Replace race with class background, they argue. Class-based quotas simply miss the point about what causes economic inequality. Today, the U.S. probably does a better job of helping high IQ individuals from all segments of society move up the ladder than any country in history. So analysts find huge economic inequality not just within pairs of strangers coming from the same class, but also within pairs of siblings coming from the same home. Charles Murray's study of 710 pairs of siblings found that those with IQ's below 90 average only half the income of their brothers and sisters with IQ's above 110.
Nobody wants their hospital to turn down smart surgeons and hire more stupid ones.
Nor is it clear that quotas do their intended beneficiaries much good. Consider a young man with a strong body, nimble hands, and a decent work ethic. Let's also imagine that reading and writing aren't his strong suits. Cesar Chavez's success at winning higher wages and safer working conditions for stoop-laborers in the 1960s and 1970s was the result of government policies like President Eisenhower's Operation Wetback deportations that dramatically cut the number of Mexican migrant workers in the 1950s and 1960s. But after the floodgates opened up again, millions of Mexican immigrants undermined the United Farm Workers' power.