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Civics Fail?

Cara

A new report has come out showing that average American citizens scored a failing grade of 49% on a test about American history, civics and economics, and elected officials did even worse at 44%.

At first this did disturb me, based on many of the questions that the article highlights, until I looked at the test.  I took it, and scored a 75.76%.  That is, of course, significantly better than the average reported in the article.  But looking at the questions, a lot of the time I just had to ask myself “who the hell cares?”

I mean, we’re supposed to be upset that our elected officials don’t know the answers to these questions — and I personally am of the frame of mind that we should seek people to run our government who know more than most of us do — but in the end, who really cares what the Puritans believed, or what the main issue debated by Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas was regarding slavery when all were important questions, or what statement Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Aquinas would all agree with?  I don’t, even if I do think they’re points of interest, nor do I particularly care whether most other people know these things.

The additional good news is that most public officials are going to be at low levels — city counsels and such.  Though these people certainly have to be smart and know a lot of things to do a competent job, I don’t think that many aspects of national history are hugely relevant to those positions.

On the other hand, I think that there are real implications to people not knowing whether it’s Congress or the president who has the power to declare war.  I’m also worried when people don’t know what the Electoral College is, let alone the basic aspects of how it works.  I think there are further implications regarding the effectiveness of our school system when so many people can’t name two of the U.S.’s World War II enemies in a multiple choice question.  And while some of the economics questions are ideologically driven, I do think that people ought to know what a profit is.

So, what do you think?  First of all, how did you do on the test? And secondly, how much do you think it matters?

102 thoughts on Civics Fail?

  1. 100%. I guess those degrees came in handy.

    I don’t like the phrasing of the answer to #27, but I saw which one they wanted us to select.

    33 was a bit of a trick question. Most folks will confuse one word for a similar word and pick the wrong answer.

  2. 81.82%. I agree, the questions are pretty arbitrary. Some are really important (like knowing the three branches of government) and others (like what Plato and Socrates thought) would be great if people knew more widely, but it’s pretty unreasonable to expect everyone has taken a college course in philosopy. Then ones like #27 just had me scratching my head – isn’t that a pretty subjective question?

  3. i totally scored a 93.1% which i am prouder of than i really am willing to admit.

    i found some of the questions kind of ridiculous — like the socrates/plato/etc question and some of the history. but the public works ones and the “how does this work in the government/what does this branch of government do” questions are SO IMPORTANT.

    i really have been thinking lately about this — how little most of us know about how the government runs aside from “in a way we disagree with.” (and that is no matter how left or right you are!) what does the federal reserve do? who controls the interest rate? what are public works? i feel like this stuff is really important, not in a weirdo elitist way but in a very real way. i have been trying to learn what is going on and i still barely understand the bailout — and in my group of fairly educated, fairly on-point friends, i am somehow becoming one of the experts. i am a nerd for things like this — i wish more people were.

  4. “But looking at the questions, a lot of the time I just had to ask myself “who the hell cares?”” Bravo to that statement.

    I have never really shared any type of interest at all when it comes to history. Is it important? From a philosophical stand point, does it matter what really is in our past? Yes it helps to understand why things are the way they are now, but does it benefit anything?

    A better statistic to look at would be:

    How many average Americans have attempted to start their own internet based company this year?

    How many average Americans have attempted to participate in the world of blogging, with the intention to help others learn about things they truly care about?

  5. 72.83% Not bad for a Canadian I suppose. I did well on the history questions, but not too well on the economic ones!

  6. I got a 31/33 – 94%, and I am routinely in danger of failing history classes. What disturbs me about the low scores for “public officials” isn’t exactly the importance of understanding any particular question so much as that the questions are pretty easy on the whole, even for someone (me) who completely sucks at history, philosophy, and economics classes. They’re mostly things you pick up from occasionally reading the news or elimination of some of the choices.

  7. Micheyd, I didn’t think that 27 was subjective. I thought the “correct” answer was debatable, one of the “wrong” answers was arguable, and three were just wrong. If they had replaced the “right” answer with something more general, like “because, in theory, many decision-makers allocating capital will allocate it more efficiently, using more and better information,” I would have liked the answer better. However, as we all know, in practice, Teh Sainted Market can get things as wrong as a Soviet Central Planner. (That’s why responsible developed countries have mixed economies!)

  8. I got 100%, by recognizing the ideological bias of the questions. Hello, emphasis on free trade! And the description of “public good” was really weird, like they were trying to get around saying “public goods are provided by the government because there is no market mechanism to pay for them.”

    I do think people should know more about how the government works, but in that regard knowing how your city council, park board, library board, water & soil commission, and zoning board is just as important, and gives people a better chance of making change (though a working knowledge of what powers the executive, legislative, and judicial branches are supposed to have would be nice in the average voter, legislator & executive).

  9. I scored 93.94 and the ones I missed were both economics questions. Not clear on how promoting capitalism qualified as “civics”.

  10. Yeah Thomas, maybe subjective is the wrong word…I picked the right answer but definitely thought it was debatable.

  11. 100%. I guess those degrees came in handy.

