, provinces, communes), religious classifications, races, or any other grouping. Sometimes…