Imagine a pool of 100 people. The richest person has $100, everyone else has $1.
There's a total of $199, and the richest 1% have more than half the total wealth with $100.
I'm not saying this is the distribution of the real world, but that statement alone is not a contradiction.
I’ve met smart people who enjoy intellectual challenge but are low in industriousness so don’t desire the process of monitizing the intellect
Smart people who are low in orderliness so they are too chaotic to focus enough to monitize.
Smart people who have particular skills that a capitalistic society doesn’t value.
And what is the definition of “smart” here? The article spouting off IQ numbers is the bare minimum effort to try and quantise something that in reality has multiple dimensions - fluid intelligence, domain knowledge, wisdom, originality, creativity, all of which are dimensions of smart but not always connected to wealth
All that “Smart == Rich” does is create entitlement and bitterness among the lazy intellectuals and should be stamped out - if you want to be rich, being smart can help, but so much more is required.
Conversely I see not-so-smart people who do make it, because they're confident and believe they'll make it.
I think success is much more dependent on mentality than smarts, but people focus on smarts because it is somewhat quantifiable.