    Doesnt take a degree. I did that well without one. Just takes not having fallen asleep in your average middle school American history course.

    Not clear on how promoting capitalism qualified as “civics”.

    Agreed. In fact I think they were wrong about one of those questions, but I knew what the “right” answer was supposed to be.

  12. Well you all did better than me! Good work.

    In my defense, I did go to college in Australia, which means that I learned all of this a.) in high school or b.) not at all. 🙂

  13. Has anyone noticed this was put together by a right-wing think tank? From ISI’s website about their beliefs:

    “Moral Norms-
    The values, customs, conventions, and norms of the Judeo-Christian tradition inform and guide a free society. Without such ordinances, society induces its decay by embracing a relativism that rejects an objective moral order.”

    “Free Market Economy
    Allocating resources by the free play of supply and demand is the single economic system compatible with the requirements of a free society, and also the most productive and efficient supplier of human needs.” (Get rid of welfare and social services?)

    Also, their first president was William F. Buckley…

    This is being taken seriously because….?

  14. Has anyone noticed this was put together by a right-wing think tank?

    Ha, nope! I definitely noticed that there was a right-wing bent to the questions, but attributed to that being the way that such things are generally taught in this fine nation of ours. Didn’t know it was put together by complete and total wingnuts.

  15. When I was unsure, I asked myself, “what would the conservative neo-liberals who obviously wrote this quiz want the answer to be?” and I scored 90.91%. This is a very ideologically biased quiz.

  16. I never know what to make of these quizzes, I did very well (only getting the Puritan question wrong), and I don’t know anyone who didn’t do very well. I’m college educated and so are most of my friends who took the test, so I’m a biased sample, but someone getting ~50% surprises me.

    One frequently hears about tests where some discouraging percentage of people can’t do something fairly basic (remember what “profit” means, find the US on a map, name the President, etc…). I don’t feel like I ever actually *meet* these people though. The test results say I should be meeting them all the time, but Americans who can’t find the US on a map are so rare that the idea of them seems ridiculous.

    Are the test results misleading? Is there a vast uneducated class I never interact with because of my class? I feel like the first is much more likely than the second. I’m especially suspicious of this test because it is so screamingly ideological.

    p.s. They changed #9, the first time I took it they listed “levy taxes” as option D. The trouble was they forgot that levying taxes is a power of the federal government (amendment 16 starts “Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes”), so there were two correct answers.

  17. I got the same percentage you did. Not bad, considering I’m european. I did find many questions debatable; #27 was the most obviously skewed, but others also looked suspicious.

    And yes, I think the survey is totally irrelevant – it’s a weird mixture of fundamental knowledge, general (non-civics) knowledges, and their own personal biased opinions.

  19. “You answered 31 out of 33 correctly — 93.94 %”! And I’m not even a citizen. Feh.

    Did anybody else think that the Sputnik question didn’t really belong there? Seeing as it’s more Russian/Soviet history than American civics?

  20. I got 31/33, or 93.94%. Question 27 was terribly written, as writers above noted. And yes, it was easier as soon as you recognized that the questions were clearly written with a base emphasis on contemporary conservatism.

    I also got Question 33 wrong, but I blame that on 1) the question and 2) some sloppy overconfidence.

    On 27, I initially selected D. property rights and contracts are best enforced by the market system, while the right answer was A. the price system utilizes more local knowledge of means and ends.

    On 33, I picked A. Government Debt is zero. I guess that’s sloppy.

    Now, on to the test.

    Yes, a lot of our elected officials are quite stupid. I would prefer them to the best possible people at their jobs, and I think part of that would be curiosity and deep knowledge about American governance. And perhaps our neighbors could stand to know a bit more about the basic machinery of government.

    I don’t think that the American people need to be capable of, at a moment’s notice, defending the theories of “free market” capitalism should any Communists speak aloud. As Jay and others noted, no one particular economic ideology is rooted in our civics – and, if there was one, it wouldn’t be this one! This all reminds me of the Schneiderman case, in which the United States tried to strip a citizen of his citizenship because he was allegedly a Communist.

  21. I scored 84.85%. For a liberal socialist Canadian, I’d say that’s a good score.

    I’d be interested in seeing the scores of American citizens and public officials that focuses more on the role of government (what branches there are, who does what, how the system works, etc), with less of the history and ideological questions. I’d like to think more public officials would score higher on such a quiz. It’d also be interesting to see how citizens of different countries score on a similar quiz, with questions relating to their respective countries. Do Canadians, for example, know more about their government than the average American, and how do Canadian public officials score?

  22. @ Rosa- I definately agree about the bias in the questions.

    I got ~87%. I missed some of the memory questions, like which document a certain phrase appeared in (there were a few of those), and the economic stimulus one, and the foreign trade one (I oscillated between the correct answer and the answer I put because it was not clear if they wanted the overall global market effect or the effect on a single country participating in the global market).

    Some of the questions did cover essential stuff, like the powers of branches of government, constitutional rights, etc. But…Sputnik? Srsly? I think that was thrown in there so people could at least get one right 😛 Also opinion and history. While history is important, it’s not the same as civics. So the straight up history questions (i.e. who were our enemies in WWII) were not a good measure of how one understands how the government works.

