US Officials Flunk Test On Civic Knowledge

A test on civic knowledge given to elected officials proved that they are slightly less knowledgeable than the uninformed people who voted them into office. Elected officials scored a 44 percent while ordinary citizens managed an amazing 49 percent on the 33 questions compiled by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. "It is disturbing enough that the general public failed ISI's civic literacy test, but when you consider the even more dismal scores of elected officials, you have to be concerned," said Josiah Bunting, chairman of the National Civic Literacy Board at ISI. The three branches of government aren't the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria?

Comments

I'd care more

[thebrett]

If they had the text of this 'civic test' available.

Re:I'd care more

[ep32g79]

Perhaps this is what you are looking for: http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/resources/quiz.aspx

Re:I'd care more

[JMZero]

I really hope that wasn't the test in question - there's very few questions there that shouldn't be obvious; just from random pop culture you should be able to get more than half. If I had spent any time learning American history (which I probably would have if I was American), I would assume it would have been even easier.

Re:I'd care more

[ep32g79]

It is, and here is the breakdown question by question:
http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/2008/additional_finding.html

Re:I'd care more

[Qzukk]

Taking the test, I have to say that I think they may have gotten confused, what with high school teaching one semester of economics and one semester of government these days. Otherwise, why would I need to define "profit"? :P

I got 31/33. Missed the questions on Puritans and Stephen Douglas. A few of them have fairly loaded options that made it trivial to guess the right one, I probably guessed at another 3-4.

Re:I'd care more

[iJusten]

I't hard to believe the averages are so low. I got ~82%, and all I know of America I learned from television. And Internet, I suppose.

Re:I'd care more

[KevinKnSC]

If you're going to give them a hard time about that, you probably shouldn't confuse the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. :)

Re:I'd care more

[CrimsonAvenger]

32/33. Braindumped on the balanced budget question - deficit is zero if taxes and spending are equal, not debt. Rest of it was a cakewalk. Could have answered every one of the history questions by the time I was 12, and the rest by the time I was 14.

Re:I'd care more

[Aphoxema]

Ugh, I only got 69%, there was one set of answers I got wrong because I misread them, but the fact is if I didn't have a definite answer then there's still something wrong.

I don't know how I really compare, though. I'm a high school dropout who missed nearly 2/3rds of her elementary attendance (and they allowed me to because I was in an 'emotionally disabled' class) and I started in a community college a year ago.

Re:I'd care more

[bonkeydcow]

Yeah i was just in a hurry to get my post up, I didn't confuse them really. I scored an 88% on their test so...

Re:I'd care more

[characterZer0]

I have not taken a history course since my last one in high school ten years ago. I have no particular interest in history. I got 31 right. That the voters and officials are doing so badly is a good sign that something has gone wrong with both our education system and our democracy.

Re:I'd care more

[mariushm]

"You answered 15 out of 33 correctly â" 45.45 %"

and I'm not even American or interested in becoming American, just filled it because I was curious.

I don't know what to say except that this kind of test should be passed by anyone reading about American history for a couple of days.

Re:I'd care more

[Kintanon]

I got an 84.85%
I missed the following:
Question #7 - D. Gettysburg Address
Question #8 - C. appoint additional Supreme Court justices who shared his views
Question #13 - E. certain permanent moral and political truths are accessible to human reason
Question #30 - C. decreasing taxes and increasing spending
Question #33 - D. tax per person equals government spending per person

Considering that I have a terrible memory and most of the things on that quiz I haven't thought about in over a decade I find it unacceptable for anyone to score lower.

Re:I'd care more

[tylerni7]

I apologize for writing in all caps, here, but let me just say WHAT THE FUCK.

Each question has between 4 and 5 options, some questions, like 19, show elected officials at about 10%.
That means if they picked a random answer, they would be correct twice as often.
I'll conceed that it wasn't the easiest question there, and I can understand low scores, but.... seriously?

Re:I'd care more

[Mr. Slippery]

I have to say that I think they may have gotten confused, what with high school teaching one semester of economics and one semester of government these days. Otherwise, why would I need to define "profit"?

Because this "test" is a bit of right-wing propaganda, which seeks to conflate conservative doctrine with actual facts about our government. (Or is there an answer to "Free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than government's centralized planning because:" or "International trade and specialization most often lead to which of the following?" hidden somewhere in the Constitution that I've missed?)

The "Intercollegiate Studies Institute" evolved out of William Bennett's Madison Center for Educational Affairs and Irving Kristol's Institute for Educational Affairs.

Re:I'd care more

[randyest]

Riiight. Nice save attempt, but no one believes it. Sorry!

Re:I'd care more

[janeuner]

If taxes equal government spending, then:
A. government debt is zero
B. printing money no longer causes inflation
C. government is not helping anybody
D. tax per person equals government spending per person
E. tax loopholes and special-interest spending are absent

Umm, wtf? Where is None of the Above?

Re:I'd care more

[Dave Tucker Online]

Some questions were obviously chosen because there are specific misconceptions regarding that issue. For example, the president has the ability to declare war, doesn't he? After all, our presidents have been sending troops all over the world for decades without congressional approval. But that is wrong. Only congress has that power. "Separation of church and state" being granted by the constitution is another common misconception.

Wrong answers to questions on central planning vs. free markets, however, are due to a devotion to a philosophy that is just wrong. I'm sure those elected officials were shocked that they got that one incorrect.

So yes, you would expect that no group could do worse than 25% when given 4 choices, but when the questions are chosen with misconceptions in mind, it becomes far more likely.

Re:I'd care more

[kramulous]

Seems to be a pretty strange one to get wrong. Don't Americans have a 'budget night' where the government lays out of the table how taxpayer money will be spent for the next financial period?

Re:I'd care more

[Anonymous Coward]

I got 20/33 (60%) - Fairly good for someone who has never been to America, has no intentions of going and learned everything relevant to the quiz from cartoons.

Re:I'd care more

[wilder_card]

No, D is correct. If Tax = Spend, then Tax/person = Spend/person, since the number of people is constant.

Re:I'd care more

[belmolis]

None of the above is unnecessary since the correct answer is D.

Re:I'd care more

[elhedran]

If that is the test, than I as a non-American just got 70%.

Re:I'd care more

[sumdumass]

I missed 4 questions.

Question #4 - B. Would slavery be allowed to expand to new territories?
Question #11 - A. their arguments helped lead to the adoption of the Bill of Rights
Question #13 - E. certain permanent moral and political truths are accessible to human reason
Question #33 - D. tax per person equals government spending per person

Strangely, I specifically remember selecting the right answer to questions 4 and 11 but I guess I failed at making sure the mark was in the appropriate place so maybe my score should have been even lower.

I'm also like you in that it's been a while since I was in school, 2 decades to be exact. But I have thought about it more recently then that, I have argued over some of the questions in here to be exact. It looks like we both missed questions 13 and 33, 13 I had no clue about, 33 I think I misread the answers and assumed that the debt they were talking about was for the year seeing how they claimed the taxes and budget was for the year. Of course I was thinking of deficit which contributes to the national debt. You got any theories on why you missed them?

Re:I'd care more

[gregbot9000]

You see where the politicians choked is on economics and markets.

See when asked what a free market was the politicians kept looking for the box that said "where you get things for free from helping a business expand their market"

Or when asked why free markets secure more prosperity then government central planing they kept looking for "Because you are free to go work for a business in the market after you help it through central planing"

Or why a levee is a public good they were looking for "cause whats good for my contractor buddy with a no bid contract is good for the public"

Re:I'd care more

[Kamokazi]

Haha, you think most Americans care about their own history. That's cute. You really have no idea how stupid people can be around here. They're fat, dumb, and happy thinking they know everything and actually knowing nothing.

Where I live, a rural area of Ohio, people are generally Republican because they are ignorant of the outside world and have knee-jerk emotional reactions to anything that contradicts their personal values or way of life (abortion, gay marrige, oil, Iraq, etc). People in larger urban areas are generally Democratic and have knee-jerk emotional reactions to the BS spewed by the media every day. (global warming, Iraq, etc).

To be fair, where they live affects their perception of the world. Being in rural areas you stay isolated, so everyone around you generally shares your values, religion, etc. There is usually no noticable pollution (other than the occasional manure smell :-), employment rates are higher because manufacturing companies like to locate in rural areas to keep labor costs down, etc. In cities, you have an overwhelming amount of pollution to people who aren't used to it (ie me), jobless rates are higher because cost of living keeps wages high which causes companies to outsource and automate more. You see more foriegners and foriegn ways, or generally just people and things with values different from your own.

The bottom line is, the majority of this country is full of morons who don't think things through. Even if they think they do, but are really just going on crap they heard somewhere and never bothered to scrutinize or verify it for themselves.

Re:I'd care more

[Kintanon]

#33 I misread debt for deficit and so chose the wrong answer.
#30 I missed due to apparent philosophical differences. I don't think increasing GOVERNMENT spending is a good way to stimulate the economy.
#7 I missed because my historical speech/document memory is incredibly horrible.
#13 for the same reason as #7. I simply have a difficult time equating people with their statements/speeches unless I've just recently been exposed to them.
#8 I missed because I had never read anything about it and was under the impression that no Supreme Court justices were up for appointment at that time.

Re:I'd care more

[sumdumass]

You have to read the answer to the question. If taxes were equal to spending, you could divide the the taxes by every citizen and get the same answer as spending for every citizen.

Lets say there are 10 citizens and $100 total collected in taxes and that government spending equaled the same $100. Now you could have two people paying $5 in taxes with two paying $15 and the rest ten but for the total collected, you would divide the $100 collected by the 10 people to get $10 per person collected. If you look at spending, it is the same math, they could spend $20 on two people and nothing on 2 others but you would divide the $100 spent by the 10 people and it would equal $10 per person spent. It's the unrelated stuff in the middle that confuses you.

Re:I'd care more

[CaptainCarrot]

No.

Re:I'd care more

[CaptainCarrot]

Sure. All those centrally planned economies that have historically been so prosperous give the lie to the very idea that free markets are the best way to go.

What, there aren't any? Oops...

Sorry, but you fail. No one on the American Left who might actually get elected into office favors a centrally planned economy. Since the US does in fact use a free-market economy, it's important that it be properly understood. Nowhere did this test claim to be solely about government.

Re:I'd care more

[CaptainCarrot]

I find it moderately alarming that even with your claimed terrible memory you thought the any of the alternatives for Question 8 were correct.

I missed #33 myself, only because the correct answer was a tautology and I thought there must be more to it than that.

Re:I'd care more

[yfkar]

78.8 %.

It went surprisingly well, considering the fact that I'm Finnish and don't have much interest in politics. Some answers were easy to deduce but some many required making a semi-educated guess.

Re:I'd care more

[pjt48108]

Hmm... I got 93.94%.

Me for Congress!

Re:I'd care more

[Monokeros]

Getting a certain few of the questions wrong might be very disappointing in a public servant (e.g.: I hope they all know who commands the US military). Most of the questions were useless, though interesting, historical trivia. I got 31/33, but if a senator doesn't know the specific dogma of a religious sect, I won't think any less of them as that knowledge would not help them run the country.

Re:I'd care more

[MaskedSlacker]

The US does not in fact use a free-market economy.

You are as misguided as GP. The statements about the benefits of free markets vs. central planning are mathematical facts because the two systems only really exist as mathematical models. The reason central planning doesn't work is the same reason that free markets do not really work--they make hideously incorrect assumptions about human behavoir. They make different incorrect assumptions, but they are both incorrect all the same.

Re:I'd care more

[CaptainCarrot]

I don't know of any government in history that used a pure system. Even in planned economies there's usually a healthy black market. (I say "usually" only because I don't know if it's true in every instance. Where I know for sure, I don't actually know any cases where one did not or does not exist.) Obviously there are broad segments of the US economy that are regulated, and even lacking that regulation a certain amount of restriction can be accomplished via tariffs. But I think one is safe in saying that the US economy is broadly free in a loose sense, which is how people usually mean it unless they're determined to nitpick.

