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—“CURT: WHY ARE PERSIAN AMERICANS SO MUCH WEALTHIER THAN ARAB AMERICANS?”— There are some questions that you should not ask because they produce answers you will not like. It is my job to answer uncomfortable questions so I’ll give you the respect of the correct answer, if you’ll respect that it might be unpleasant. We were horrified by the Galilean Revolution but we adapted to it anyway. In the west we were horrified by the Darwinian Revolution. But we adapted to it anyway. We were somewhat horrified by the consequences of industrialization but we adapted to it anyway. So some knowledge must be adapted to if we want to prosper. Persians divided from common ancestors with Europeans a long time ago, but are the ethnic group closest to West Eurasians (Europeans) – They integrate well, tend toward professional occupations, and demonstrate relatively high trust versus their other levantine neighbors. They have an extraordinary history of intelligence and scholarship despite the destruction to their civilization, language, culture, and demographics by the Arab conquest. So they are ‘compatible’ with American Civilization. Persians, like the Ashkenazi, are high performance ethnic group. They will do better in any country no matter where they go. The Indians and Chinese start with very large populations, and their best talent travels the world. They are consistently high performers. The difference is that Persians and Ashkenazi produce asymmetric success despite their small numbers. Some groups consist largely of the upper genetic classes, some the middle, and some the lower. Economic, scientific, and artistic performance corresponds directly with the demographic constitution of an ethnic group. So no matter what anyone does, the fact that some ethnic groups consist almost exclusively of the genetic middle and upper classes means that they will always statistically outperform those groups with large underclasses. It’s just math. So the differences in performances of ethnic groups is not so much due to genetic differences between groups but the scale of the underclass and the drag that the underclasses put on language, culture, institutions, and knowledge. The problem that produces inequality isn’t race, or ethnicity, it’s class. Some groups have vast underclasses, and some have nearly eliminated them. The Arab conquest was the most catastrophic event in human history, destroying the four great civilizations of the ancient world, causing 500M dead, and creating a 1400 year dark age from which only a remote corner of northern europe was able to rescue the world from. And the side effect of that civilization was a rapid expansion of the size of the underclass due to the inability to develop a middle class, due to low trust, due to tribalism. Outbreeding with the slaves didn’t help much either. It just made it worse.