  24. I got 75.76%, and I’m from Europe.

    Yes, the questions are very biased towards free trade and there are a lot of them which don’t really matter, but they’re not that hard and whilst the average may be 49%, the only thing that bothers me is that elected officials got less than I did!

    Seriously, that’s not a good sign. These questions matter more for them than for the normal person in the street and it’s really quite bad that they don’t score much higher.

  25. 32 of 33 for 96.96%

    Some of the questions were quite obscure while many of the answers were oddly worded (making things more trickier, obviously). And the test very definitely has a right-wing feel to it. One of the posters above noted how some of the possible answers “felt” better as opposed to the “right” answer, based on the ideological bent.

    I’m a politics and political history junkie, so I knew what the “right” answers were (with one exception). But the “lean” is pretty obvious! If anyone is interested, there is a “progressive” version of the test in a couple of the Daily Kos diaries.

  28. “Has anyone noticed this was put together by a right-wing think tank?”

    I kinda suspected so. Some of the questions seemed like propaganda to me (asking stuff like “who were our enemies” and “why is free market better than central planning”)

    I got 30/33 (90.9%). I’m Canadian and know jack shit about US history, so I guessed on most of the answers! Oh well, maybe I know more than I think.

  29. Note that the quiz is, in banner form, set up to play the politics of fear. “Our Fading Heritage: Americans Fail a Basic Test on Their History and Institutions.” That’s the title of the quiz. If someone had handed me the SAT, with the banner title: “Our Foolish Children: Americans Fail a Basic Test of Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic,” I wonder how I would do.

  31. I got 96.97% right — some of the questions definitely have some ideological suppositions, but it’s pretty easy to figure out which ones they wanted you to pick.

    But to answer the larger question, yeah, this stuff matters. Knowing how things were, and how they got to be where they currently are, allows societies to avoid mistakes made in the past. And elected officials are supposed to become experts in this stuff. The fact that they’re scoring lower than the average is pretty sad.

  32. I am proud to say that I scored an 84.85%, both because I was actually worried that I would not have done that well, and that I dropped out of college, and have spent the subsequent years liberally (haha) apply alcohol to my brain. I am of the opinion that everything is important though (and interesting!) and hoped that we would’ve done better as a people

  33. 30/33
    I blame poorly worded questions for my failure.

    Americans should know the history of their country. . . we’ve all heard the saying “those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them”

    We can’t identify our allies on a map.
    We suck at math and science.

    our standards are far too low. We should have some general well of knowledge in society.

  34. I missed three, although I call shenanigans on two of those (one beat me fair and square).

    I think that the questions were relevant, though perhaps not for the reasons the test designers intended. The questions about capitalism and history that a lot of people didn’t like I felt were especially salient. The way I see it is that whether you’re a dyed-in-the-wool anarchocapitalist or Karl Marx himself its beneficial to, you know, have a critical understanding of the theories you’re supporting or opposing. The US is a capitalist nation, so understanding how capitalism works is kind of a prerequisite to understanding how the US works (or doesn’t, as the case may be). I feel much the same way about history. If you live in a western society its useful to be able to understand where your values came from and in what context, otherwise you find yourself in a state of either unquestioning obedience or abject confusion. Its difficult to fight, or defend, something you can’t adequately identify.

    But hey thats just my two, admittedly relativistic and utterly subjective, cents.

  35. 96.97 I got the last one wrong. I agree, it seemed clear that several of the questions were questions of ideology. In other words, like a catechism test, you give the answers the Church wants to hear. I would have loved to have comments on each answer.

  36. 87.88% (29/33 correct)

    I missed the one about how to “stimulate economic activity when the economy is in a severe recession”– since I don’t agree with their answer. (And that’s when I knew it was rightwardly-skewed, too.)

  37. I got 84.85%, and I thought everybody knew the real three branches of government are rum, sodomy, and the lash.

  39. “You answered 28 out of 33 correctly — 84.85 %”

    Again, not bad for a Canadian.

    But I’m not sure which questions are supposedly ideological. The ones I got wrong were more or less simple knowledge questions (I can’t believe I got “for the people, by the people” wrong) and the rest seemed straightforward to me.

  40. I got 90.91%, and two of the three I missed were market-related questions I got “wrong” for ideological reasons.

  41. I took it yesterday and got something like an 89%.

    It’s tough for me to answer whether it matters, because I am interested in politics and am a total history nerd. But yes, there is plenty in there that everybody in the USA doesn’t have to know. However, the elected officials doing so poorly part makes me sad and somewhat satisfied in my expectations. I laughed unpleasantly over them not knowing who has the power to make war. I mean, we already knew that congress was confused about that.

    There are things that I WISH people knew, because it’s good to know. I know that not every needs to care about the Battle of Britain and Andersonville Prison and Vietnam war protests to the extent that I do. However, not knowing who the the USA fought against during WWII seems like a lack of basic historical knowledge. If your grandparents were there, it’s too recent for you to be totally clueless about it. It reminds of a poll in Britain which claimed that a certain large percentage of the population thought that WINSTON CHURCHILL WAS FICTIONAL CHARACTER. I basically refused to believe that on the grounds that it would turn me into a giant misanthropist.