Re:I'd care more

[CaptainCarrot]

"Submit" button was clicked accidentally instead of "Continue editing". Nitpicker will no doubt nitpick even more as a result. Oh well.

Re:I'd care more

[aoeu]

I missed two, which I'm OK with. Judging by the comments on /. the order of questions is suspect. I missed 13, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas would concur that: which is here called 16, because I had forgotten that these guys weren't very nice, and 29 A flood-control levee (or National Defense) is considered a public good because: which is here called 30 Theme of Question Citizens Elected Politicians Knowledge Gap 1. U.S. - Soviet Tension in 1962 70.09% 56.51% -13.58% 2. Declaration of Independence 83.09 69.78 -13.31 3. Sputnik 74.1 62.82 -11.28 4. Definition of Free Enterprise 41.45 32.08 -9.37 5. M. L. King's "I Have a Dream" 80.5 71.5 -9 6. Electoral College 65.88 57.31 -8.57 7. Scopes "Monkey Trial" 67.76 59.21 -8.55 8. Susan B. Anthony 80.84 72.98 -7.86 9. Power to Declare War 53.6 45.82 -7.78 10. Business Profit 49.11 41.38 -7.73 11. International Trade 37.47 30.45 -7.02 12. FDR's Government Programs 66.63 59.73 -6.9 13. Abortion 50.77 43.94 -6.83 14. Federal Branches and Foreign Policy 54.71 48.39 -6.32 15. First Amendment Freedoms 79.58 73.32 -6.26 16. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas 29.49 23.29 -6.2 17. FDR and the Supreme Court 25.07 19.24 -5.83 18. Taxes and Government Spending 27.7 22.12 -5.58 19. Free Markets vs. Centralized Planning 16.25 10.71 -5.54 20. Action Prohibited by the Bill of Rights 26.41 21.24 -5.17 21. Commander in Chief 79.04 74.46 -4.58 22. Anti-Federalists and the Constitution 38.22 33.82 -4.4 23. Source of phrase "a wall of separation" 18.92 15.07 -3.85 24. Policy Tool of the Federal Reserve 43.12 40.48 -2.64 25. Powers of the Federal Government 75.01 72.69 -2.32 26. World War II Enemies 68.76 66.58 -2.18 27. The Puritans 19.1 17.32 -1.78 28. Definition of a Progressive Tax 51.26 49.97 -1.29 29. Three Branches of Government 49.65 49.32 -0.33 30. Definition of a Public Good 27.6 28.03 0.43 31. Gettysburg Address 21.06 22.95 1.89 32. Fiscal Policy for Economic Stimulus 36.07 39.93 3.86 33. Lincoln-Douglas Debates 19.06 23.62 4.56

Re:I'd care more

[CrimsonAvenger]

Seems to be a pretty strange one to get wrong.

Was pretty dumb. Which is why I used "brain-dump" to describe it. None of the other answers looked quite right, and I turned the higher faculties off and assumed they used "debt" where they meant "deficit". My bad.

Re:I'd care more

[aoeu]

Preview fail, it was a table. http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/2008/additional_finding.html

Re:I'd care more

[Tisha_AH]

I felt like a dunce with 27/33. Going over the answers it is clear that I was sleeping during the civics class on Jefferson/Davis and have forgotten many aspects of the Gettysburg Address.

This is a question they should have asked;

34. John Brown was famous for;
  a) Being the first black astronaut in space
  b) Writing the Federalist Papers
  c) The actor on "Eight is Enough"
  d) Led the raid at Harper's Ferry
  e) Running mate of Ross Perot

It has been +20 years since university but some things are ingrained by nuns beating me with rulers.

Re:I'd care more

[sumdumass]

You should really look into #8 a little. It's really interesting.

There weren't any justices up for appointment at that time. Roosevelt and congress was going to create positions for more justices and stack them just so if all the regular justices said "unconstitutional", the other ones could override them. This is what eventually led to the expansion of the interstate commerce clause in which the government seems to use to extend it's reach further then any sane reading of the constitution allows.

As for the reasoning, those seem like the same reasons I would miss stuff in school, I would either forget who said what when under pressure or I would miss something small like the difference between debt and deficit. You see, #33 would have been correct if we were only talking about the budget for the year but it was looking at the overall operation of the government throughout the years. IE, no deficit for the year means no debt for the year, but it doesn't erase any previous debt carried over from the previous year.

Over all, I think we did a decent job on the tests.

Re:I'd care more

[HalfFlat]

Non-American, never studied US history: 31/33 (Erred on #4 and #8.)
This is just from common sense and exposure to movies.
Don't you guys even watch your own movies? Though, that'd explain a few things ...

Re:I'd care more

[TriezGamer]

Sorry, but you're wrong. Per person is inherently an average.

Re:I'd care more

[J Story]

I got 30/33. For me, an average Canadian, this speaks volumes about the reach of American culture.

Re:I'd care more

[dgatwood]

A lot of this stuff is not really civic knowledge, though. For example, while philosophy did play a role contributing to the thought processes that led to the founding of our government, it has little bearing on understanding the way governments actually work....

Also, #33 appears to have no correct answer. A. is wrong; the deficit is zero, but the debt may still be substantive. B. is wrong because printing money causes inflation if less money is taken out of circulation by being destroyed than is being printed, and has really nothing to do with money given to the government (which is still effectively in circulation). C. is wrong because the government may well be helping some groups while taking from others. On the average, it may be "true", but it still isn't actually true. D. is wrong for the same reasons. E. just has nothing to do with it.

They apparently consider D. to be "correct", which is just utter nonsense. Basically, the claim is that if the aggregate of all taxes and spending are equal, then the amount collected from each individual is the same as the amount spent for each individual. Clearly, this is not the case. A person on welfare clearly gets more money spent on them than a person not on welfare, etc. Now you could argue that the -average- per-person spending is the same as the -average- per-person income, but the "correct" answer did not say that. If they had said "per capita" instead of "per person", the answer would have been correct.

*scratches head*

Humorously, the other four questions I missed were the same four questions that politicians answered correctly more often than normal people. Apparently, I don't think like a politician. Good to know.

Re:I'd care more

[cheeseboy001]

You're right: I got 26 out of 33 as a 16 year old from New Zealand.

Re:I'd care more

[Jarjarthejedi]

Except D is completed irrelevant. Spending per person equals income per person? Okay...I guess that's true...but is it useful knowledge? Not really, since the amount of money spent on the average individual by the government (counting everything government supported that they use) will almost certainly be less than the amount that person spends.

I mean sure, if you take a number, multiply it by the population of the US, then divide by the population you'll get the number back...but that says absolutely nothing about the number.

It's a worthless question.

Re:I'd care more

[TroyM]

Maybe that's the reason self-identified elected officials did so badly - they were probably overwhelmingly Republican. Anyway, I interesting: "Forty percent of respondents, meanwhile, incorrectly believed that the US president has the power to declare war, while 54 percent correctly answered that that power rests with Congress" Could it be that people were responding to what has really happened over the last couple decades instead of what the Constitution says should happen? Quick question - when was the last time the US officially declared war - following the Constitution?

Re:I'd care more

[eldepeche]

Uh, if taxes equal spending, then taxes per person equals spending per person. That's not civics, that's math.

Re:I'd care more

[CaptainCarrot]

The economy of Singapore is a highly developed capitalist mixed economy. While government intervention is kept at a minimum....

Sorry, no.

Re:I'd care more

[stjobe]

44% for your elected officials and 49% for the average schmuck? I scored 73% (24/33) and I'm Swedish...

Seriously, you might want to consider having a long hard look at your educational system... Jeez.

Re:I'd care more

[CaptainCarrot]

For example, calling the USSR's planned economy a "failure" when it took a nation devastated by the sequence of a civil war, WWI, and WWII, and made it the first spacefaring nation and a major world power, is overly simplistic.

You mean the planned economy that starved tens of millions, and collapsed under its own weight only 40 years after WWII ended, surviving in the meantime only because of a black market and barter system? Yes, I call that a failure.

I'm afraid it's not at all clear that FDR's policies did anything to lift us out of the Great Depression. And if your thesis is that the kind of government spending that took place during WWII is a sustainable, feasible model for an economy in the long term and in peacetime, I have to wonder what you're basing that on.

Re:I'd care more

[FLEB]

For those of you playing along at home...

Re:I'd care more

[torstenvl]

I hope it's not, too. It has very little to do with civics. What is Sputnik? What's the definition of business profit? A lot of these questions are from Business Economics 101 and have absolutely nothing to do with civics.

Re:I'd care more

[InadequateCamel]

28/33 over here, for someone who has never set foot in the US. Not so much a "Hey look at me!" as much as it's a sad commentary on those who failed this test.

Re:I'd care more

[wyohman]

The bottom line is, the majority of this country is full of morons who don't think things through. Even if they think they do, but are really just going on crap they heard somewhere and never bothered to scrutinize or verify it for themselves.

I'm sure you're a bright, shining light in the darkness that is the average. I love to hear how it's always everybody else.

Re:I'd care more

[ozmanjusri]

Not so much a "Hey look at me!" as much as it's a sad commentary on those who failed this test.

Yep. I'm an Aussie who answered 29 out of 33 correctly, 87.88%, without trying too hard.

One of the kids here (14yrs old) got 100%. Smug little bastard.

Re:I'd care more

[wisty]

Hmm, I got a few wrong. 69.70 %, when the average was 77.7%. I couldn't resist saying that the 3 branches of government were bureaucratic, military, and industry.

Re:I'd care more

[CptNerd]

Sorry, you're overqualified... (I'm an old, conservative, Republican, Christian, hence evil old fart, and I got 32 out of 33. Of course I was in school before the Modern Education System took over...)

Re:I'd care more

[dgatwood]

Reread what I said. The word you're looking for is capita, not person. Those do NOT mean the same thing in proper English. Doing something per person means that you did something for each literal human being. Doing something per capita means that you did on average something per person.

The term "capita" refers to an equivalence class of population units in which all people are treated as being equivalent even if the literal individuals that make up the population are not equivalent. Therefore, when you say we spend $1,000 per capita, it means you spend $1,000 on average per person.

By contrast, the term "person" refers to a flesh and blood object. When you say we spend $1,000 per person, you might stretch that terminology to mean that you spent $1,000 per capita. However, a precise interpretation of that phrase is that you spent exactly $1,000 on each person. I'm sure you can understand that those two statements are completely different in their meaning.

Here's an example. I encounter ten homeless people on the side of the road asking for money. If I give $1,000 to one person and nothing else to the other nine people standing there, I gave out $100 per capita within that population of ten people. I'm sure you won't argue that I gave out $100 per person, however. The people who got nothing would beg to disagree with you, as they did not get $100. Okay, after they beat up the tenth guy, they might, but....

The problem is that using the phrase "per person" is ambiguous. It can be interpreted in two different ways---the way you interpreted that statement (as a sloppy way of saying "per capita") and the way I interpreted it (as a logical fallacy that if you spent population * k dollars on a group, this implies you spent k dollars on each member of that group).

Saying "per capita", by contrast, is deliberately unambiguous and can only mean "per average person". There's a reason that people talking about financial matters always say "per capita" and not "per person". To people who are used to precise meanings of terminology like "person" versus "capita", the meaning of those two phrases is completely different. I'm not at all surprised that a lot of people missed that question because by a literal interpretation of the phrase "per person", the "correct" answer is incorrect.

Worse, depending on how you interpret the question, answer A. can also be correct. The question did not specify a time period. If you define the time period of the question to be from the creation of the government up until the present, and if the amount of income equals the amount of money spent during that time period, the debt is provably zero. So by one interpretation, D. is correct, by another interpretation, A. is correct, and by a third interpretation, neither is correct....

See why I object to this question now? Writing good, unambiguous test questions is really hard. This test was pretty well written for the most part, but that question was a real stinker. :-)

Re:I'd care more

[Cow Jones]

The low average scores really are surprising.

