Nothing in life is guaranteed, but some things sure stack the deck. Average skills, hard work and a bit of ambition will greatly increase your chances of a comfortable life.

"Increase your chances" is not the same as "guarantee."

It seems a bit nieve to think that you need to have an above average IQ to make it into Middleclass society.

A person who manages to accumulate a million dollars is far beyond middle class and a wage of 2x the median household income is well beyond middle class.

The comment you are replying to was not saying that.

IQ is highly predictive of future outcomes. Where are you getting you data from?

IQ is highly predictive of the outcomes of future IQ tests, and to a degree academic performance (though much of academic measurement is based on similar theories, so this is unsurprising)

There's much less corellation when you consider "future success" in terms of things like job performance, financial success, happiness, et cetera. IQ is obviously measuring something, because IQ tests are quite reliable, but the thing it's measuring does not seem to show a strong corellation with a lot of real-world goals.

It's one of those measurements that people _want_ to use a lot, and so it sees a lot of use, but the idea that you can boil general intelligence down to one number is fallacious to begin with, so many of the things it's used for are not useful.

This is literally one of the things the post we're commenting on is saying. High IQ people are not automatically successful and whatever effect high IQ may or may not have on future success is easily lost in other, more significant, factors.

> whatever effect high IQ may or may not have on future success is easily lost in other, more significant, factors.

IQ correlates with income more than any other factor. When you take away the correlation between socioeconomic situation and IQ (which admittedly there is), it correlates even more.

High IQ people are not automatically successful in the same way that tall people are not automatically basketball players.

You're making a lot of claims contrary to generally accepted research. It's invaluable, and not in the good way.

It's common sense. I did say barring accidents and having an actual life. The below is conservative.

1. Pick practical degree, because you are poor and anything else is luxury.

2. Work in college, because you are poor. End up with 30k of debt because you are dumn and didn't get a scholarship.

3. Make 40k a year. (22% fed, let's say 4% state), 30k net. -10k rent, -10k expenses, 10k left.

4. Pay off college by 25.

5. Save up 50k by 30.

6. Masters degree by 32 with no debt.

7. Increase income to 100k by 45.

8. Congrats middle class pleb. (Which I am, though this isn't my story)

I can tell that that isn't your story, because there's a lot of conjecture in there that isn't supported by the data. Even just starting with #1, the ability to pick a degree at _all_ is a privilege not automatically afforded to everybody. Should you be able to do so, then working during college is strongly linked to worse outcomes, as you have less time to dedicate to learning - thus making #3 harder as you're competing against people who have had better chances than you. If you can't do 3, you can't do 4, 5, 6, or 7, and 8 is predicated on that.

It might be "common sense" to you, but it's directly contradicted by all the data.

"the ability to pick a degree at _all_ is a privilege not automatically afforded to everybody."

I completely agree that this is a huge issue. A large problem for kids from "bad" families is not having any idea what they "should" be doing, and by the time they figure it out, they may have already ruined their life and missed opportunities.