  42. I got 93%, but then, I’m an avid reader on all kinds of weird topics (like Plato and Aristotle *laughs*).

    Really, though, all of those questions about economics? Yeah, I knew most of the answers, but they really weren’t about American History as much as, you know, economics.

    Anyone that failed the first half of the test, though? Send them back to high school civics.

    Oh, the question about the Lincoln debates? Was a very important item at that point in history. Would new states admitted to the union be allowed to have slaves. Essentially, it was a state’s rights issue, the primary issue that led to the Civil War. So, while I would have asked a different question around that subject, the subject was important to know.

  43. I got 30/33, so 90.91%. I missed 27, 31, and 33. Though, I think 27 was a rather strange question, so I don’t know that I think it should count.

  44. 81.82%. I’m not great with the business/economic terms, but I got the history questions correct. 27 was not a great question. Overall, I didn’t like how any of the economic questions were framed. Idealogical reasons for missing them may be to blame. The history part was okay, though. However, I slept through most of highschool economics because I didn’t like the teacher, and I don’t really want to take it in college, so that could be why my score was lower.

  45. 84.85%. W00t! I’m unreasonably pleased with myself. In honor of my personal low standards, I’m going to take my solid B and dance around the office.

    As for the relevance of the test, I agree that some of the questions (Puritans? Socrates?) seemed more trivia than actual useful knowledge. But a lot of the other questions addressed topics that would help citizens – and, for that matter, elected officials – better understand the situations we’re facing now. Understanding the roles and powers of the branches of government, knowing what the electoral college is and the purpose and origin of the Bill of Rights, those things would probably help people better understand how government works and what they should be able to expect from their elected officials.

  46. I got 91% as well. Missed the Cuba one–didn’t read the question right. I completely didn’t know anything about the Jefferson’s letters thing, and I forget the last one…

    This is very much a bullshit test beyond oh…60%.

  48. ah, and one more thing…

    the sample of public officials is probably ridiculously low, and probably involves a whole bunch of ideological ignoramouses.

  50. 100%

    I’m a PoliSci major with a History Minor and I used to have a major that required me to learn economic theory, so I was prepped for this test.

    It was very much a “hold my nose” and choose on 27, because of the assumption that the free market system is superior to government planning and that somehow government planning doesn’t prop up the so-called free market system in the US (see recent economic bailout). Nope, no bias there.

    Speaking of that bias, I agree with previous commenters on the obvious neo-Liberal quiz bias. I’m also curious about this supposed failure thing going on since their own statistics on my result page tell me that the average score has been 78.71%. Are those of us on the interwebz really that much smarter?

  51. 90.91% – I missed 11, 31, and 33.
    The test seems rather pro-laissez faire to me. It occurs to me that international trade will mean A. an increase in a nation’s productivity in the short term, but has shown that D. a decrease in a nation’s standard of living will be the long-term result for all parties.

  52. I got 75%, which I’m almost proud of as a dual UK/US citizen raised in the UK. Though I have lived in the US for 8 of the past 10 years. I know that I would have scored way lower before I knew my husband. I’m curious to see what he gets on the test.

  53. 90.91% – and I blame poor government/econ teachers in high school for the rest.

    The results here make me really curious about who they asked in their original sample, since most if not all of the scores here are within the top 4% of their findings. Either that, or makes me very sad for this country. I was amused to see that church attendance seemed to be inversely related to the score on the test.

    And aside from the obviously free-market ideology questions, I do think a lot of the things they asked are important. Maybe not the exact answers to the questions they asked, but the ideas behind them. Like the philosophers question – knowing that those ideas were part of the philosophical basis of our country can help us to understand what appropriate interpretations of the founding documents may be. Some of the other questions seem to be about particular events, but they’re actually about what powers certain parts of the government have – the possibilities of what can be done, and what things are unconstitutional and should be sources of outrage. And in an era where many people don’t know what women’s suffrage is, I sure wish they knew who Susan B. Anthony was!

    But I think that maybe the way this quiz can be useful is not so much about what we currently know as about its potential to go viral and perhaps inspire curiosity about civic issues when people realize that they don’t know the answers to such important questions. But maybe that’s me being more optimistic than realistic.

  54. I got a 90.91%. Sadly, the questions I missed were not the ideological ones – I could surmise pretty well what answers I was supposed to give for those. I just plain didn’t know where the phrase “wall of separation” between church and state came from. Of course, the fact that I fully understand and actively promote the idea of separation of church and state means nothing; I am clearly a bad American unfit to live in my country.

    What I am trying to say is that I am rolling my eyes real hard at this test and its supposed testing of knowledge of civics.

  55. Also, has anyone noticed that on the organization’s webpage there doesn’t seem to be a single person who isn’t white in any of the pictures? (Correct me if I’m wrong) And I only count 4 or 5 women out of probably over 50 people. Which makes me suspicious of any use of “we/our” or “American” on the site. Somehow I’m not sure if I’m included.