I'm in central Europe and have no special connection to the US, apart from reading the news and sites like Slashdot. I scored 78.79% on the test, which had some _very_ US-centric questions, so an average score of 77.77% for Americans does seem a bit low, especially for elected officials.

CJ

Re:I'd care more

[portforward]

For example, the president has the ability to declare war, doesn't he? After all, our presidents have been sending troops all over the world for decades without congressional approval. But that is wrong. Only congress has that power.

Sometimes it is hard for me to recognize when someone is being sarcastic. So, if you were being sarcastic, then I beg your forgiveness. But, the president does need permission from Congress to do anything with the armed forces. In the Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton was saddled by the vote she made to allow Bush permission to send troops into Iraq, Kerry did too. Obama never made the vote because he wasn't in the Senate at the time. Do you remember 4 years ago, "I voted for it before I voted against it?" Yes, Congress hasn't officially declared war since 1942, but the War Powers Act sets out the legality of non-declared war military action.

Re:I'd care more

[Tubal-Cain]

A slashdotter trying to get his post in before someone else so as to get a karma bonus rather than a redundant mod?

Nope, that almost never happens.

Re:I'd care more

[RichiH]

> employment rates are higher because manufacturing companies like to locate in rural areas to keep labor costs down, etc. In cities, [...] jobless rates are higher because cost of living keeps wages high which causes companies to outsource and automate more.

Unless Ohio is _very_ different from pretty much all of Europe, let me just quote you directly "The bottom line is, the majority of this country is full of morons who don't think things through."

Re:I'd care more

[neomunk]

I'm a USAn, and I got 31/33. I missed the one about what Roosevelt threatened the Supreme Court with, and I thought Puritans were pacifists, mistaking them with Quakers, I guess.

Re:I'd care more

[glitch23]

Where I live, a rural area of Ohio, people are generally Republican because they are ignorant of the outside world and have knee-jerk emotional reactions to anything that contradicts their personal values or way of life (abortion, gay marrige, oil, Iraq, etc). People in larger urban areas are generally Democratic and have knee-jerk emotional reactions to the BS spewed by the media every day. (global warming, Iraq, etc).

I believe you are wrong. Democrats do indeed react based on emotion which is why they want to view the world as gray. They say we don't live in a black and white world but only because they don't want to view it that way and do what they can to add the gray. On the other hand Republicans are going to disagree on topics with Democrats because Republicans make decisions based on absolutes. The personal values they hold are based on absolute values which Democrats just choose to ignore and therefore view them as personally held by Republicans because they have to be if there isn't anything absolute. Having anything absolute means they wouldn't have the power to view/judge things how they need/want to view/judge them. Having absolutes, in a way, means you don't need to be all knowing of the outside world because, in a sense, you don't have control over certain aspects of that world anyway. What is right will always be right and what is wrong will always be wrong and people will get what they deserve in the end. This doesn't make them stupid and the Democrats smart. It means they know some things are considered above them but Democrats want to get their grubby little hands on anything that will put things in their favor.

Re:I'd care more

[jandersen]

And yet... I got ~78% correct, about 1% more than the average (of those that took the online test, I assume), despite the fact that I'm not an American citizen and all I had to go on was general knowledge picked up from the news. I didn't cheat by using Wikipedia (otherwise it would have been 100%) and in school history was my weakest subject; and I don't propose that I am of more than average intelligence. Politically I disagree with many of the "correct" answers. All I had to go on was reading and understanding the questions and answers before choosing.

To me it seemed that most of the answers could be inferred from the questions, if you understood the concepts used - like:

5) The United States Electoral College:
A. trains those aspiring for higher political office
B. was established to supervise the first televised presidential debates
C. is otherwise known as the U.S. Congress
D. is a constitutionally mandated assembly that elects the president
E. was ruled undemocratic by the Supreme Court

How could that be anything other than D? And it was all over the news when Bush was elected, anyway. So, while personal bias is a large part of the explanation, I think another large part is that people often do not read and/or understand the options before they decide. Which is hardly surprising in an anti-intellectual climate, where "gut-instinct" rules over actual knowledge. I mean, what the gut actually tell you? "I need to eat/crap" is just about it, really.

Re:I'd care more

[neomunk]

No, the part that makes people (as the GP put it) morons is repeatedly trusting the same innaccurate sources of information, even in the face of said source's abysmal accuracy rate.

Re:I'd care more

[sumdumass]

Ir doesn't matter if it is an average, it is the only answer that can be correct. This means that they ecpected the answer regardless ofit being an average.

Coult it be considered a trick question? MAybe, but the other answers were so wrong that even with the trick, you should have been able to figure it out.

Re:I'd care more

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Since when is capitalism the opposite of central planning? Capitalism and free markets are two independent characteristics of an economy.

Hell, just read the 2nd sentence of the page you linked to: "While government intervention is kept at a minimum, government entities such as the sovereign wealth fund Temasek control corporations responsible for 60% of GDP"

To me that says the government stays out of the businesses it doesn't directly control ala AIG bailout, but it still is right there in the middle of at least 60% of the market since it does directly control them.

Re:I'd care more

[azav]

It's called civics, not civic.

Re:I'd care more

[NoOneInParticular]

Well, if you take the unofficial motto of the US: "The best democracy money can buy", it starts to make sense.

Re:I'd care more

[Mr. Slippery]

You mean the planned economy that starved tens of millions

The famine of 1931-33, which killed about 4.5 million, was a pre-WWII event, caused by a combination of poor planning and natural disasters and possibly deliberately exploited by Stalin for political ends.

Around the same time, the U.S. experienced the Dust Bowl, caused by a combination of poor planning and natural disasters. Few people died, because of centralized relief efforts and programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Soil Conservation Service.

Is the lesson here a) centralized planning == doubleplus ungood, b) centralized planning == doubleplus good, or c) life is too complicated for simple answers? I"m going with c.

I'm afraid it's not at all clear that FDR's policies did anything to lift us out of the Great Depression.

It has become a favorite canard of conservatives that FDR's policies were either ineffective or lengthened the Depression. A look at the numbers shows that it's nonsense.

Employment began to recover as the New Deal were put into place. In 1937, due to conservative opposition, New Deal programs were cut - and employment dived. It rose with their restoration. (That's non-farm, non-WPA employment, BTW.)

The GDP shows the same pattern. As does industrial production.

The hole dug by Hoover was so deep that it took a while, but FDR's policies reversed the downward trends in production and employment. Employment was higher in 1937 than in any previous year except 1929, the peak of the boom, and reached a new high by 1940. The GDP exceeded 1929 levels in 1937. In fact, looking at these numbers, I have to retract my statement that WWII brought us out of the Depression - contrary to popular wisdom, it seems that the New Deal did that well before the war.

Re:I'd care more

[azav]

Ugh, I got 24 out of 33 for a 72%. Am 42 and have been in software for most of my life. Majored in marine biology. Yes, I live in the States. But, do I need this info to make informed decisions about my govt or to lead my daily life? Serious congrats to the people outside the states who know more about the country than I do.

Re:I'd care more

[ravenshrike]

Question 9 is wrong as well. Congress ratifies treaties, it doesn't make them. The president and state department 'make' them.

Re:I'd care more

[SurlyJest]

It didn't say "Congress" it said "Federal Government" as in opposition to the State government. Doing badly on this test I think mostly results from: 1. Ignorance of history... If you don't have a clue what the Federalist Papers or the Lincoln-Douglass debates were all about, you lose. 2. Inability to read closely....

Re:I'd care more

[Murple the Purple]

I don't think "per capita" can be correct. Businesses are taxed as well as living individuals. Incorporated businesses are considered by the law to be people, but I don't believe businesses are included in capita numbers.

Re:I'd care more

[Ihmhi]

I missed 4, 8, 20, 29, 30, and 33.

I failed out of two high schools and never took a civics class. I'm quite proud that I managed 81.82%. It's a bit unfair that I'm a history geek, though.

This is why we should have civics and ethics education reinforced back in school... /=

Re:I'd care more

[MaskedSlacker]

I'm not nitpicking, you've missed my point entirely.

The absence of government regulation is NOT a free market. It is an unregulated market. A free market is a specific model which has specific assumptions. Among them are:

1) full transparency and information
      -- All buyers and sellers are perfectly informed about the quality of goods and perfectly honest.
2) Full mobility
      -- there are no artificial barriers to the movement of goods. Artificial barriers mean all sorts of things, governmental, social, or psychological.

There are several others, but these are the two biggies that are NEVER actually satisfied. The free market model is to economics what newtonian mechanics was to physics. A good model, ground breaking, and based on incorrect assumptions that severely limit its applicability.

People in the US, owing to their own willful ignorance which they blame on the piss-poor schools (I am speaking generally atm, not directed at you, since I do not know where you live or your educational background), do not know anything about what a free market is. When we say we have a free market system, what we mean is that we try to encourage our economic arrangements to match the model. This is rather silly, since it amounts to saying "Well we want newtonian physics to match what we observe, so we won't fly very fast or near very big objects."

The bottom line is that that is not how reality works. The free market model makes assumptions about human behavoir (honesty in the full transparency requirement, and the absence of anti-competitive behavoir in the full mobility requirement) that are just wrong. Hence, there is no such things as a real free market.

Re:I'd care more

[I am Jack's username]

I got 32 out of 33 correctly -- 96.97 % (got #11 wrong) and I live in a third world country (South Africa) and I've never even been to the USA. What officials did they give the quiz to: primary school hall monitors (prefects)?

Re:I'd care more

[TheGeniusIsOut]

At least you used loose correctly...

Re:I'd care more

[CaptainCarrot]

A contest I indeed rarely lose, but I'm willing to let this one go...

Any link to the test?

[rolfwind]

Would like to see how stupid they (the politicians) are.

Re:Any link to the test?

[The Snowman]

I scored 90.91% (30/33). One of them I was braindead and should have gotten correct, two I was guessing on. Regardless, that is still an A, and roughly twice what my elected representatives scored in aggregate.

Re:Any link to the test?

[Bai jie]

81%, maybe we should consider running for elected office. It frightens me that our current elected officials could score so low.

Re:Any link to the test?

[robinsonne]

You answered 31 out of 33 correctly - 93.94 %

Hmm...guess that kills my chances of ever being elected to any office.

Re:Any link to the test?

[ivan256]

Same. Including the braindead question...

Question #7 - D. Gettysburg Address
Question #8 - C. appoint additional Supreme Court justices who shared his views
Question #17 - D. manmade satellite

Not sure how I got 17 wrong... I thought the right answer, and managed to click the wrong option...

Re:Any link to the test?

[Shadow Wrought]

You answered 32 out of 33 correctly -- 96.97 %

Braindeaded the alst one. I didn't read A close enough and selected it without reading the rest. I wonder if the /. effect can change online quizzes, since the monthly average is now up to 77% ?

Re:Any link to the test?

[PMuse]

33) If taxes equal government spending, then:
A. government debt is zero
B. printing money no longer causes inflation
C. government is not helping anybody
D. [mean] tax per person equals [mean] government spending per person
E. tax loopholes and special-interest spending are absent

There, fixed that for you.

Re:Any link to the test?

[leomekenkamp]

You answered 28 out of 33 correctly -- 84.85 %

Since I am from The Netherlands and have lived here from the day I was pushed out of my mother womb, I find it both hilarious and disturbing how my score compares to US elected officials. Note that I did not study US history or anything related...

Re:Any link to the test?

[ivan256]

You didn't actually change the meaning any.

In other words, you didn't "fix" anything.

Re:Any link to the test?

[Spugglefink]

You answered 31 out of 33 correctly â" 93.94 % I agree with the discussion about #33 in particular though, and the various other heavily slanted questions. I played to win a high score, rather than choosing the "right" answers in these cases, because the political bent underlying the survey was pretty transparent. I seriously wonder WTF was up with Plato and Aristotle on this too. American civics? Aristotle? That was one of the two I missed. I slept through philosophy class right after the guy started talking about his pink elephant.

Where's the test?

[DanOrc451]

I want to take it myself so I can feel all smu.... err... ensure that I know enough about our great nation here.

