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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GPS Info who wrote (205416)	10/8/2006 7:45:35 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 281500

It has already been done; GDP versus IQ: lagriffedulion.f2s.com Smart Fraction Theory II "Why Asians Lag" Scroll to the bottom for the bottom line. <I was thinking along the lines of measuring Einstein’s IQ while he was in college and accumulating these scores to evaluate GDPs versus IQs.> I did a similar analysis, but on an individual basis, 20 years ago when my job with BP Oil involved lead in petrol and the effect on brains [and health]. I wondered what the economic damage of having lead in petrol was. So, I figured it out. I'd have to dig into my filing cabinets [pile of rubble in the attic] to find the actual calculation, but as I remember it, the cost was something like ... hmmm, I can't remember, but I think it was something like $100 per person per year [on average]. Which in the USA would be $30 bn per year. If we treated that as return on capital, at 10%, it would be a negative investment of $300 bn. If it was $100 per person per year [which was for 0.25 IQ point loss as being the average lead damage] then that would be $400 per IQ point or, for 20 IQ points, $8,000 per year. Hmmm. It must have been more than $100 per person per year as getting from IQ 100 to IQ 120 does more than increase average incomes by $8,000 per year. I'd guess it's more like an $80,000 per year differential [in the USA] between average IQ 100 salaries and IQ 120 salaries. Google probably has data. So, maybe it was $1,000 per person per year. That seems about right. Or maybe it was somewhere between. As you can see, lead in petrol was a huge blunder in the 20th century. The benefits were even questionable as cars got lead polluting their oil ["grey paint" was a problem in the 1960s and before] and lead increasing octane requirement due to combustion chamber deposits, [which required carcinogenic scavenger additives to avoid the worst of it], as well as spark plug contamination and lead poisoning of exhaust pipe workers and mechanics. An enterprising bunch of lawyers should be able to bring the biggest class action suit ever, making cigarette damages look trivial. Cigarettes do their damage at the end of life [literally], but I mean mostly in old people who have had nearly all their life anyway and only a fraction of people die from smoking [only a third smoked for decades, and not all of them got serious harm or death from their smoking]. Lead in brains does lifelong economic harm, not to mention loss of personal well-being and enjoyment of life, to nearly everyone. There has been a lot of huffing and puffing about asbestosis too, which is also utterly trivial [overall] compared with the harm done by lead damage to brains. Though, I hasten to add, for the individuals affected, asbestosis was a LOT worse than losing 0.25 IQ points. Lead was small harm to everyone, whereas some damaging things, such as benzene causing myeloid leukaemia, do no harm to most people but kill the unlucky - they are an either or situation. There was some concealment of the harm that was done, in my opinion, so it's not that "Nobody could have imagined the harm that was being done". Associated Octel wrote one particular thing which I consider was deliberately misleading and really annoyed me [as I was trying to figure out what was going on and I didn't need obfuscating dishonesty]. I see John Browne [BP boss] is to be interviewed in the USA within 3 weeks. He could be asked about the damage from lead in petrol while they are at it. Mqurice