  58. 100% This test was clearly written by someone with an Econ background – 27 was what Hayek one his Econ Nobel for, and is undoubtably true – whether the market CORRECTLY utilizes that local knowledge is less certain.

    Question 33 is seriously dumb – it is an attempt to implement a ‘trick’ wrong answer without actually going through the effort of coming up with an intelligent question to attach it to.

    29 is exactly correct, without trying to ‘work around’ anything. A public good is any good or service which is non-excludable – that is, the benefit from it cannot be provided to those who pay for it without also providing it to people who don’t. The conclusion that the ‘government should provide or pay for it’ is not primary to the definition, though it is a common conclusion.

    25-32 are lifted from a Principles of Macroeconomics final exam. At least half of them, or very much like them, were on mine back when I was a TA. The rest is a mix of high school US history and government. The bit about moral and political truths is important because those philosophers were the foundation on which the Enlightenment was built, and our country was a creation of the Enlightment.

    I find it sad, but not surprising, that the average person would fail this test. Commenters on American political blogs are almost definitionally more learned on these things – we wouldn’t be here if we weren’t interested in civics. Most people don’t read blogs, because they aren’t interested.

  60. And yes, it is pro market, Economics as a social science is. I wouldn’t go as far as to say “pro laissez faire” – the very mention of ‘public goods’ excludes that. Free trade is about as solid a result as you get in economics – it is not even up for debate whether trade creates benefits greater than its costs, it does. (Ironically, not a Conservative position – hardcore Conservatives think trade hurts our culture.) What is arguable is the effect of trade on individuals – the gain is there to compensate the losers from free trade, it is just a case of reallocating some of the gains.

  61. 27 was what Hayek one his Econ Nobel for

    Thank you, RVman, that explains the precise wording.

    (The broader issue of neoliberal theory pushing off distributional unfairness in favor of wealth creation and then not doing the back-end process of redistributing the gains … well, that’s a structural flaw IMO.)

  62. 100 percent, but I earned a polisci minor and am a total junkie for such things. Gagged a little — okay, a lot — at the ideological bent of the survey, but have to strongly disagree with Cara about whether this stuff matters. As was previously pointed out, those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. And even if you know history, you’re sometimes inclined to make the same mistakes. Yes, some of the questions were nitpicky; totally agree. Still, as was also previously pointed out, some of the stuff that people DON’T know is far more horrifying than what they do know. Like, most people know for sure Iraq was behind 9/11 and believe in Bigfoot, but don’t know where the USA is on a map, or the difference between the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I’d rather have people know way too much than not enough.

  63. I got a 23/33 or 69.something%. That appears to be in the average range. But I do think whether or not ideology played a role in some of the questions (which I think it did, particularly with the questions regarding economics) impacts its validity. I don’t care what anyone says, but I think free trade, as it is right now, does more harm than good. It might make some people a lot of money, but it hurts a lot of people.

    As for the ones I answered correctly, I learned most of that stuff within the last 2 or 3 years by listening to Air America Radio, watching cable news, and reading nonfiction. It bothers me that I didn’t learn most of this stuff in school.

  64. I missed 7 and 8, but I think the most fascinating question is 15, where they talk about the roots of “separation of church and state”. The reason I find this so fascinating is because this is something I’ve been fighting over with a well-meaning right-winger friend for the last few days, and evidently the fact that this phrase was first seen in a letter in 1802 where Jefferson basically says “the first amendment puts up a wall of separation between church and state” instead of appearing verbatim in the constitution has become the newest reason why church and state shouldn’t be separate, at least if you’re a fundie. So, again, no surprise this is a right-wing site.

  66. 60%, but I am Canadian. I am amazed what other non-Americans are getting. Notice it now says the average is 78%? I think my education as far as economics has been poor. I was pretty confused by some of those. It is a bit scary 30% didn’t know two enemies in World War 2.

  67. I got a 90.91%. Of course, two of the three questions I missed were the economics questions. I can’t believe I got the one about the Lincoln/Douglass debates wrong.

    Although you might say “Who cares?” I thought this was significant from the “Additional Finding” page:

    * Seventy-nine percent of those who have been elected to government office do not know the Bill of Rights expressly prohibits establishing an official religion for the U.S.

  69. 87.88%, not American but I am a history major. Mostly got economic questions “wrong” due to ideological slant.

  70. 30/33, never been to America or formally studied anything about it. But I can recognise a right-wing capitalist bias when I see it!

  71. 87.88% Law school helped. The history degree not so much, but I concentrated in European history. Like others, I was pretty darn pissed off at the economic questions. I’m a socialist and I didn’t quite appreciate it. The history/constitution stuff seemed pretty unbiased (though “public good”) is debatable, but then suddenly it’s all about how great free trade is! Uhh…

    I got 7, 8, 30, and 33 wrong. My Con Law II prof would not be happy to hear that I’ve forgotten all about Roosevelt’s war with the Court over the New Deal!

  72. Pingback: debgpi » Blog Archive » Time for a (idoeologically rooted) civics quiz

  73. 97% I missed # 33 about government spending and government taxes

    I am about to have a law degree and was a philosophy/mathematics/physics triple major.