Re:Where's the test?

[krlynch]

Google is your friend....

http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/resources/quiz.aspx

Re:Where's the test?

[turtledawn]

Hopefully their November results will now be biased significant upwards. :-) I can't be too smug though, as I only got an 84.4%. I'm a biologist, not an economist!

Re:Where's the test?

[Eudial]

That wasn't too hard. I'm not even American, I really don't care about politics, economics or social sciences and I scored 70%.

Re:Where's the test?

[ivan256]

To be fair, some of the questions are "history", and not "civics".

Re:Where's the test?

[vux984]

So I took the test and scored 90.91% (30/33)
And I'm Canadian.

The 3 I missed...

I had no idea what Roosevelt threatened to do to the supreme court when they declared parts of the New Deal were unconstitutional. I didn't know what particular rights the first amendment gives. And I missed the one about the Scopes "Monkey Trial", which I'm not sure how I got wrong. I think I misread the correct answer as something to do with teaching evolution in private schools.

Of course, I got a few right that I made educated guesses on too, so it works out I guess. I had no trouble with the ones that were more 'general knowledge' but struggled with the real "Americana". Like the source of the phrase 'wall of separation' between church and state... I didn't actually know the answer was Thomas Jefferson's letters, but made it as an educated guess from the choices.

Overall, though I'm shocked that any elected official would score less than 80% on it... never mind less than 50%.

Re:Where's the test?

[myvirtualid]

So I took the test and scored 90.91% (30/33) And I'm Canadian.

Me too!

The 3 I missed.... #7, thought it was much earlier; #10, knew it wasn't A, guessed one of the others; and #33.

33 is an interesting one. I chose "debt", though I knew it was wrong, but felt it was "more right" than any of the others. Deficit would have been 100% correct, no question. I dispute the correct answer, because it is open to interpretation. I took it to mean "is spending on me exactly what I pay in taxes", which is obviously correct only for a very few. If they'd stuck in "average", that would have been fine, and while I agree you could argue it was implied, well, when words are implied the result is almost always ambiguity.

Just look at the 2nd amendment and the all the ruckus arising from its ambiguous phrasing!

Re:Where's the test?

[mrchaotica]

I had no idea what Roosevelt threatened to do to the supreme court when they declared parts of the New Deal were unconstitutional.

The key to that question would be to think about what he would have been allowed to do: three of the four choices require powers the President doesn't constitutionally possess.

Re:Where's the test?

[vux984]

Some of the questions initially appear esoteric, but then I realized the way the questions are designed, it's not so much a test of if you know the actual historical event, but if you can, based on your civic knowledge, reason out the correct answer.

Huh? The questions were remarkably straightforward. They were not trick questions. They were not cases of multiple 'right answers and one best answer'. They were not multivalued : a,b,c then d is a and b types. They did not generally have deliberately misleading questions or answers. There were a couple that were slightly tricky... like the last question might trip you up if you don't know the difference between a debt and deficit, but seriously... you SHOULD.

It's not really a fair test for the general public.

I'm curious to see what you think a fairer test would be?

If questions on the same topics were asked in a more straightforward manner, you would get higher scores.

How could they be more generally straightforward?

I don't think many people could get 100% on it without at least a college education.

I think that says more about the american education system than the test. But seriously, the fact that the general public didn't get 100% isn't really the issue... the issue is that elected officials on average, FAILED it.

Its multiple choice with ~4 answers per question. A big enough collection of monkeys doing it randomly should score an average of 25%.

Plus, like most simple multiple choice tests, at least 2 of the answers can be easily eliminated with basic reasoning as being off topic or otherwise clearly wrong, reducing most questions to a 50/50 shot even if you don't have strong knowledge of the topic. So getting 50% on this test should pretty much be a freebie. If you know even a little bit, you should score >50%. And the average should probably be up in the 70's, at least.

I don't think you need college to get 100%, a high school education should be sufficient. But I will agree that the people who didn't go to college include the people who didn't do well in high school, so going to college would definitely be a predictor for higher scores.

Re:Where's the test?

[vux984]

The key to that question would be to think about what he would have been allowed to do: three of the four choices require powers the President doesn't constitutionally possess.

That's precisely what stumped me. I didn't think he constitutionally possessed the ability to expand the size of the supreme court at will either.

For me that left impeaching them... and I operated on the theory, that everyone is a criminal if you looked hard enough. So while I didn't think there were likely any legitimate grounds for impeachment, I figured he might have been able to harass them out of the way with impeachment proceedings based on silly grounds.

After all, a Nevada judge, Harry Claiborne, was impeached and removed from office for 'filing a false tax return' back in the 80's.

And the Clinton impeachment strategy, could similarly have been applied... get them on some trumped up charge to force them to testify about the details of their sex lives, and then impeach them for making false statements when they don't admit to having had a 3-way or anal sex or a hooker or a blowjob or something else that you've got evidence they did at some point or other...

Re:Where's the test?

[sumdumass]

He doesn't have the power to create new seats. However, congress was stacked behind him and went along with what he said. That's why the Supreme court backed up on their rulling and expanded the interstate commerce clause which is partially to blame for most of the problems in America today with the over reaching laws and such.

That is also why the democrat politicians are so worried about stacking the supreme court with ideologs. They know that it can be used to allow their somewhat unconstitutional policies stand and hope to benefit from it. TO be fair, the republicans are just as worried but the at least appear to be concerned with the justices adherence to the constitution, not whether or not something will stand.

Re:Where's the test?

[flyboyfred]

He tried to get a bill passed that would grant him the authority to expand the Supreme Court. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_packing_plan

Re:Where's the test?

[CaptainCarrot]

To be accurate, much of civics is history. Much of it has to do with understanding our political traditions and their historical roots.

Re:Where's the test?

[Bigjeff5]

Deficit would have been 100% correct, no question

Actually, it would have still been wrong, a deficit is just a form of debt. Different from most debt, sure, but it's still a debt of a sort.

The question made a premise and then asked what amounts to a math question based on it. It's very common in SAT type tests to test your ability to solve problems.

The question was, in math form: IF taxes = government spending THEN? D. taxes/person = spending/person.

The question itself had nothing to do with debt or deficit or anything like that. A deficit (a type of debt) occurs when taxes/person are less than spending/person. In other words, when government spends more than it takes in via taxes, the government has a deficit, or debt.

All that said, you did a heck of a lot better than I did, I got an 81% and was pretty disappointed with myself for it. :/

I'm not exactly a history buff though, and that's where I made my mistakes. Oh well :P.

P.S.: The ruckus around the 2nd ammendment only happens when you try to change what the 2nd ammendment says. If you take it at face value (like we have for almost 200 years now) there's no confusion. If people don't like it they aught to push for a new ammendment to alter it (or "clarify" it, if you like), not try to make laws that infringe uppon it.

Re:Where's the test?

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations to my toque wearing brethren of the frozen north.

I scored 93%, one question I read the correct answer incorrectly (I wonder what factor this has in academics) and another my libertarian nature took over.

I'm curious as to how my stats are factored considering I'm from a rural area, make less than 24k a year, and have a measly hs education.

It does look like the scores are going up a bit tho, ty slashdot.

Overall, I'm not shocked that elected officials would fail this test. Have you seen what they do to us?

Re:Where's the test?

[TroyM]

Debt is the accumulated deficit - it's the total amount we owe. Deficit is how much we added to the debt this year. If we could magically balance the budget this year, we'd still owe $10 trillion, we just wouldn't be adding more to it.

This distinction is important. When Bush took office in 2001, we had a $5 trillion debt, but were running a slight surplus. He talked like the government was taking in money and had nothing good to do with it. If you weren't paying close attention, it sounded like the $5 trillion debt had been eliminated, just because we weren't running a deficit that year. So he was able to pass massive tax cuts and spending increases, and now we've doubled the national debt.

Re:Where's the test?

[splorp!]

I have a high school education and I only missed 3.
My wife has a college education and she missed 6.
Education isn't the entire defining factor. It's an interest in politics.

Re:Where's the test?

[legirons]

I had no idea what Roosevelt threatened to do to the supreme court when they declared parts of the New Deal were unconstitutional.

The key to that question would be to think about what he would have been allowed to do: three of the four choices require powers the President doesn't constitutionally possess.

And how would you apply that logic to the current president?

Re:Where's the test?

[YourExperiment]

As a UK citizen, who does not consider himself particularly knowledgeable regarding either the United States or history in general, I answered 25 out of the 33 questions correctly (76%).

As seems traditional in multiple-choice tests, several of the answers could be deduced by common sense alone; one was given away entirely by an earlier question. Of the remainder, about half seemed like common knowledge; I made educated guesses on the remainder.

It would worry me if my country were being run by people less knowledgeable than me. Not that I'm implying our elected officials would do any better in a similar test... quite the opposite, I fear.

Re:Where's the test?

[Attila Dimedici]

Congress was stacked behind him, but the idea of stacking the Supreme Court the way that Roosevelt suggested was so unpopular that Congress refused to go along. In the next Congressional election, Roosevelt campaigned heavily against every Congressman who voted against his proposed Constitutional Amendment (all but one of them won anyway). There was a History Channel show on about FDR just the other night. I think that the Democrats also lost a significant number of seats in the next Congressional election over this, but I may be mixing up elections on that part.

Re:Where's the test?

[VoidCrow]

72%... I'm not American either, though I *did* start to care about politics when the Neocons started to ping my asshat radar.

Re:Where's the test?

[sumdumass]

I think what set congress against him was when Roosevelt basically told the courts "make me" when they originally ruled part of his new deal legislation unconstitutional and told him to stop enforcing it. I didn't see the history channel thing on FDR but I saw one on the supreme court. Of course in that one, they showed the perspective of FDR having the support of congress- IF not just for the new deal legislation. Roosevelt knew he was the executive and controlled all the law enforcement and the court (at the time at least) couldn't do anything but talk more or less.

Re:Where's the test?

[ivan256]

This is also true, but much of history *isn't* civics.

Who we faught against in World War 2... That Sputnik was the first man-made satellite... Those things are history (and history that people should be familiar with), but they aren't civics.

Re:Where's the test?

[CaptainCarrot]

Except for the permanent effects of WWII and its aftermath, and the long-term effect of Sputnik on the space program and government's involvement in technological development... sure.

Re:Where's the test?

[RockDoctor]

The dumb-fucks who designed that didn't include the possibility of "I neither know nor care, nor care to go through it again to make up for the deficiencies of your programming."

Three what?

[the_other_chewey]

The three branches of government aren't the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria?

EO*: "I've never heard of them. I don't even like blondes. What? Ohhhh... branches"


*:elected official

Sheesh

[PhetusPolice]

Maybe testing officials should be mandatory, and yield consequences..

Re:Sheesh

[haystor]

Start with drug testing them.

Constitutional Correction

[DrSlinky]

... of the morons, by the morons, for the morons.

Re:Constitutional Correction

[sgt scrub]

In other words the U.S.A has finally become an Idiocracy.

Experience

[unlametheweak]

Politicians often argue that people shouldn't get involved in elected office because of lack of experience, though lack of knowledge or judgment doesn't seem to be an issue.

Re:Experience

[butterflysrage]

or morals... course that is a given in politics...

Re:Experience

[Aphoxema]

Only in capitalism, and socialism, and like, anythingism.

Re:Experience

[sumdumass]

Speaking of that, I would like to know what specific leaders like Obama, Hillary, McCain, Palin, Biden, Pelsoi and Reed had scored. I think it would be interesting to see if the people put their trust in the right places based on knowledge.

Misleading

[Luthair]

To make an accurate judgment, we really need to see the test, questions about economics for example can be largely opinion/philosophy based rather than factual. Though failing to correctly answer opponents in WWII is either blatant stupidity, or willful ignorance, a child raised by wolves could answer that 2 days after being 'rescued'.

Its also important to consider who might consider themselves elected officials. For example doesn't the US also elect local sheriffs?

Re:Misleading

[Tokah]

Call me crazy, but I'd prefer my county sheriff be able to list the three branches of government. Anyone in a position of public sector authority should have a firm grasp on our nation's history and how it's government is structured.

