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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   26436 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 15, 2024

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Why ask it that way?

Most people in Israel are from Eastern Europe/Russia/The Middle East. How does Israel's GDP per capita compare with those areas? Answer: It's massively higher.

How does the GDP per capita of American Jews compare with non-Jewish Americans? Answer: It's massively higher.

Is there a Jewish Ashkenazi group anywhere in the world that doesn't massively outperform their countrymen economically? No, there isn't.

Here's another way to look at it. Put 10 million random Americans into a tiny strip of arid land with no resources and check how they are doing in 70 years. The results wouldn't be pretty. Israel has outperformed to an almost unbelievable degree.

Is there a Jewish group anywhere in the world that doesn't massively outperform their countrymen economically? No, there isn't.

Yes, absolutely. Sephardic and Mizrahi jews don't noticeably outperform their countrymen, and they especially don't do it in Israel. IIRC (but I may be wrong, so don't trust this without verification) it was actually the Christians in the middle-east who outperformed economically and on IQ tests.

Here's another way to look at it. Put 10 million random Americans into a tiny strip of arid land with no resources and check how they are doing in 70 years.

This is a silly hypothetical because you have selection effects for Israel which aren't actually completely random. Exactly who counts as American is different as well - are you drawing this 10 million-strong cohort from the America of today or America as it was when Israel was founded? But even if you correct for that, throw in all the resources that Israel receives from America and the jewish Diaspora and the random Americans would most likely be doing better, if only because they don't have to support a population of non-working, non-military serving orthodox.

selection effects for Israel

Many Jews remained in the US and Europe, but hundreds of thousands were forced out of Arab countries and now there are practically no Jews in Arab countries. The selection effects were importing a lot of mizrahis which you consider unremarkable.

The selection effects were importing a lot of mizrahis which you consider unremarkable.

And from a HBD perspective, they largely are unremarkable compared to others. But the point remains that the forces bringing them and the Ashkenazim to Israel were not random at all, which is one of the reasons why it would be silly to compare them to a random selection of Americans.

I don't see how you can argue for selection effects for mizrahim when they were entirely expelled from the Arab world which was their home and are now almost all in Israel. Such a uniform phenomenon is like the opposite of a selection effect, unless you are thinking they were selected for being Jews.

Because they weren't entirely expelled - there remain populations of mizrahim in various countries, and according to wikipedia at least several of them end up moving to the USA instead. I do agree that they were under less severe pressures than the ashkenazim, but that doesn't mean there wasn't any such pressure at all.

There are approximately zero mizrahim left in the middle east outside Israel. The only country with an appreciable population is iran. The population of mizrahim in israel is something like 5x greater than the rest of the world combined. Again, maybe you can say that picking 5/6ths of a population is a selection effect, but that seems like a weak claim.

I don't think my argument really suffers at all from making that adjustment, so sure.

Yes, absolutely. Sephardic and Mizrahi jews don't noticeably outperform their countrymen,

Sorry, I thought it was assumed we are talking about Ashkenazi. My bad.

For the record, I don't believe that practicing Judaism magically make you more intelligent. There was obvious some sort of genetic funnel in the Middle Ages in Europe.

Sephardic and Mizrahi jews don't noticeably outperform their countrymen, and they especially don't do it in Israel.

Sephardic Jews and Jewish converts to Christianity (Marranos) certainly were overrepresented in positions of influence, power and wealth in the Latin world, and later two of the most prominent Anglosphere Jewish politicians of the 19th century (Disraeli and Judah Benjamin) were Sephardic. Sephardim were extremely overrepresented among the affluent middle classes in Thessaloniki, Istanbul and elsewhere before WW1. And Mizrachi Jews were also very overrepresented in powerful positions, both as court advisers and as bankers, retailers, department store magnates, theater owners and so on across Egypt and the rest of Islamic North Africa, and in Persia and the Levant at times. And even before the colonial period were overrepresented among courtiers, bankers, jewelers, merchants and so on.

But again, the baseline gentile host populations have / had lower performance, so this ‘works’ even if Mizrachim average, say, 95, provided those around them are 80 or 85. The Lebanese do extremely well in Central America, but badly in Australia - the difference is a host population at 80 vs a host population at 100.

That's really interesting - I hadn't seen any sources which made the claim that they were overrepresented in those areas but I freely admit to not looking at the situation throughout history. Do you have any good links for more information on that topic? Most of the sources I can find compare Sephardim/Misrahim to Ashkenazim, which really doesn't do them any favours.

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