    I think it is VERY important that our leaders understand the answers to basic questions like these, because they are at the heart of what makes our democracy in my view.

    We should distinguish though: for average people, you really need to know the layout of the constitution, powers of government, etc. Also basic econ helps too- for instance people being fooled by union special interests into thinking protectionist measures can be efficient when they almost never are.

    But our leaders ought to know the theories of virtue put forth by ancient thinkers, because they are at the heart of our western heritage. As much as we post-modernists like to “deconstruct” these “patriarchal” systems of thought, one cannot easily disturb them without upsetting the whole foundation for our liberty.

  74. 93%, taking about 10 minutes. After a 14 hour work day.

    I find it interesting that they propose that civics be a required college course. In my boomer youth, civics and American history were junior high and high school material. Kids should have a basic grasp of civics by the time they reach voting age, and the subject needs to be taught at varying levels from grade school to high school, in order to ensure that all students, even those who drop out at 16, get taught the basics. American history is also an important topic, but civics – how the system works (in formal terms) – should be the mandatory minimum, and “enhanced civics” courses should be available and recommended (the party system, role of money, role of lobbyists, role of citizen lobbyists, elections, media, role of various Departments of the US gov. and the difference between political appointees and civil servants – the rules and the actuality).

    Most of the questions are fairly basic. A relative deficiency is that of legislative procedural issues – How does a bill become law? What is a veto? What determines House districts and who draws the boundaries? What is the role of House and Senatorial committees? What are the Vice President’s formal roles? What happens when Senate and House pass similar but not identical bills? How is the U.S. Constitution amended? These are the nuts and bolts questions that citizens need. Sputnik, Cuban missile crisis, Lincoln-Douglas debates – these are all basic history, but aren’t terribly useful in navigating the system today.

    A few are a bit ambiguous – international trade, for instance. If country A specializes in high tech, it may well increase its long term growth, etc. If country B specializes in selling non-renewable resources or in selling agricultural produce, it may not increase long term growth, depending on how the profits are distributed and how used. A few are easy to misread. A few are irrelevant – it is all very well to know a little bit about the intellectual toolkit available to the founders (philosopher list question), but more important to know what the founders actually wrote and thought.

    ISI is a fairly well known conservative education think-tank. I do think that understanding some economics and something about capitalism, managed capitalism, mixed capitalism and socialism, socialism in its varieties is useful. There is bias toward questions concerning capitalism here, but historically, that has been the economic system here, and I have no particular interest in totally rejecting it in favor of a state-run centrally planned economy on the order of Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China and the “5 year plans”, or the fascist economy of Germany, both prone to cronyism and inefficiency. I think that a mix of managed capitalism (basic rules concerning securities trading, banking, and the like, gutted in the last 30 years) and socialism (national health plan, state or city run water, state or region-run electricity grid, state and national highway and railway systems) would be inevitable.

  75. 26/33 – 78.79%. Just slightly above average. I’d agree with most of the other folks commenting, though, and say that the test had QUITE the slant to it, not to mention being painfully vague with the wording on several answers. Bleh :/

  76. In addition to the ‘free market capitalist is teh bestest!!’ bias I noticed that the correct answers to questions 6 and 15 put together sound like the argument of aggressive Christian fundamentalists when they want to make their religious beliefs law. They point out that the bill of rights only forbids the establishment of an official religion and that the phrase “wall of separation” was taken from Jefferson’s letters, not the constitution.

    Just for fun, the quiz writers’ choices for wrong answers also want to make sure we all notice that Hey! the Bill of Rights doesn’t forbid prayer in school or discrimination based on religion!

    Aggressive Christian fundamentalists – good at minimalist literalism, not so good at intent.

  77. I got 94% – two wrong. Pretty good for a non-American, I think. I guessed on several, especially sources for certain famous phrases. I got all those right, but that’s just a familiarity with multiple choice tests.

    Is this kind of thing important? I would argue that it is to some degree. I don’t think it’s important for people to be able to list all the presidents in order, but a basic understanding of some of the major events of history – the Cuban missile crisis, the New Deal – as well as understanding things that effect one’s day to day lives – the rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment – are important.

  78. I can’t see an ideological bias to this test. The economics questions are non-controversial if you read them carefully. The rest are simple questions about facts of US history and government.

    25) Free enterprise or capitalism exists insofar as:

    (essentially, asking for a definition of free trade or capitalism)

    A. experts managing the nation’s commerce are appointed by elected officials (probably factually untrue, and not directly related to free enterprise nor capitalism)
    B. individual citizens create, exchange, and control goods and resources (generally the definition of free enterprise and capitalism)
    C. charity, philanthropy, and volunteering decrease (factually debatable, and decrease compared to what?)
    D. demand and supply are decided through majority vote (obviously incorrect)
    E. government implements policies that favor businesses over consumers (not essential to capitalism nor free trade)

    Free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than government’s centralized planning because:

    Note “typically”, “more economic prosperity” (presumably in the aggregate, ignoring distribution), and “centralized planning” (essentially describing a command economy along the lines of the USSR). Lesser forms of government involvement in the economy (less than centralized planning), such as redistribution, tax policy, and the like are not at issue in the question.

