Talk:Gregory Clark (economist)

A poor article

This article presents only a sketchy and not wholly accurate of Clark's intricate argument. It appears to be based mainly on the New York Times article cited.

It would be helpful if people wanting to take up space here discussing it would read Clark's book first. 12.214.62.215 (talk) 21:33, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Illogical Thesis

From the article: In Britain, however, as disease continually killed off poorer members of society, their positions in society were taken over by the sons of the wealthy, who were less violent, more literate, and more productive.

The wealthy are less violent? Didn't kings depend on violence for gaining, securing and maintaining their thrones, and didn't lords gain their lands through military service on behalf of the King? Didn't those that were successful in violent confrontations gain wealth while those who were unsuccessful lose their lives? It seems that to get to the top level of pre-Industrial British society, being skilled at violence would be quite helpful.

And if the British became industrialized due to their genetic superiority, why did industrialization spread to the rest of Europe, North America and eventually most of Asia? The genes of so much of the World's people couldn't possibly change so much over a few generations, so other factors must be at work.

Anyone who believes Clark's thesis should take a look at the Sunday Times Rich list. Most of the self-made billionaires are foreign born. The Brits aren't even the best at making money in their own country.

Clark's thesis may be "provocative"; but I'm not impressed. It's illogical and seems to be a subtle defense of racism rather than sound economic reasoning. --76.105.3.220 08:30, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I suspect you didn't read his book. When he speaks of the wealthy, he makes a specific point of excluding the aristocracy and including the more numerous business class; he also tries to empirically demonstrate that they had more offspring surviving to adulthood by analyzing wills of poor and rich.

Your second point also seems to misunderstand him. He only very tentatively suggests that there was any physical or genetic dimension to why the rich surviving was important; he puts much more weight on memetic transmission of values and attitudes of industriousness, avarice, temperance, etc. to offspring. It's pretty obvious that such attitudes could spread to other nations (just compare travelers' accounts of Chinese indolence and sloth to accounts by, say, Thomas Friedman today of their work ethic!). --Gwern (contribs) 05:04 9 December 2007 (GMT)

Poorly Written

The following sentence:

That the book discharges Western politics from every responsibility for the poverty most people on earth are living (and also doesn't refer in the economic history to events like the oppressive aspects of colonialism), seems to be a reason that not least made its theses attractive to some circles, stated Christof Dejung from the University of Konstanz.[2]

seems poorly written. It is difficult to follow. It seems that at least part of the reason it's hard to follow is that it is quoting Christof Dejung. But if it's quoting him, shouldn't there be quote marks indicating the portion that's quoted and the portion that's paraphrasing? If it's all paraphrase, it should be much better written.

Clark's guardian article inclusion

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/04/social-mobility-equality-class-society — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.14.49.84 (talk) 21:11, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

 Done Thanks, I've just covered it in the The Son Also Rises (book) article, which I recently split out from this article.--greenrd (talk) 17:09, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

WP:DUE weight and WP:TONE of recent edits

Despite the inclusion of a few secondary sources, I would argue that these large additions represent an WP:UNDUE inclusion. The bio now reads, to my eyes, more like a resume (see WP:NOTRESUME) or book report. I'm all for including more detail on this person's work –– emphasizing specifically those aspects that are discussed in WP:SECONDARY sources –– but it needs to be done with an eye to encyclopedic brevity.

As we discuss this, it would be helpful if the three brand new accounts –– AAHN458, Caidentobias13, and KeaganBeeravolu –– who just added this material, and who haven't edited any other articles besides this BLP, would indicate whether they have a personal connection with the subject. Thanks, Generalrelative (talk) 00:08, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi Generalrelative. AAHN458, Caidentobias13, and I (as well as 2 others) are currently working on a project to edit a Wikipedia article on a topic/person that relates to our class. Our focus is on adding information on his research which we have been working on and were just now adding our finished work, so if you have any advice on how we can bring what we've done more in line with Wikipedia's requirements we would appreciate it. Our current idea for this is reorganizing our additions by topic rather than article so it looks less like a resume. Thanks, KeaganBeeravolu (talk) 01:38, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

Ah, that makes sense. We do sometimes run into similar issues when a teacher gives an assignment to expand a Wikipedia article. The problem is that the imperatives of such an assignment are not always in line with our policies and guidelines. In this case, I will draw your attention to our policy on Biographies of living persons, in particular the section WP:BLPRS. There are whole sections that have been added to this biography which violate that policy.

Note too that while I don't see anything particularly contentious in what was added, this scholar appears to be involved in controversy surrounding eugenics and purported connections between genetics and social class. Extra caution is warranted when introducing material on these contentious topics.

Since I don't have the time to sort through your edits today, separating the acceptable from the unacceptable, I posted over at the BLP noticeboard to see if some other experienced editors care to take a look. Generalrelative (talk) 15:42, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

Please be aware that students working on school projects are required to comply with Wikipedia's Policies and guidelines just as are all other editors. There is no special leniency for student editors. Especially when it comes to a Biography of a living person, it is best to develop new content in a user sandbox page until it is properly referenced and policy compliant, and only then move the content into the actual article. Cullen328 (talk) 18:39, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi @KeaganBeeravolu, AAHN458, and Caidentobias12: Are you in a college or university class in the US or Canada? If so, my organization, m:Wiki Education Foundation, exists to support instructors and students doing class assignments on Wikipedia. We provide training and guidance so you don't run into troubles like these. Can you encourage your instructor to visit teach.wikiedu.org or email us at contactwikiedu.org for assistance on this project? We are happy to help! --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:03, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

I've removed most of the content added over the past day. All of the summaries of primary articles by Clark were WP:UNDUE, as we should look to reliable, secondary sources for their summaries. The secondary, primarily academic sources were a mixed bag. Here's what I found by looking at them:

• Stephenson/The Economic History Review: Clark is cited once (in a footnote)
• Vickers and Ziebarth/The Journal of Law & Economics: Clark is mentioned once in the article
• Jacks, O'Rourke, and Williamson/The Review of Economics and Statistics: Clark is cited mostly in tables but mentioned a few times in the article; Clark's paper is 1 of 66 sources, whereas several academics are cited 2-4 times
• Sascha, Hornung, and Woessmann/American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics: Clark is mentioned twice, both times in a string of other academics
• Holder/UC Davis: Clark is only mentioned in the introduction, and Holder never references him directly that I could see
• Friedman/New York Times: Clark's book is the focus of the book review
• Broadberry, Campbell, and van Leeuwen/Explorations in Economic History: Clark is mentioned 25 times in the article; sometimes his numbers are slightly high, sometimes slightly low, other times similar to other estimates, and a "runs counter to the weight of recent scholarship"; much of the latter part of the article is about Clark's numbers
• Broadberry, etc./British Economic Growth, 1270–1870: Clark appears to be mentioned only 14 times in the entire book
• Solon/The Economic Journal: Clark mentioned throughout article, and the article is primarily about Clark's book
• Corak/milescorak.com is a self-published source, so unusable per WP:BLPSPS
• Heckman/Science: doesn't mention or cite Clark that I could see
• Haugh/glasgowtimes.co.uk is a reliable, secondary source about Clark

Because of this, I've kept most of the content cited to the New York Times, Explorations in Economic History, The Economic Journal, and glasgowtimes.co.uk. Whether the content needs to be updated I'll leave to everyone else. Woodroar (talk) 19:10, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

Well done, Woodroar. Cullen328 (talk) 20:29, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, very much appreciated! Generalrelative (talk) 21:41, 29 September 2024 (UTC)