Re:Misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

Other people have posted the link. It's really a biased test that is about 1/3 real civics (i.e. questions about how the government works). The rest is history, philosophy, economics, etc (with a conservative slant in economics - at least a blatantly obvious one).

Re:Misleading

[rohan972]

For example doesn't the US also elect local sheriffs?

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=civics
civics
-noun (used with a singular verb)
the study or science of the privileges and obligations of citizens.

I would hope that all law enforcement would have a thorough knowledge of civics, particularly the privileges and rights of citizens. It is perhaps even more important than for legislators. If you have law enforcement and jury members/voters with solid understanding of civics, legislators ought not be too much of a problem.

Re:Misleading

[Luthair]

Yes, but would you expect them to extensive knowledge about economics, etc.? They might, but it isn't required.

Question-33 seems to not have a valid answer. I believe they want (a) but it ought to say deficit, not debt.

Re:Misleading

[vux984]

Question-33 seems to not have a valid answer. I believe they want (a) but it ought to say deficit, not debt.

What do you think is wrong with the correct answer? D

Re:Misleading

[vux984]

Other people have posted the link. It's really a biased test that is about 1/3 real civics (i.e. questions about how the government works).
The rest is history, philosophy, economics, etc (with a conservative slant in economics - at least a blatantly obvious one)

To be fair, this 'civics' quiz is for Americans, and understanding the actual economic structure of America is more important than understand broader economic theory... so its not really a bias to focus on free market questions, any more than its a bias to focus on american history.

That said, one question out of all of them did strike me as 'biased', #27, "Free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than government's centralized planning because..."

I think the question could and should have been framed in terms of a free market vs a monopoly. As it was written in the quiz I do get sense that their is an implicit judgement that free market is superior to a planned economy...

which is sort of ironic given the last couple months of free market bliss, and the rush to nationalize banks, bail out companies, and introduce massive amounts of regulation. Why... one might inadvertently come to think the free market can only fixed with 'centralized planning'. oh noes.

Re:Misleading

[quax]

Then maybe you should take the test yourself?

I scored 78% and I am not a US citizen.

Re:Misleading

[Luthair]

A deficit occurs when the entity spends more money than it earns. Debt, is the accumulation of deficits, the government can have money in = out, and still have debt from the past.

Re:Misleading

[vux984]

A deficit occurs when the entity spends more money than it earns. Debt, is the accumulation of deficits, the government can have money in = out, and still have debt from the past.

Exactly. That is precisely why A) is WRONG. It says -debt- not -deficit-.

D, on the other hand, is clearly correct.

So what you're saying is...

[SandwhichMaster]

the Vice President isn't in charge of the senate?

Re:So what you're saying is...

[Altus]

No, he is responsible for protecting the space-time continuum. Read the Constitution!

Re:So that's what explains it...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

George Bush getting elected twice.

No, but it does explain why he got the PATRIOT act and PATRIOT II acts passed by congress.

Re:the three branches of government:

[wagr]

I had to laugh; among my friends we use these terms to describe the three branches of our government:
sedentary
metaphoric
ignatius

More pointless mandated tests!

[santiagoanders]

Most college graduates have to take the GRE to get into grad school (though some have specialized tests for their field). I propose that our to-be-elected officials take a similarly pointless test of knowledge and the results be made public. I will not vote for someone who can't do elementary math if they are planning on spending millions of tax dollars.

Key Caveat

[necro81]

the key caveat with this news item is that, when you RTFA, you find that they are culling the results from "self-identified elected officials." So, anyone could take the test and, for a laugh, identify themselves as an elected official.

In other words, it is not the case that the organizers of this test randomly selected a cross section of the populace, got complete demographic information about them (including occupation) then had them take the test.

See also self-selection and selection bias.

Re:Key Caveat

[slashqwerty]

Indeed. From the report:

Among the 2,508 respondents, 164 say they have been elected to a government office at least once.

These people may have marked themselves as elected officials out of pure carelessness. If they're making mistakes on that they are likely to have made mistakes elsewhere as well. That's probably why these people scored lower than average.

I feel stupid.

[Richard Steiner]

You answered 29 out of 33 correctly -- 87.88 % I guess that's not bad considering I graduated from college 21 years ago. But still. :-(

Quiz is here...

Re: I feel stupid.

[rev_g33k_101]

You answered 27 out of 33 correctly 81.82 %
Average score for this quiz during November: 77.3% Average score: 77.3%

you did a little better then me :D
but I have some arguments about some of the questions.

mostly Question #33-- could have been A or D
and
Question #6-- could have been B or D

Re: I feel stupid.

[Sneftel]

Question 33: You're thinking of deficit, not debt.
Question 6: Read the damn amendment.

Re: I feel stupid.

[rev_g33k_101]

Question 33: If taxes equal government spending, then government debt will not get worse. If there was pre-existing debt, then it will clearly not be zero. Could not have been A.

Question 6: The Bill of Rights is only the first 10 amendments. Some of those prohibitions against discrimination came later. Could not have been B.

I see your point on 33
6 was my bad.

I retract my previous statements.

Re: I feel stupid.

[frank_adrian314159]

Wuss. I got 100% and I graduated 27 years ago.

That being said, some of the questions were a bit "questionable", vaguely worded, and/or open to interpretation. Still, a well-educated person should have been able to get at least 75%.

Re: I feel stupid.

[hurfy]

same here, missed 4

That includes purposely missing one i read the answer to here before trying :) I tried to guess what i would have guessed ...

Kinda misread the last one :(

I don't really care what Socrates, etc believed ....

Not sure why i missed the one on Puritans, guess the right answer just seemed too obvious, hehe.

Have to agree that the fail rate is pretty pathetic as half of those are easy to guess if you had any education. If anyone missed the one about the New Deal they should be failed also since the answer is like 5 questions down in question 8...i love tests like that.

If only we could give this to candidates...

People scare me

Re: I feel stupid.

[janeuner]

"tax per person equals government spending per person"

I read that as a flat-tax and apportioned expendatures - neither of which have occurred anytime in US History.

Re: I feel stupid.

[dprovine]

Well, don't feel too stupid. The guys at Yahoo misspelled "American" in their title, leaving out the "c".

Re: I feel stupid.

[RobertinXinyang]

Right, I read that one as "each person gets the same benefit as they pay" which is not the same as the test phrase. However, it was the best of all the choices given so I still went with that one.

You answered 31 out of 33 correctly -- 93.94 %

Average score for this quiz during November: 78.1%
Average score: 78.1%

Trick question?

[pwolf]

"Sixty-nine percent of respondents correctly identified Germany and Japan. Among the incorrect answers were Britain, China, Russia, Canada, Mexico and Spain." Technically weren't we enemies with Russia until Hitler turned on them? They did support Germany and helped them invade Poland. They even signed a pact/treaty to own invaded territories. It might not have been "official" but that's what we have been taught after all. Granted all that was before we (The United States) entered the war, but we were very much involved in it way before Pearl Harbor.

Re:Trick question?

[pwolf]

Doh, it would help if i knew how to read... and looked at the test...

Given the choices "Germany and Japan" or "Russia and China" then there is only one clear answer.

Re:Trick question?

[JCSoRocks]

No, what happened is that Russia saw Germany coming. They were concerned about it and were in talks with the west to sign some sort of pact. We took too long and Russia signed a pact with Germany. It wasn't about helping Germany as much as it was prevent Germany from attacking them. The Germans attacked them anyway and we ended up helping Russia significantly through the Lend-Lease program. Anyone that can't remember that we were allies and that Germany was split in two and half of Europe ended up Russian as a result is crazy.

Have people just never watched a World War II movie or what? How could you possibly not know that Germany and Japan were the two countries we were fighting? All of those people should just be banned from voting. They've obviously forgotten the most significant event in our nation's history since the civil war and as such don't deserve to vote.

Re:Trick question?

[ShadowRangerRIT]

Russia never actively supported Germany, they just acted in self-interest on Poland and signed a non-aggression pact. While Allied relationships with Russia were frosty, they were not considered an enemy during the war. The closest we came to being enemies during WW2 was in competition for land and scientists as the war drew to a close.

Oh, and as long as everyone else is posting scores, 96.97%. I missed #4, having guessed wrong between the two answers I considered possible given my flaky memory of elementary school Civil War history.

Re:Trick question?

[whoever57]

Have people just never watched a World War II movie or what? How could you possibly not know that Germany and Japan were the two countries we were fighting?

Apparently you didn't watch the movies too carefully either, since there were more than 2 countries that the US was fighting.

Re:Trick question?

[Detritus]

Do the Italians and Vichy France count as combatants? The Italians were embarrassed by the Ethiopians, even though they eventually won. Their performance in North Africa was pathetic.

Ouch!

[DoomHaven]

I'm not even an American (though I did live there for almost 6 years) and I got 27 out of 33 correct, which is 81.23%!

Here is what I missed:
Question #4 - B. Would slavery be allowed to expand to new territories?
Question #7 - D. Gettysburg Address
Question #12 - B. the Supreme Court struck down most legal restrictions on it in Roe v. Wade
Question #13 - E. certain permanent moral and political truths are accessible to human reason
Question #14 - B. stressed the sinfulness of all humanity
Question #33 - D. tax per person equals government spending per person

Biden is a perfect example

[Anonymous Coward]

"Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history. The idea he doesn't realize that Article 1 of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that." - Joe Biden

Article 1 establishes the legislative branch not the executive branch.

Re:Biden is a perfect example

[mrchaotica]

That doesn't mean he doesn't understand the Constitution; it means he can't count. ; )

Re:Biden is a perfect example

[Skjellifetti]

Vice President Elect Biden is correct. Article I does indeed define the role of the Vice President:

Article I. Section 2:

The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided.

Article II merely describes how the Vice President is chosen and the conditions under which the VP may become President (later superseded by Amendment XXV).

Re:Biden is a perfect example

[darkmeridian]

Biden is saying that Article 1 defines the role of the vice president of the United States, and that that role is part of the Executive Branch. The VP gets to break ties in the Senate so that the Executive branch can check and balance the powers of Senate.

Keep in mind that Cheney is pushing the idea that the Vice President is NOT a part of the Executive (while the President is) only so he can avoid federal disclosure laws. Cheney wants to advance the power of the unitary executive by co-opting in part the power of the legislative branch of government. It's pretty scary stuff.

Re:Biden is a perfect example

[MindlessAutomata]

Maybe once Biden gets in power he will think a little more like Cheney will :/

Re:Biden is a perfect example

[Attila Dimedici]

At the time that Article 1 was written, the Constitution specified that the Vice President was the person who got the second most Electoral College votes. That means that usually the Vice President was the President's chief rival, so when Article 1 was written, the Vice President was not viewed as the President's surrogate.
This was changed when Aaron Burr (who was nominated with the intention that he become Vice President) received the same number of Electoral College votes as Thomas Jefferson (nominated by the same party).
I think that in this last election if the original design was in place that Sarah Palin would be Vice President.

Not that great

[Viking Coder]

I answered 25 out of 33 correctly; 75.76 %

Damnit! I'll never be an elected official!

Re:Not that great

[TrekkieGod]

I got 31/33. I notice the "monthly average" was 75%, I wonder if it's all from slashdot people taking the test just now :)

Nerds kick ass at taking tests. It would skew the average.

Why would they care?

[MikeRT]

"It's just a God-damned piece of paper" between them and doing anything they want...

Small Sample Size

[rm999]

It's a big no-no to take a sample and then reveal statistics on a sub-population without first making sure that the sub-population size is big enough for its results to be statistically significant. The elected officials should have been polled separately to ensure there are enough of them in the sample.

2,500 people is more than enough, but I'm guessing that fewer than 1% of randomly-chosen people qualify as "elected officials." Far fewer. Even if the sample had 25 elected officials, I wouldn't give much weight to the results.