    A. the price system utilizes more local knowledge of means and ends (correct answer)
    B. markets rely upon coercion, whereas government relies upon voluntary compliance with the law (wrong by definition)
    C. more tax revenue can be generated from free enterprise (debatable, and doesn’t directly answer the question)
    D. property rights and contracts are best enforced by the market system (factually false, property rights and contracts are enforced by the legal system, a part of the government)
    E. government planners are too cautious in spending taxpayers’ money (debatable, and not really on point)

    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?

    C. decreasing taxes and increasing spending

    This is basically Keynesianism.

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

    A. an increase in a nation’s productivity.

    Note the significance of the term productivity. This is David Ricardo’s comparative advantage, which hasn’t been controversial since mercantilism came to an end 200 years ago (even to Marxists, although the broader impact of specialization and productivity gains is the more relevant question in the Marxist school of thought).

  79. 94% from Britain, no humanities degree. I’d endorse what NancyP says at 74. I’d also suggest that a contempt for history, as some people have shown here, is deeply dangerous. Everybody’s favourite quote from Santayana should be inscribed on the gateway of every school in the world.

  80. 30/33 90.91%

    While I can agree, to a certain extent, that many of these questions are not relevant to the job most politicians have… I am still disturbed by the fact that they scored so low. Shouldn’t they have a good grasp of the past so they are better prepared for the future? A basic history course and some common sense should get you a decent score on this test and the fact that our country’s leaders are lacking these basic things scares me. I really don’t want the Sarah Palins of the world running my country.

  81. Are there more economists out there to confirm that the answer to 27 is a well-established fact? I get annoyed to “evolution is just a theory” nonsense, so I don’t want to sound the same, but how wide is the consensus in the social sciences?

    I work in the only research area that is
    so pure that its truths are undubitable – hence I tend to doubt everyone else’s, especially the social sciences.

  83. Sorry to insist, but I just noticed that the percentage of right(?) answers on question 27 is 16.94. Which is less than one fourth; in other words, people did WORSE than random guessing on this question.
    I would have doubted my own wisdom in such a case, instead of making a big fuss about everybody’s ignorance.

  84. 90.91 here. This test was silly. A number of the questions, particularly the economic ones, are not “factual”. This particular recession, while very similar to the Great Depression, is also showing us that some so-called economic truths aren’t. There would be different answers given to these questions if you were writing the question from neocon, Keneysian, or even the Chicago School of Economics/Frieman pov’s…

    As for the much discussed #27, this has already been tested and challenged by increased information available — in some cases, local knowledge is no longer th most comprehensive.

    I actually missed this one, because I was thinking of our current circumstances, and it’s a VERY “republican” view of it: #30. We are at a point where we cannot increase spending without increasing taxes. Of course, I’m considering those taxes given to the hyperrich, but the question only seems to allow for looking at an across the board same percentage increase for everyone, which is not only silly, but betrays the bias in the test.

  85. Sorry, to clarify. I’m only considering the expansion of taxes on the hyperrich (which were among those rolled back in the Bush years, leading to the current problems), as opposed to an across the board raising of taxes, so to me the logical answer on #30 is to both raise taxes and increase spending in a recession…

  86. I’d say the philosophy (Socrates/Aquinas/etc.) question is important because those sorts of ideas were a part of the Enlightenment ideals that fed the American Revolution.

  87. I’m Swedish, and I got 32/33 (got Roosevelt vs. The Supreme Court wrong).
    First off, I agree with 78. Tom, though the right answers on most of the economics questions might be debatable, they are, given the other alternatives, undeniably correct in this context. Though still vaguely worded.

    As for the test, I would say it measures important things, but it measures them poorly, through poor selection and vague wording.

    The philosophy question is very important, in my mind, but it’s asked in a really stupid manner. It doesn’t matter one whit what the great philosophers in the past believed, the importance in this context is obviously the way it impacts the constitution, which there is a much simpler way of doing.

  89. Pingback: Politicians fail at civics « Musings of a Misanthropist

  90. Just reviewd the rest of the answers. I call bullshit on this one:
    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

    I chose A (which isn’t necessarily true granted — any existing debt will remain and not decrease nor increase save for the interest on it), and the answer is D, which is NOT true. One person might get five times the amount five other people get and still satisfy taxes/same as spending. The hell?

    Stupid question.

  92. @ anon
    Well, for 33, B, C and E can easily be thrown out so you’re left with A and C.

    A is meant to be a “trick” answer; the true form of this answer would be “government DEFICIT is zero” so the answer is somewhat trying to discern whether the tester knows the difference between debt and deficit.

    This leads the discerning tester to their answer of D. Which you’re right to say it’s not true. It is, on average, but that’s misleading.

    There are examples of these in a lot of their questions….how they funnel the tester to pick an ideological but inaccurate answer. Because if all the plainly incorrect answers are thrown out, the only “correct” one remains.

