Individuals with aggressive, rule-breaking and anti-social tendencies are over-represented among [welfare] benefit recipients.

[Axulus]

It’s safe to say that, among the progressive left, the House of Un-American Activities has no defenders. Which makes it all the more ironic that McCarthyism is alive and well and being practiced by the liberal intelligentsia. Last week, I wrote about the punishment meted out to Napoleon Chagnon, the evolutionary anthropologist whose work on the indigenous population of the Amazonian rain forest challenged liberal pieties about the goodness of man in his prelapsarian state. Chagnon was essentially blacklisted by the people who control the anthropology industry. This week I want to highlight another victim of liberal McCarthy-ism — Dr Adam Perkins, a lecturer in the neurobiology of personality at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London. Like Chagnon, Perkins is a social scientist whose research findings pose a direct challenge to one of the central planks of left-wing ideology.

Over the past five years, he has accumulated a mass of evidence about the personalities of welfare claimants and concluded that individuals with aggressive, rule-breaking and anti-social tendencies — what he calls the ‘employment–resistant personality profile’ — are over-represented among benefit recipients. He also found that their children are likely to share those traits, which helps explain why poverty has a tendency to be passed down from one generation to the next.

Now, none of that will surprise anyone who has spent time among the long-term unemployed or their -progeny, such as the police, social workers and teachers. You might even say it’s bleedin’ obvious. But to the progressive left, Perkins’s research is sacrilege. It runs counter to the anti-capitalist narrative that portrays the ever-expanding underclass as ‘victims’ whose only sin is to be born on the wrong side of the tracks. We’re back to the myth of the noble savage.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/...enefit-claimants-and-the-left-shuts-you-down/

 

[bigfield]

The study itself is interesting--information like this enables governments and NGOs to develop better programs to break the generational cycle of poverty.

As social workers, carers, foster parents and teachers can all attest, many children are undeniably victims of the circumstances of their upbringing. We deny science if we expect these children to spontaneously reform themselves once reaching adulthood or write them all off as hopeless cases with heredity mental disorders, doomed to perpetual poverty.

On the other hand, Young's commentary about 'liberal McCarthyism' is inane. According to the article, Perkins has only enraged one unnamed academic:

Colleagues with whom Perkins had collaborated in the past warned him off publication, worried about being associated with such a heretic; and a powerful American professor was so enraged by his conclusions that he lobbied for him to be banned from the conference circuit.

 

[Canard DuJour]

I doubt anyone of any political persuasion is in the slightest bit susprised that "aggressive, rule-breaking, anti-social.. employment resistant personality" types are over-represented among welfare recipients. Marx had a name for them : the "lumpenproletariat", and nothing but scorn.

Neither is this any counterargument to the idea of a growing underclass of welfare recipients as capitalism's victims - not least since most welfare recipients are now actually employed.

And a quick google reveals that Dr Perkins isn't in trouble for the trivial claim implied above, but the rather more radical claim that said personality traits are caused by and more prevalent due to welfare.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

challenge to one of the central planks of left-wing ideology.

A conveniently imaginary plank.

You'd expect an over representation of anti-social people among the unemployed*, as within prison or the boardroom.

*Such traits make finding and holding a job more difficult.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

So I read the article and found this:

A senior editor of Nature, one of the leading academic journals, refused to consider it for review because she regards scientific research into the personalities of the long-term unemployed as ‘unethical’, and a sociology professor whom the publishers had asked to peer-review the book refused to do so on the grounds that any book linking benefit dependency to personality must be nonsense because personality is a ‘capitalist construct’.

But yet refuses to name the "senior editor" or place the "unethical" quote into context of a journal that does not accept social science research papers. Why would they review it?

Second one potential reviewer refused to review it and there is now a giant left-wing conspiracy?

 

[Derec]

The idea that mental traits are to a great extent passed down genetically does not fit into far-left world view.
Of course, that has lefty pedigree on the Left. Stalin/USSR did not like Darwinian evolution and genetic hertitability, strongly preferring  Lysenkoism.

 

[Derec]

The study itself is interesting--information like this enables governments and NGOs to develop better programs to break the generational cycle of poverty.

Like for example, not encouraging the poor to have as many children as possible, as the current welfare/EITC/child tax credit/food stamp model does.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

It’s safe to say that, among the progressive left, the House of Un-American Activities has no defenders. Which makes it all the more ironic that McCarthyism is alive and well and being practiced by the liberal intelligentsia. Last week, I wrote about the punishment meted out to Napoleon Chagnon, the evolutionary anthropologist whose work on the indigenous population of the Amazonian rain forest challenged liberal pieties about the goodness of man in his prelapsarian state. Chagnon was essentially blacklisted by the people who control the anthropology industry. This week I want to highlight another victim of liberal McCarthy-ism — Dr Adam Perkins, a lecturer in the neurobiology of personality at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London. Like Chagnon, Perkins is a social scientist whose research findings pose a direct challenge to one of the central planks of left-wing ideology.

Over the past five years, he has accumulated a mass of evidence about the personalities of welfare claimants and concluded that individuals with aggressive, rule-breaking and anti-social tendencies — what he calls the ‘employment–resistant personality profile’ — are over-represented among benefit recipients. He also found that their children are likely to share those traits, which helps explain why poverty has a tendency to be passed down from one generation to the next.