Re:Small Sample Size

[gnarlyhotep]

All survey respondents were asked whether they have ever engaged in any of 13 different political and civic activities. These included, for example, registering to vote, signing a petition, contacting a public official, publishing a letter to the editor, and whether they have ever been elected to a government office. Among the 2,508 respondents, 164 say they have been elected to a government office at least once.

Not only was it a rather small size of elected officials, it was also completely voluntary test in the first place and entirely voluntary to answer the identifying questions.

The small sample size, and entirely opt-in nature of the test and questions lead me to believe these results mean very little (their results regarding colleges in the US is much more instructive, however).

33 out of 33 right for me...

[3waygeek]

not bad considering that my last goverment/civics/poli sci class was 25 years ago.

Here's a Dirty Little Secret

[Anonymous Coward]

So elected officials don't know as much about the law as common people? The dirty little secret is they don't actually read the bills they vote on -- they instead rely on others to summarize the bills for them and use various bills as bargaining chips to vote for or against another congressmans bill. Plus there are always those last-minute ammendments that others attach to the bills that have nothing to do with the title of the bill, but that's another story.

It's not a great test

[ratnerstar]

I took it and got all 33 answers right. This is not to brag, but to establish some limited credentials for when I say: this test sucks. Hard.

Okay, yeah, people should know the three branches of government and who has the power to declare war. On the other hand, a lot of questions and answers are very vague or misleading. Some examples:

Q: If taxes equal government spending, then:

A: tax per person equals government spending per person

This question tests your grasp of logic or algebra, not civics. For the record, another option is "government debt is zero." This is incorrect because it's the deficit that's zero, not the debt. It's designed to confuse. A knowledgeable person could get this question wrong merely by being careless.

Q: Free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than governmentâ(TM)s centralized planning because:

A: the price system utilizes more local knowledge of means and ends

This is not the answer I would have given in a non-multiple choice test. I picked it because it was better than the other options.

Q: Free enterprise or capitalism exists insofar as:

A: individual citizens create, exchange, and control goods and resources

This is just phrased poorly. Why not be clear and ask "What is the definition of capitalism?"

Anyway, of course people should be doing better on this than they are. But it's still a crappy test. And for the record, the "officials" cited aren't exactly Barack Obama and John McCain; they're poll respondents who indicated that they have held elected office at one point. That could include your local dogcatcher, the chairman of your condo association, the head of your PTA, etc.

So don't be too alarmed.

Re:It's not a great test

[thebrett]

Yes, this test is terrible. Also, the interpretation of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is "life, liberty, and property". I would imagine that many people got that wrong. Question #33 - D. tax per person equals government spending per person This is obviously not true. The government has lots of things they can sell, buy, etc.

Re:It's not a great test

[atraintocry]

They could also be people who lied about holding office.

I agree, the test could have been a lot better.

The price system utilizes more local knowledge of means and ends

To be fair, this is how I remember learning it in freshman economics. To the degree that, after I read the question, I expected an answer about price being based on information, and individuals getting the information faster. Not that it isn't contentious, or that there isn't more to the picture, but I think it's okay to expect someone to know at least that definition. Of course, if they're going to include the money questions, they should call the test subject something like "American goverment" rather than civics.

Re:It's not a great test

[Elrond, Duke of URL]

I took it and got all 33 answers right. This is not to brag, but to establish some limited credentials for when I say: this test sucks. Hard.

Q: If taxes equal government spending, then:

A: tax per person equals government spending per person

This question tests your grasp of logic or algebra, not civics. For the record, another option is "government debt is zero." This is incorrect because it's the deficit that's zero, not the debt. It's designed to confuse. A knowledgeable person could get this question wrong merely by being careless.

I don't think this is a bad question at all. You're correct that it is specifically testing whether you know the difference between a government deficit and government debt. This seems entirely appropriate for a civics test question. Such terms come up all the time and it is important to know the difference between them.

The other two questions, though... yeah, they weren't that great.

Anyway, of course people should be doing better on this than they are. But it's still a crappy test. And for the record, the "officials" cited aren't exactly Barack Obama and John McCain; they're poll respondents who indicated that they have held elected office at one point. That could include your local dogcatcher, the chairman of your condo association, the head of your PTA, etc.

So don't be too alarmed.

Hmmmm... there's still something interesting here. You're probably right that most of the self-identified politicians who took this test are low-to-mid level elected officials. But, if this is the case, these people should not be that different from the rest of the random sample. Shouldn't they have had a nearly identical average score to the rest of the people?

Honestly, I would have expected that these people, citizens who have shown at least a small iota of enthusiasm to work for the community, would have scored slightly better than the rest of the sample.

Re:It's not a great test

[YourExperiment]

I take your point about some of the poorly designed questions, and I salute your perfect score, but I have to ask: do you guys really elect your dogcatchers?

Re:Test administration was poor.

[JCSoRocks]

Nevertheless it's still a depressing example of the state of America. I can understand how you'd miss a few. I managed to get 90%... but I can't imagine missing half of them. Self-identified or not, you'd still expect them to do at least a little *better*, not worse.

My Guess

[slimjim8094]

is that this is related to the attack on 'elitism', which has turned into an attack on the elite. There are a lot of stupid people, and a lot of smart people, but people (typically neo-Republicans) conflate elitism (being a dick in the fashion of 'i'm better than you') to being elite (in general, suceeding at life, often because/with education).

This selects against people who suceed at life, or people who look like they have suceeded at life. Because 'they can't relate to me' is more important than understanding a number of economic theories, or the culture of an enemy nation.

My (slightly) partisan guess, but I wouldn't be suprised.

Proof

[Gat0r30y]

Can we count this as proof that we (I mean Americans) like to elect people who are dumber than us? I hear (and frankly occasionally produce) conjecture that the populace of the US votes for idiots because somehow we like the idea that anyone can do it. Can we count this as proof that whatever the reason, the electorate of the US votes for people who are generally dumber than the rest of us? (BTW 93.94%)(31/33) Missed -
Question #7 - D. Gettysburg Address Question #33 - D. tax per person equals government spending per person

On the other hand...

[hyades1]

...I bet they did just fine on questions about the Old Testament (especially the parts about stoning homosexuals and burning witches).

Re:On the other hand...

[eli pabst]

Probably not, because those fuckers are always at Red Lobster wearing mixed fabric clothing.

Which stats they decide to highlight

[dat cwazy wabbit]

Why do they point out gaps that are in the noise range such as liberal vs. conservative, non-church-goers vs. church-goers, but say nothing about significant ones such as male vs. female and Republican vs. Independent vs. Democrat? http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/2008/major_findings_finding1.html

Results from a Brit...

[Firefalcon]

I'm not even American, and I know little of the details of the US Constitution, Declaration of Independence, US case law, and political systems, yet I got 20 correct out of the 33 (about 60%), so I'm astounded to read that US citizens on average did worse.

One thing I noticed on the results page though was "Average score for this quiz during November: 77.4%".

So, while I don't know what the average for US citizens in the figures for this month (and all time) was, it suggests that results reported in the story were most likely not a representative sample...

Re:Results from a Brit...

[Tranvisor]

Or perhaps that since the results were made public and reported on, smarter people, the people who read the news relatively currently, have actively looked for and taken the quiz. People who like to take little quizzes like this do it because scoring higher probably makes them feel a little better about themselves. Uninformed people probably don't seek out things that will, in all likelyhood, make them feel dumb.

Post Yours

[Liath]

30/33 - 91.1%

Semantics

[nick_davison]

Forty percent of respondents, meanwhile, incorrectly believed that the US president has the power to declare war, while 54 percent correctly answered that that power rests with Congress.

But police actions, anti terrorism actions and a broadly, ill defined war on a noun like "terror" or "drugs" are all fair game.

Splitting hairs, they're different to "declaring war." In practice, they're all ways presidents have ensured they can declare quagmires, I mean wars, without actually needing to stop and ask congress.

It's kind of like asking a child, "Did your brother hit you?"
Crying, "Yes!"
Brother, "Ha! I only kicked you. You're wrong!"

Re:Semantics

[atraintocry]

You're right...I think that's that's precisely why people should be educated on who exactly can declare war according to the Constitution. So that they can call out the things you listed as the bullshit power grabs that they are.

Re:Semantics

[antifoidulus]

Not to mention shit like the War Powers act which pretty much says that the President can start a war for 60 days without congressional approval.

Re:Semantics

[atraintocry]

I agree with most of what you say, and I also thought the test was crap.

However, I think it's important for people to understand the debates between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists. They give us the context for, among other things, the Constitution. Even though it does say in the Bill of Rights that powers not delegated to the government in the Constitution go to the states or the people, it might drive the point home further for some people if they understood that not all of the founding fathers wanted a Bill of Rights.

They'd take the next logical step and ask how that could be. Then they'd realize that there is a downside to having a list of rights--people start to think that the government actually grants them their rights, when it merely is charged with protecting them.

The story is similar with copyright. If you understand that not everyone was in favor of it, it becomes easier to take of the "but that's that way it is" glasses and truly look at the pros and cons.

I think the problem was mostly the name of the text...they should have called it "history and civics" or something. Even considering the more contentious questions, it doesn't reflect well on someone who got less than half of the test right, and who is American. I realized as I was taking the test that this is why people say such stupid things around the office around election time, because they don't understand things like checks and balances, whereas I tend to take for granted that people know the three branches (I wonder how many people would say Democrat, Republican, Independent).

Are these civics? Or is this a push poll?

[internic]

For what it's worth, I took the test just now and got 100%, but I find a few things about it questionable: First, there are several questions that I'm not sure really fall under the definition civics. Second, several of the questions are of a theoretical rather than factual nature and I got the distinct impression that the test makers were pushing a specific (libertarian/conservative) ideological agenda. Maybe my impression was incorrect; I haven't had a chance to look up the group yet.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines civics as, "a social science dealing with the rights and duties of citizens." Most of the questions deal with the structure of our government and the history of that structure, so they can reasonably be said to fall within civics. But consider the following questions:

13) Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas would concur that:

25) Free enterprise or capitalism exists insofar as:

27) Free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than government's centralized planning because:

30) Which of the following fiscal policy combinations would a government most likely follow to stimulate economic activity when the economy is in a severe recession?

31) International trade and specialization most often lead to which of the following?

Number 13 is a question of philosophy (or, if you like, history mostly far preceding US history). Questions 25, 27, 30, and 31 are questions of economics. I suppose you could include economics as part of civics, because it's important to governance, but on that rationale you could start including all sorts of things, like statistics. Also, the answers to the questions are largely theoretical in nature. While there may be a consensus view amongst economists, they don't really admit clear empirical answers due to the complexity of disentangling the various influences in macroeconomics. On the topic of how best to stimulate economic activity, there are various different schools of thought that advocate different approaches and have enjoyed popularity at different times.

The other point was more a vague feeling I got that the questions were pushing an agenda. The survey picks out "religion" as one of the constitutional rights, rather than "freedom of religion". It asks for the attribution of the phrase "wall of separation" between church and state, and highlighting that this is not from the constitution (even though it is from one of the framers) is a favorite past-time of those who advocate a larger role for Christianity in government. Questions 27 and 31 praise free trade criticize centralized economies. And answering one of the questions "correctly" points out that federal disaster aid is not guarantied by the constitution (relevant to disagreements over the aftermath of hurricane Katrina). It's not really pronounced and may be just coincidence, but I'm curious if anyone else got this feeling. I'll have to look up ISI and see if I've guessed correctly. In any case, it occurred to me that you could use the press release to get the general public to take it and use it as a push poll, stating your opinions as the "correct answer" or selecting factual information in such a way as to give the appearance for support of your argument.

It's a lousy test for Civics

[sirwired]

Too many of the questions are random historical trivia rather than testing understanding of the knowledge of the structure of the United States Government and Economy.

Interestingly, other than a couple of questions on the Supreme Court the test is devoid of questions on the Judicial system. Nothing about trial rights, jury service, criminal rights, etc.

I would have classified many of the questions as History questions, not Civics questions. And even them, some of them are sufficiently obscure and/or inconsequential that they would be poor questions on a general test of US History also.

