Has anybody read: "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen? I haven't, but was wondering if anyone was using this as a reference in this discussion. Here is a link that discusses some of the findings:
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/sft.htm
I'm not sure if it discusses "genius" IQ/income correlation, but I'd be interested to see that.
They did find a correlation between a nations IQ and it's GDP. However, they stated that low GDP could be the cause of lower IQ scores, while low IQ could cause lower GDP. (A little bit confusing.)
Another site (i forget which one) that discussed the subject, had data that showed that IQ only made up 1/3 of the income-making abilities. The other 2/3 were grouped as Emotional Intelligence (EI). This includes a person's social skills and ambition.
So what the "geniuses don't make money" people are saying is that IQ is inversely related to EI (or EQ) at the high IQ levels.
Daniel Goleman wrote a book called "The Emotionally Intelligent Workplace". (Link to excerpt:
http://www.sq.4mg.com/GolemanEI-IQ.htm) The correlation he found between IQ and EI was very low. He states that IQ mainly predicts what profession an individual can hold a job in. Once people are in a given job, role, or profession, EI emerges as a more powerful predictor of who succeeds and who does not.
I stand by my argument: if 1% of the population are geniuses, than about 1% of the people making big money will be geniuses.