WASHINGTON (AFP) – US elected officials scored abysmally on a test measuring their civic knowledge, with an average grade of just 44 percent, the group that organized the exam said Thursday.
Ordinary citizens did not fare much better, scoring just 49 percent correct on the 33 exam questions compiled by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI).
"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.
"How can political leaders make informed decisions if they don't understand the American experience?" he added.
The exam questions covered American history, the workings of the US government and economics.
I got 32 of 33. Beat me.
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Joined: Wed Dec 13, 2006 4:37 am Posts: 3610 Location: London, UK Gender: Female
not beating PD and Smilin, but this foreigner got
Quote:
You answered 29 out of 33 correctly — 87.88 %
and 2 of the ones I missed I hesitated with the correct answer.
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Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2004 10:51 pm Posts: 14534 Location: Mesa,AZ
Green Habit wrote:
31/33.
I don't get how #29 can't also be E and #33 can't also be A.
Oh, and I bet Paul Krugman would love #30.
#29 is B by definition. A public good is something that's non-excludable and non-rivaled, not necessarily something that's funded by the government. The government funds lots of things that aren't public goods.
I thought the same thing on #33, which is one of the ones I missed. My reasoning, of course, was that if spending equals taxation, there's no debt, but the flaw is my reasoning was that there could technically be outstanding debt in place, and it only means there's no change in debt. If spending has always equaled taxation, then I would thing there'd be no debt. I think the wording was a little tricky on that one.
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$úñ_DëV|L wrote:
#29 is B by definition. A public good is something that's non-excludable and non-rivaled, not necessarily something that's funded by the government. The government funds lots of things that aren't public goods.
I guess if they had simply asked what a public good is, then you'd be right, but they explicitly listed "A flood-control levee (or National Defense)" in their question. I'm not sure if both of those are inherently non-rivaled and non-excludable, as opposed to something such as, say, air.
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2004 10:51 pm Posts: 14534 Location: Mesa,AZ
Green Habit wrote:
$úñ_DëV|L wrote:
#29 is B by definition. A public good is something that's non-excludable and non-rivaled, not necessarily something that's funded by the government. The government funds lots of things that aren't public goods.
I guess if they had simply asked what a public good is, then you'd be right, but they explicitly listed "A flood-control levee (or National Defense)" in their question. I'm not sure if both of those are inherently non-rivaled and non-excludable, as opposed to something such as, say, air.
They're non-excludable because if the levee protects your neighbor, then it protects you. You can't build a levee or national defense that protects only the people who fund it unless you build a levee around only your own property, which isn't feasible in most cases. It's non-rivaled because the protection it provides you doesn't decrease the amount of protection for someone else.
Levees are actually more non-rivaled than air, as air is only virtually unlimited.
Obviously, whether something is non-rivaled or non-excludable is not black and white, and there are some things that might fall somewhere in the middle, but as far as the question was concerned, levees and national defense are the only choices there that really come close to capturing the essense of a public good. But this is why I think public goods are one of the most misunderstood principles in economics; many people think the government can designate whether something is or isn't a public good, when whether something is a public good is actually an inherant property.
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Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 5:51 am Posts: 17078 Location: TX
You answered 29 out of 33 correctly — 87.88 %
Three of these I got wrong, no doubt about it, but the very last question has more than one right answer. Trick questions are lame.
This test was really easy. I don't consider myself very knowledgeable about this nor do I remember everything I have learned. The last civics test I remember taking was much harder. You can easily feel your way through about half of these questions with minimal knowledge.
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, 8, 14, 15 