Now, none of that will surprise anyone who has spent time among the long-term unemployed or their -progeny, such as the police, social workers and teachers. You might even say it’s bleedin’ obvious. But to the progressive left, Perkins’s research is sacrilege. It runs counter to the anti-capitalist narrative that portrays the ever-expanding underclass as ‘victims’ whose only sin is to be born on the wrong side of the tracks. We’re back to the myth of the noble savage.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/...enefit-claimants-and-the-left-shuts-you-down/

Is this a genetic argument? Or in anyway biological? Something that simply cannot be helped? These people are just born this way?

 

[Nice Squirrel]

The idea that mental traits are to a great extent passed down genetically does not fit into far-left world view.
Of course, that has lefty pedigree on the Left. Stalin/USSR did not like Darwinian evolution and genetic hertitability, strongly preferring  Lysenkoism.

What? Is it suddenly the 1930s?

- - - Updated - - -

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/...enefit-claimants-and-the-left-shuts-you-down/

Is this a genetic argument? Or in anyway biological? Something that simply cannot be helped? These people are just born this way?

It's what scientist call a "political argument".

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I love watching strawmen burn.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

I love watching strawmen burn.

Aw come on, neurobiologist Dr Adam Perkins is a victim of the new McCarthyism!

Here is Joseph McCarthy reviewing his book:
http://drjamesthompson.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-welfare-trait.html

"Perkins rightly draws attention to the work of WL Tonge and colleagues on 66 poor families in Sheffield, 33 of them problem families. This should have been displayed in a summary table. Problem families were more impulsive, irresponsible, apathetic and aggressive than controls. In modern jargon, less conscientious and agreeable. None of these differences were due to income or local job opportunities."

"Perkins sees the Hart and Ridley (1995) study as persuasive that parents, by their lack of involvement, create disadvantage in their children. However, the results are mostly due to parental levels of education, a proxy for intelligence, which the children inherit." <-earlier the author points out that no intelligence tests were given, but were assumed based upon level of education obtained, which is common to be similar to the parents across societies. College educated parents tend to raise college educated children.

"Indeed, the general conclusion that about 100 years of welfare legislation could significantly change human personality by genetics alone seems premature."

 

[PyramidHead]

So lemme get this straight: people who are so poor that they can't support themselves or their families tend to display symptoms of frustration, anger, and panic? What could be the reason for such a bizarre correlation?

 

[prideandfall]

The idea that mental traits are to a great extent passed down genetically does not fit into far-left world view.

actually it does - because 'the left' as a general rule view people as a construct of factors and posit that to a certain extent some mental traits are outside of one's control.
it's the right that has this militant faith based insistence that everything a person is or everything a person does is their own choice, and that boot-strap pulling is possible and everyone could be a billionaire if they just got off their lazy ass and worked for it.

once again, you're taking what is obviously and blatantly a ridiculous right wing assertion and just going "nuh uh liberals did it!" and it's just as pathetic and shallow now as it has been every other time you've done it.

 

[laughing dog]

I'll bet if this researcher had studied CEOs, he'd get similar results.

 

[Rhea]

The idea that mental traits are to a great extent passed down genetically does not fit into far-left world view.
Of course, that has lefty pedigree on the Left. Stalin/USSR did not like Darwinian evolution and genetic hertitability, strongly preferring  Lysenkoism.

You are wrong about what the far left thinks.
Utterly wrong.

 

[ronburgundy]

I don't know if his data supports it, but he is making claims that go way beyond a mere correlation between being poor and employment-resistant personalities.

He is claiming that poverty and unemployment themselves fail to account for this relationship, suggesting that it welfare itself has a more direct relationship with such personalities. He is claiming that getting welfare causes poor people to have more kids than they otherwise would and that these kids are prone toward a employment-resistant personality, both because they inherit a tendency from their parents and because their parents and welfare itself create an environment that contributes to such traits.

I'm sure he is doing more than just looking at a correlation, but as seen in the gender pay gap thread, more complex multi-variate analyses do not automatically mean more valid causal inferences.

I haven't found the actual research article, but I'm having trouble of thinking of an analytic approach that would sufficiently rule out confounding factors that determine which poor people go on welfare and for how long. A compelling case would likely need some time series data with a specific welfare policy change, showing that the same sub-population of welfare recipients changed their fertility rates as a function of welfare policy.

 

[Alcoholic Actuary]

I suppose the children in Flint were genetically predisposed to having poisoned water too?

aa

 

[fromderinside]

I suppose the children in Flint were genetically predisposed to having poisoned water too?

aa

Seems that fucking McCarthy with his camel's nose finds a way to climb into every conservative description of liberal or progressive nature.

Personality? What the fuck is that? Oh wait. Someone has the idea that sociology is a science.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

I suppose the children in Flint were genetically predisposed to having poisoned water too?

aa

And it's AA for the dunk and the WIN!!!

 

[ronburgundy]

I suppose the children in Flint were genetically predisposed to having poisoned water too?

aa

And it's AA for the dunk and the WIN!!!

If there is a contest for biggest strawman or least valid response, then yes, this wins.

There are reasons to be skeptical of the OP, but this ain't one.

If everything in the OP were true and well supported by the data, it would in no way imply anything like that. There is no sound intellectual basis to presume any claims in the OP are wrong, just a basis to be skeptical that the data exist to show that it is right.