    That’s how people with an agenda get smart people to agree with statements that they wouldn’t normally agree to. By setting up a finite set of statements from which to choose, and having all but one be obviously false, forcing agreement with their agenda. It’s an expanded false dichotomy.

  93. 100 here. It didn’t even occur to me to read “tax per person” and “spending per person” as taxes on each specific person” and “spending on each specific person.” How could one measure the latter, anyway? Read it as “average … per person” and D is obviously right. On the other hand, the others are all wrong on any reading.

    I can see people thinking 27 has a false presupposition, but surely there are some circumstances where free markets work better than central planning (regardless of whether the situation is as universal as the question implies) and surely A is the correct explanation for why free markets work when they do.

    I also found the wrong answers on the Socrates/Plato/Aristotle/Aquinas question so painful that I would have trouble respecting anyone who didn’t manage to get that right.

  94. Again, with 27, the question turns on “centralized planning”. The argument for a free market (or free-ish market, i.e.: mixed economy) vs. a central planner does turn on the information problem. Buyers and sellers in a spot market do have greater information about means and ends than a central planner operating five years out ever will. Would you have trusted someone five years ago to accurately plan out, say, housing stock or automobile production for today? Note that there are efficient exceptions, even in a free market. Ronald Coase identified in the 1930s that business firms exist essentially to subvert the contract-based spot market, by locking-in exchange relationships and prices to lower transaction costs.

    Given the alternatives of “free market” and “centralized planning”, the existence of the information problem is decisive. The question does not address issues of market failure, bounded rationality, information asymmetries, public goods, natural monopolies, unequal distribution, or a number of other factors that can cause bad outcomes in a free market. The outcome asked about is economic prosperity, presumably in the aggregate. I don’t know of any case of an entire economy in which centralized planning has led to greater output than a market system. Does anyone have an example to offer?

    30) “…stimulate economic activity when the economy is in a severe recession?” Reducing taxes and raising spending. This is the Keynesian approach. With the goal being to stimulate the economy, you won’t be raising taxes more than necessary. Get the economy going again and then raise taxes. Better in the short term, if possible, to borrow (from bond-holders who can be paid back later) and print money to get the economy back into expansion and then raise taxes.

    33) (since you mentioned it anon) If taxes equal government spending, then: government debt is obviously not zero (deficit is). “Per person” means on average. Distribution again is not addressed. If T(taxes)=G(Government Spending) and n is population, then T/n = G/n.
    The question again didn’t discuss distribution, if each and every person pays and receives the same amount in taxes, or if they receive as much in government spending as they pay in taxes.

  95. leah, repeat after me, the purpose of government is redistribution…the purpose of government is redistribution. The entire point of having a government is to redistribute pooled assets for the aims of the whole, which by definition means that some people will get more tax than other people, who will get more services, even if the budget is balanced–and we haven’t even gotten to oppression issues. The answer ultimately has to have *average* in there to make that statement actually true, which is why I ended up picking A like the other people.

    The income tax question had two right answers. A progressive income tax is explicitly about pushing profits back into investments in industrial societies. Otherwise, it *only* happens during a serious war, like the Civil War.

  96. Are there more economists out there to confirm that the answer to 27 is a well-established fact?

    Its an established fact that the advantage to capitalism is that it solves the problem of incredible complexity by distributing the decisions to a large number of individuals who decide based on their own information.

    Leontief was another source for this. Essentially economies are just so complex that without a distributed decision making process it will just not work.

    But there seem to be a lot of people who have a misconception of capitalism that it means ‘everything being provided by the market’. But capitalism does in fact suggest a government role in the market, in Adam Smith’s the Wealth of Nations this included the provision of national defense, the provision of civil defense, and the establishment of select public institutions, as the three roles of the government. The last one is pretty broad and includes lighthouses, or roads, as well as free and compulsory public education.

    In modern economic parlance these would be dubbed “positive externalities” since they benefit people not involved in their transaction, thus the level they’d be provided through the free market would not reflect their true cost/benefit. The flipside to this issue is “negative externalities”, which are things which impose a cost to people not involved in the transaction (e.g. pollution) and thus the government’s proper role is to tax or legislate an adjustment to that cost.

  97. shah8, note that answer A on the progressive tax question specifically said “encourages more investment from those with higher incomes“, obviously wrong, all else being equal, if those with higher incomes are being taxed at a higher rate (leaving them less income to invest). Again, possible alternatives that might have progressive taxation but would promote savings or leave them unchanged, such as government surpluses and spending on public works or specific tax policies to encourage investment (e.g.: tax-deferred retirement plans), were not addressed.

  98. Tom, you would do well to get in a bit of history on tax policy.

    and leah, reread what you said, so, um, ooops, sorry about that.

  99. shah8, I noted that different tax policies will lead to different outcomes. The question was a basic one on a progressive tax scheme, not on specific policy alternatives. Again, the fact that the answer specifically said “encourages more investment from those with higher incomes“, absent any other policy feature, makes it clearly wrong.

  100. again, that is precisely true–there was a huge argument about this during the early decades of the 20th century.

  102. Answered 31 out of 33 correctly — 93.94 %. And I’m British. I think you might expect more from Americans – most of these things came up during the election.

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