(I got a ~94%)

SirWired

Missing Question...

[MustBeOriginal]

What's the best way to become an elected official:
1. FUD Campaign.
2. Diebold VOTE-RIGHT(tm) automatic voting machine.
3. Be married to indiscreet high office holder and then publicly declare you still love him.
4. Legally change name to "None of the Above"

Re:Missing Question...

[jonaskoelker]

Wait, he didn't change his name to non... oh. Oohhhh....

iseewhadudidthar...

Loaded questions also reveal political bias.

[cith]

Many of the basic history questions in the test should have been easy (US allies/enemies in WWII).

But it's much harder to blame people for failing questions like this one where " just 16 percent, tested respondents' basic understanding of economic principles, asking why "free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than government's centralized planning?"

I'm not sure that question has a right answer, particularly in light of recent turmoil in the global economy. Depending upon your political bias, this question can be answered ostensibly correctly by disagreeing with the question.

If this were a quiz based upon known facts it would have more value as an objective measurement.

This Explains SOOOO Much

[wilder_card]

Elected Officials:

• Seventy-nine percent [...] do not know the Bill of Rights expressly prohibits establishing an official religion for the U.S.
• Twenty-seven percent cannot name even one right or freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment.
• Fifty-four percent do not know the Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war. Thirty-nine percent think that power belongs to the president, and 10% think it belongs to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

This is why the Supreme Court has to strike down so many stupid laws. And since WWII, apparently even Congress has forgotten that the power to declare war resides with Congress.

A democracy only works with a well-educated populace. We used to know that.

Question 33...

[Fishbulb]

33) If taxes equal government spending, then:

A. government debt is zero

B. printing money no longer causes inflation

C. government is not helping anybody

D. tax per person equals government spending per person

E. tax loopholes and special-interest spending are absent

The answer page says "D" is the correct answer. I answered "A".

This is a little perplexing to me, since D would imply that every person pays the same amount of tax, say $5000, and therefore the Gov't would spend $5000 per person.

However, the pool of tax the gov't receives and spends was generated by a progressive tax. For the sake of illustration, if person A makes $500,000 and is taxed at 20%, they pay $100,000 in tax. Person B makes $50,000 and is taxed at 10%, so B pays $5,000. The total tax the gov't receives is $105,000 and therefore spends $52,500 per person, despite the tax per person being quite disparate.

So answer "D" only makes sense in a situation where there's no progressive tax. Which isn't even what the question is about.

The question is what is meant when the gov't spends what the gov't gets, and that just means no deficit spending.

Which is answer A. Right? Am I missing something?

Re:Question 33...

[vux984]

The answer page says "D" is the correct answer. I answered "A".

Its probably the trickiest question on the whole test, but D is the correct answer.

This is a little perplexing to me, since D would imply that every person pays the same amount of tax, say $5000, and therefore the Gov't would spend $5000 per person.

It implies no such thing.

"per person" is equivalent to "per head" or in latin "per capita"

Anything measured "per person" or "per capita" represents the total amount divided by the total number of people. It doesn't generally imply the same amount was taken from each person. If I collect 10,000$ in donations from a group of 100 people, I could legitimately say I brought in 100$ per person.

Or when a cereal box of lucky charms says there are 200 calories per 1 cup serving, that doesn't mean every cup will have exactly 200 calories. If one cup has a few extra marshmallow charms than another that cup will have more. But on average, each cup would be 200 calories.

so tax collected per person = tax spent per person simply means:
(total tax/total people) = (total spend/total people)
which is trivially true.

"A" on the other hand, is trivially false because:

The US debt is 10.6 trillion. If next year, the total taxes collected that year = total government spending that year the US debt will still be 10.6 trillion. It will absolutely NOT be zero. The deficit will be zero, which would be a good start, but that's not the debt.

Re:Question 33...

[Detritus]

"per person" or "per capita" implies the arithmetic mean or average.

Re:Question 33...

[wikinerd]

only makes sense in a situation where there's no progressive tax

Or when you do the following: let A be the total tax income the government had from all of its tax-payers, and let B be the total population of tax payers, then divide the two. Progressive tax, flat tax, fair tax, unfair tax, or whatnot it doesn't matter: that division always gives the same result.

I got the same as you

[Anonymous Coward]

81.something%

The thing is, I'm Canadian and everything I know about U.S. civics comes from television and places like Slashdot.

Actually, whats embarassing is, I probably know more about the U.S. than I do about Canada in these areas. Sigh!

And you wonder how we elect these idiots

[Quila]

Bush, Obama, William Jefferson (even while under indictment), Stevens, Clinton, etc.

The populace gave the Democrats in Congress a victory, kicking out lots of Republicans in this whole "change" mantra, yet it's shown that 43% of Obama voters didn't know the Democrats were in charge in the first place. Only 17% knew Obama won his first election by having his opponents removed from the ballot.

We are, in aggregate, dumb and completely uninformed. We will therefore get commensurate-quality representatives in government.

Re:And you wonder how we elect these idiots

[Detritus]

That's why I'd like to see a requirement that prospective voters must pass a basic civics and history test like that given to applicants for naturalized citizenship.

Re:Are these civics? Or is this a push poll?

[Anonymous Coward]

The other point was more a vague feeling I got that the questions were pushing an agenda.

Of course they are. The sponsoring organization is a right-wing policy paper mill. Here's some background on ISI.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Intercollegiate_Studies_Institute
http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=177
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercollegiate_Studies_Institute
http://www.mediatransparency.org/conservativephilanthropy.php?conservativePhilanthropyPageID=11

WWII

[KiboMaster]

The abysmal score (69%) from the World War 2 question cracked me up. How could anyone in congress miss that question, a good portion of them were alive while it was going on.

Re:Are these civics? Or is this a push poll?

[hellsfruition]

Number 33 is perhaps also an economic question, but one whose distressingly low proportion of correct answers suggest either a) people were getting tired on a fairly long test or b) people are terrible at reading. If taxes are equal to government spending, then *of course* taxes per person are equal to government spending per person!

Re:What am I missing?

[Qzukk]

government debt is zero

Only if it started as zero. if the government owed one dollar, took in 100 dollars and spent 100 dollars, it'd still owe 1 dollar.

The question is bullshit. As another person pointed out, governments have other sources of revenue than taxes (eg, printing currency, sale of resources) and other expenses than just spending (eg, destruction of currency).

Re:What am I missing?

[Rycross]

Yes, you're thinking of deficit, not debt. If taxes equaled spending today, then we'd still have many trillions in debt. In order to reduce the debt to 0, you either have to start from 0 and keep taxes equal to government spending, or increase taxes beyond government spending and whittle it down.

Re:the three branches of government:

[tomhudson]

The good, the bad, and the ugly.

Of course, which is which changes on a daily basis, depending on which one has made the latest frak-up ...

Examining the questions

[dcooper_db9]

Operating on the assumption that this is the test: http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/resources/quiz.aspx
Given the number of questions about economics I suspect the group that promoted the test had an ulterior motive. I noted some issues with the questions and answers:

Q. 10: Name one right or freedom guaranteed by the first amendment.
A: Religion
Issues: The first amendment prohibits the US Congress from making any law that restricts religion. It does not explicitly bar the states from making such a law. That restriction has been inferred.

Q. 13: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas would concur that:
A: certain permanent moral and political truths are accessible to human reason
Issues: I believe that philosophy and civics are separate. I would not necessarily expect a state legislator to understand Plato.

Q. 25: Free enterprise or capitalism exists insofar as:
A: individual citizens create, exchange, and control goods and resources
Issues: Individual citizens can "create, exchange, and control goods and resources" in non-free enterprise systems of economy. In most economies, including that of the United States, the freedom to do so is restricted.

Q. 27: Free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than government's centralized planning because:
A: the price system utilizes more local knowledge of means and ends
Issues: The question assumes that free markets do secure more economic prosperity than centralized planning. During the current economic crisis governments that regulated their economies have been less affected than those that opened their markets without conditions. The question also fails to establish what is meant by centralized planning. Our current socialist system empowers the Federal Reserve to guide the economic system. The power of the Federal Reserve seems to have diminished but it's hard to argue that it has not stabilized our economy in the years since the Second World War.

Q. 29: A flood-control levee (or National Defense) is considered a public good because:
A: a resident can benefit from it without directly paying for it
Issues: A public good is one that is "non-rival in consumption and non-excludable".
An excludable good is one where consumption can be controlled. A Cable TV signal is excludable because you can be prevented from consuming it if you refuse to pay. A radio transmitted television signal is not excludable because anyone with a receiver can consume the signal.
A non-rival good is one where one person's consumption of the good doesn't prevent another person from also consuming it. An example of a non-rival consumable is a radio transmission. If I turn on my television to consume a radio transmission I do not prevent you from also consuming the same transmission.
A flood control levee is arguably excludable by controlling access to the protected land. Also, levees certainly benefit one group more than another. If billions of dollars of Federal money are spent in New Orleans to rebuild levees, the benefit does not accrue equally to those of us living outside of Louisiana.

Q. 30: Which of the following fiscal policy combinations would a government most likely follow to stimulate economic activity when the economy is in a severe recession?
A: decreasing taxes and increasing spending
Issues: The question touches on two important observations regarding economics. The first is that in some cases government spending can stimulate the economy. The second is that higher taxes may constrain growth.
Historically we have been able to stimulate growth through government spending in certain circumstances. However, simply diverting money from one pot to another is unlikely to help. In order to be effective the spending must be targeted.
As for taxes

Re:Examining the questions

[wikinerd]

I believe that philosophy and civics are separate.

They are inseparable, and in fact there is nothing that is separate from philosophy, because philosophy encompasses everything.

Even posting on Slashdot is a philosophical act.

No Surprises Here

[TFGeditor]

American elections are mostly beauty contests that have little to do with the candidates' qualifications.

I despise the American electoral process--and I am an American.

Re:Are these civics? Or is this a push poll?

[internic]

Actually, that was probably the one where I was most perplexed as to the "correct" answer, but precisely because it was as obvious as you say. I mean, it's not just obvious it is a totally vacuous tautology. So I selected that answer but with some doubt that I must be misunderstanding the question.

They are wrong.

[mosb1000]

"Forty percent of respondents, meanwhile, incorrectly believed that the US president has the power to declare war, while 54 percent correctly answered that that power rests with Congress."

Just because the constitution says it doesn't make it true. I'd say that the 40% are correct on this one.

Re:Are these civics? Or is this a push poll?

[internic]

Okay, I got a chance to look at the ISI website, and it is, indeed, a politically conservative organization as I was able to guess from the content of their quiz. One portion of the site is hawking a book about "American Intellectual Conservatism" . Also looking at the mission statement is instructive.

It isn't clear to me whether this is an attempt at a sort of "push polling" as I was speculating or whether they're honestly trying to test what they see as the "important" part of civics, which is strongly colored by their world view. It's probably best to assume the latter. However, if they're not testing based on a wide consensus view of what's important in civics but rather based upon their particular ideological slant then they're not exactly testing peoples' knowledge of civics in a fair sense.

My

[Sasayaki]

I'm an Australian and I got:

You answered 22 out of 33 correctly â" 66.67 %

Not bad considering the number of questions directly relating to America. I mean, how many Americans could answer the question: "What was Harold Holt most famous for?"

Re:Are these civics? Or is this a push poll?

[Anonymous Coward]

With regards to:
13)Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas are some of the most well known philosophers that have defined much of modern "Western" thought. Although not part of civics specifically, knowledge of the general concepts that these individuals held is very important to how our society thinks and functions.

25, 27, and 31) These are basic economics questions. If you know what you are talking about, you either 1) know the correct answer or 2) are brilliant enough that you know what answer is expected.

30) Very basic economics. If you can't answer this correctly, you don't know how economics works.

Other than those, the question explicitly asks "what right or freedom is guarenteed..."; thus, "freedom of religion" instead of "religion" would be redundant (basic English comprehension here; come on, you can do better).

