Paradigms: rich people

Larry Moran describes the problem as Another Evolutionary Paradox? It seems that some anti-evolution folks discovered that wealth is inversely related to number of offspring. They conclude that this means the wealthy are less fit in evolutionary terms which, to them, is a paradox. That paradox can then be used to dismiss evolution as a valid theory.

“The only “puzzle” might be the naive presumption that rich people should have more reproductive success than poor people but we’ve known that this isn’t true for over one hundred years.”

There is also the underlying idea that being wealthy is a matter of genetics. The rich are a special class of people whose attributes are not of their doing but rather of their ancestry. This is the insidious lack of integrity in the anti-evolution thesis in the example.

Class envy is an ancient phenomena. It is the ‘American Dream’ that makes lie to it. But even the success of so many in achieving that dream in parts from small to large don’t make a dent in the envy. That envy is so cancerous that it blinds people to the link between the immigration problem and people who can see wealth as something other than an inherent attribute of a selected class of people.