Re:Obama voters fail basic knowledge test too

[Kagura]

That's an interesting survey. I never really thought about it before, but you can clearly influence the results you want based on the questions you ask and the ways you ask them. I don't know what mod actually thought it was worth modding up.

Re:Are these civics? Or is this a push poll?

[Kirijini]

I agree with you that the survey is somewhat conservative, and I think that your idea that it's a form of push poll is intriguing.

But, I think that on the whole, this sort of civics quiz is a good idea. Some of the questions do not have factually obvious answers. Many of the questions require thinking rather than pulling trivia from memory.

I would love to see a reputable, nonpartisan organization (I'm thinking a poli sci department at a university) create a somewhat more comprehensive (and more politically neutral) survey and submit it to elected officials and regular citizens. I like the idea of mixing fact-based civics questions with right and wrong answers* and opinion-based political questions that have multiple "right" answers, and maybe wrong answers too**

If the sample size is large enough, you could analyze correlations between people who got the civics questions right and wrong and their political leanings. I bet there'd be a ton of interesting data there. A lot more interesting that just a civics quiz (surprise surprise, Americans don't understand their governments) or a political poll.

*like, Article I section 8 of the Constitution: A) empowers Congress to... (blah blah blah) B) limits the federal judiciary by... C) lists the rights of states D) etc. etc.

**the form of government spending most likely to stimulate the economy is...

Re:Are these civics? Or is this a push poll?

[IHC Navistar]

"and I got the distinct impression that the test makers were pushing a specific (libertarian/conservative) ideological agenda."

- I seriously doubt you will find a Liberal/Progressive web site that will ask neutral questions on the 2nd Amendment, among other things.....

Testing.....

[IHC Navistar]

"US Officials Flunk Test On Civic Knowledge"

Now that we have tested them on their knowledge of Civics, lets give them a test on Ethics.....

Canadian repsonse....

[Anonymous Coward]

So I'm a dumb Canuck and I scored 81.82%

I suppose this shows that the people in Canada pay way too much attention to basic issues in the USA

Re:Are these civics? Or is this a push poll?

[internic]

Yeah, that could be interesting, and I wouldn't have anything against that in general, it's just that you couldn't then claim the raw results, including all the questions, as a "test of your knowledge of civics", which is what bugs me about this. The only other thing about doing what you're talking about is that you'd have to be careful in drawing conclusions.

For example, image a hypothetical world where there are two political viewpoints, each equally valid. Political philosophy A tends to benefit by the lower classes and so is generally favored by them, and philosophy B tends to benefit the upper classes and is generally favored by them. Suppose also that the amount and/or quality of education received is positively correlated to income. In this hypothetical world, your test would find less educated people favor philosophy A while more educated people favor philosophy B, but (by our assumption) it wouldn't actually be a causal relationship, just a spurious correlation.

Re:Obama voters fail basic knowledge test too

[Fritzed]

Wow, what a complete joke. I particularly like their question "with a twist" was actually a lie. The question "which of the 4 said 'I can see russia from my house' which was a question with no answer. I also love the insinuation that Mccain supporters supposedly knew more about what was going on.

It is a sad fact, but we all know how uninformed the average American is. Is it because of the media? Maybe in part. Does that mean the media has a left wing bias? Absolutely not. It would be easy to name dozens of stories negative for republicans that haven't been covered. Stories aren't covered most of the time because media is profit driven and they wouldn't raise viewership.

As for the claim 'Survey finds most Obama voters remembered negative coverage of McCain/Palin statements but struggled to correctly answer questions about coverage associated with Obama/Biden' - I can practically guarantee you that the inverse is true as well.

Oh, and I also love the claim that these were 12 of the most informed Obama voters. It's not like they had an agenda in picking them or anything. . .

Re:Are these civics? Or is this a push poll?

[internic]

Well, I would hope that anyone could write a objective questions on the topic of civics. The point is just to stick to objective facts or at least points on which there is extremely broad agreement. So, a question like, "The 2nd Amendment to the Constitution guaranties: A) the right to keep and bear arms B) freedom of speech B) 40 acres and a mule d) free booze" is objective whereas the with answers like "A) a collective right to bear arms as part of a militia B) an individual right to bear arms C) a right to arm bears" it would not be, because it's not objective in the strictest sense (it requires some interpretation) and there's significant disagreement in our society over which interpretation is correct.

These guys didn't do too badly, but it looks to me like they definitely strayed outside the limits of totally objective questions on civics from time to time. They let their bias show through, because I picked up on it loud and clear.

Re:Obama voters fail basic knowledge test too

[Anpheus]

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/11/interview-with-john-ziegler-on-zogby.html

Draft 'em

[CptNerd]

Make serving in Congress like jury duty, and don't allow for more than one term. And go back to letting state legislatures select Senators.

At least we wouldn't have so many lawyers making laws that only other lawyers understand, and that have so many unintended consequences...

Hmm

[Puffy Director Pants]

I got a 93%, and I really felt two of the questions were...totally crazy. I'd have left them blank if I could have.

Re:Are these civics? Or is this a push poll?

[amacbride]

I also got 100%, and I had the same feeling. (The wording of the questions, in particular the religion one, was not entirely neutral.)

Re:Obama voters fail basic knowledge test too

[Kagura]

Thanks for the link! That was a very good read. Summary: The survey is a total crock.

Re:Are these civics? Or is this a push poll?

[prichardson]

I took the quiz and got that too, especially that question about why free markets result in a better economy than planned economies. Any moron should be able to recognize the giant assumption in that question.

Uneducated title of TFA

[macraig]

I'd be more interested in reading TFA if its title correctly spelled the word "American". I find it amusing that alleged professional journalists, who produce an article describing the alleged ignorance of Americans and American politicians, can't even manage to correctly spell the nationality of their subjects IN THE TITLE nor proofread it before it goes to press on an internationally available Web site.

Where's the credibility? Journalists are part of that same cross-section of (American) idiots.

Re:Obama voters fail basic knowledge test too

[Zencyde]

That's something you learn in a basic psychology class. You have to be careful of how you word things.

Slashdot Effect?

[Entropy98]

ordinary citizens managed an amazing 49 percent on the 33 questions
 
I just took the test (90.91) and the cumulative average it gives now is 77.8 percent.
--
  IP Address Finding

Not that hard...

[Excelcia]

The test wasn't that hard. I scored 94%, but then again I'm Canadian so I would know more about American civics.

I (an Australian) got over 90% for this test

[ignavus]

I (an Australian) got over 90% for this test, without cheating (i.e. without using Google or Wikipedia etc to look up answers) - just using the knowledge I already had.

Re:Are these civics? Or is this a push poll?

[IHC Navistar]

Good point.

Though, I would think it would be pretty hard for anybody that has enough of a presense to be noticed like this to be able to compose a test and not have a bias one way or another.

Only one free-market question on whole test

[Latent Heat]

Wrong answers to questions on central planning vs. free markets, however, are due to a devotion to a philosophy that is just wrong.

There was only one question on the whole test that solicited an answer that favored free markets over central planning. There was another question that appeared to favor government action to solve the "free rider" or "tragedy of the commons" problem that is commonly cited as a defect of unregulated free enterprise. And there was another question that was backed up by Keynesian Theory of how a government should respond to an economic recession.

The ISI is an organization that many would characterize as "right wing." I see the question about the advantages of free enterprise as "getting their licks in." But if one has a left-wing world view, there might be only one question on the whole test one would get wrong.

I would think that someone with a "liberal", "progressive", or "left-wing" world view would be at an advantage to get the question about War Powers correct -- yes, presidents have been sending our soldiers all over the place, but that Congress has not declared war on anybody since 1941 is a major talking point in such circles.

Meh

[chazzf]

28 of 33 (84%, a B), but I'm calling shenanigans on Question #9:

Under Our Constitution, some powers belong to the federal government. What is one power of the federal government?

• A. Make treaties
• B. Levy income taxes
• C. Maintain prisons
• D. Natural Disaster Aid

The "correct" answer is (A), make treaties. All well and good; it is established in Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 that the President can do this with the "advice and consent of the Senate." Thing is, the 16th Amendment to the Constitution grants Congress the power to levy income taxes. Now, states also levy income tax, but Article I expressly forbids states from entering into treaties with foreign countries. I suppose, then, what the question was actually asking was this: "What is one power of the federal government denied to the states." Maybe that's obvious to everyone else, but I found it misleading.

Re:Are these civics? Or is this a push poll?

[internic]

Very true.

I should run for office

[Ghoser777]

93% right isn't too bad for someone who got C/B's in US History. I'm ashamed I got the Gettysburg Address question wrong on #7 (I am from the land of Lincoln) and I rushed through #33 too fast, otherwise it's pretty obvious.

Ghoser777 in 2012!

Re:Obama voters fail basic knowledge test too

[ravenshrike]

Dozens? Specifically on the national level?

32/33 here

[Nicolas MONNET]

And I'm French.

Europeans beat Americans in US civic knowledge?

[wikinerd]

Elected officials scored a 44 percent while ordinary citizens managed an amazing 49 percent on the 33 questions

For FSM's sake! I am from the birthplace of democracy and I scored nearly double than that.

Re:What am I missing?

[wikinerd]

governments have [...] other expenses than just spending (eg, destruction of currency).

Bah, that's so demonde... nowadays governments just sell their currency to the Chinese.

Re:Test administration was poor.

[pretygrrl]

self-selected - i am surprised more people here don't have a bone to pick with this. wtf is a self-identified elected official?! i should hope that ACTUAL officials have better things to do w. time than online civics quizzes. otoh, the type of person that just thinks he is an "elected official" without actually being one i think may v. well be 1 of the scarrier types around... all bloated self importance and obnoxiousness of a hallway monitor.... the types that wave hands in front of their faces when they see someone smoking a cigarette on a public street. ugh.

Mediocre Grasp of Economics

[bill_mcgonigle]

Q: If taxes equal government spending, then:

A: tax per person equals government spending per person

This is not even correct. Well, it's only correct if you're talking about averages per capita, but that's not specified, and can't be assumed. There's no way that in a balanced budged each person gets equal spending according to his paid taxes.

The best answer is B:

    B. printing money no longer causes inflation

Because with a balanced budget we don't need to participate in a debt-money system and the government can issue debt-free money tied to the rate of population growth, which puts the monetary system into a non-inflationary state. Andrew Jackson is the only president who's managed to lead the country into paying off the debt.

Also wrong is:

Q: Which of the following fiscal policy combinations would a government most likely follow to stimulate economic activity when the economy is in a severe recession?

They're looking for:
    C. decreasing taxes and increasing spending

but history shows, in the US at least that:

    A. increasing both taxes and spending

is the unfortunate reality (e.g. Smoot-Hally). I think they're asking what the government should do, but then the answer would be:

    D. decreasing both taxes and spending

because then the government isn't further prolonging the downturn by devaluing the currency with its deficit spending.

Re:Mediocre Grasp of Economics

[ratnerstar]

I hate to disagree with you, but that first question is logically and mathematically correct. The average is assumed, but that's pretty standard usage; when we talk about health care spending per person in the US, we don't mean everyone pays exactly $4721.

But what they're asking is, essentially:

Q: If A = B, then ...
A: A/x = B/x

My problem with this question is that, while it demonstrates one's knowledge of 7th grade pre-algebra, it has nothing to do with civics. It's like putting one of those "two trains leave New York and Detroit at 1pm" questions on a locomotive engineer exam.

As for the last question you mention, I disagree with your answer but definitely agree that it's a loaded question.

I really do understand why the Civil Rights Act

[RobertinXinyang]

I really do understand why the Civil Rights Act forbade poll tests. But, that time is passed. It really is time to consider reinstating a fairly applied (that means everyone takes it, regardless of race) poll test.

Re:What am I missing?

[redxxx]

It's BS. They are using D) to mean Taxes/population = Spending/population where taxes = spending. Which is undeniably true.

Of course, that's not how most people interpret the phrase 'per person', which to many people would imply the benefits for each individual are equal to the taxes that individual paid.

I assumed they were being dumb with A, and should have used deficit. meh.