Test Your News IQ Q1 - Pew Research Center

[Dad2142Dad 6,559]

http://pewresearch.org/politicalquiz/quiz/index.php

 

What percentage are you in, me 11 of 11

Edited July 15, 2011 by Dad2142Dad

[schultze13 354]

I got 9 out of 11 and the wife got 10 out of 11.

[ktcm7271 999]

Mom sent me that this morning. I got 10-11.

[shades_of_grey 1,092]

11 out of 11. I'm in the 99% percentile, and that depresses me, cause it was fuckin easy..

 

 

Whole lotta ignoramouses out there.. and too many of em vote. We don't need a poll tax, but we definitely need to require a basic intelligence and CE test before we let anyone cast a ballot.

 

Either that, or we go back to the original requirement; in order to vote, you must be a landowner. I'd favor the latter, even though it would disqualify me.

Edited July 18, 2011 by post-apocalyptic

[supertex 242]

10 of 11

 

medicare got me

Edited July 17, 2011 by ak karl

[jrance@iacwds.com 716]

10 out of 11. I missed the largest expenditure by answering interest on the national debt instead of medicare.

 

2010 Medicare 452 billion

 

2010 Interest 414 Billion

oops

[theorangeplanet 968]

I landed 11 correct, but there were a couple on which I wasn't certain and was a tossup between 2 of the answers.

 

I listen to a lot of NPR while driving... so that definitely gave me a little edge.

Edited July 16, 2011 by Risky

[fromxtor 20]

8/11 would probably help if I bothered to watch the news.

[Black3 16]

If you miss more than three or four of those very easy questions, you probably shouldn't vote. I'd really like to see the test we administer as a part of becoming a naturalized citizen be required as a condition of becoming a registered voter. Until we get that, I'd settle for being alive and a US citizen being required.

 

Oh, and 11 of 11 with half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.

Edited July 16, 2011 by Black3

[kdbutler 563]

11 of 11...98th percentile. Sad.

[Paulyski 2,227]

10 out of 11.

 

I selected 50% of Americans being obese.

 

Last year I was running health clinics at Costco for a company & had someone doing BMI measurements. Close to 50% of the people measured were obese.

 

 

They should call that a current events poll rather than an intelligence quotient test though.

 

I.Q. tests gauge problem solving & comprehension to gauge one's actual intelligence rather than knowledge of current events & politics.

[volkov 318]

9 out of 11.. I hadn't realized the goverment was lyng quite as badly as it is about unemployment rates.. and I missed the medicare vs interest one

[lvjeffro 30]

11/11 and the test was a news IQ test, not an actual IQ test pauly.

[Black3 16]

9 out of 11.. I hadn't realized the goverment was lyng quite as badly as it is about unemployment rates.. and I missed the medicare vs interest one

 

It's not so much that the government is "lying" about unemployment rates but rather that the BLS statistic only measures a very limited group. The number you hear on the news is the number of people who showed up at their state unemployment (Job Service) office, reported that they had lost their job and were seeking and available for another job. If you get fired or laid off and decide to take a break, live off your wife, or become self-employed, you are not counted as unemployed. If you were laid off as a $50/hr. skilled craftsman and take a job at the minimum wage as a WalMart greeter, as long as you're working enough hours to break through your state's weekly earnings threshold, and its pretty low, you're not unemployed. If you run out of UI benefit and stop showing up at the Job Service to look for a job, you are not "unemployed" by the way the BLS counts. This population is the so-called discouraged worker that there is no real way to count. Like so many government statistics, it only measures what it measures and people need to understand the limits of that measurement.

 

The government statistic that is really starting to impact us is the BLS' Consumer Price Index or CPI. The CPI is the common measure of "inflation" and it is the common standard for cost of living increases in Social Security, many public and private pension plans, interest rates and also the common bargaining standard for individuals or unions trying to get a raise to "keep up with the cost of living." Well, the CPI is flat or even deflating in some markets. The government and employers can truthfully say that there is no inflation because the CPI isn't going up, so you don't need a raise. But, the rub is that the CPI is VERY heavily weighted to housing costs because housing is so large a part of most people's budgets. It is a deceptive weighting no matter what the market is doing because while it means something in the aggregate, it means nothing to an individual unless you're out renting or buying a new house every month or have an adjustable rate mortgage or lease based on CPI. Since housing has deflated since the bubble burst in '08, that deflating housing cost has dragged the CPI down while we all know that EVERYTHING we buy has become more expensive, especially food and fuel.

 

I had the good sense to leave Atlanta in '74 for Alaska. While the Lower 48 was dealing with the "stagflation" of the '70s and early '80s we were dealing with the sometimes staggering inflation of the Pipeline Boom here. But, if you had some skill and mobility - or were union - the inflation didn't really bother you because your wages could just ride up with it. It was a stone cold bitch if you were on a fixed income or in low-skill jobs though. With the oil price crash of the mid-;80s we here in Alaska faced much the same situation the Lower 48 is now facing; housing prices collapsed and the Anchorage CPI even went negative for some quarters. By that time I was doing labor relations for the State of Alaska and we simply told the unions, "show us an increase in CPI and we'll show you a raise." Ironically perhaps, what got an increase in the Anchorage CPI was Exxon's throwing over $5 Billion into the Exxon Valdez spill clean-up in '89, so as bad as the spill was in other ways, all the spending pretty much broke the price crash recession.

[Paulyski 2,227]

11/11 and the test was a news IQ test, not an actual IQ test pauly.

I understand...

Just a pet peeve of mine. Must be the Grammar Nazi in me.

There's big differences between intelligence & knowledge & I hate to see the concepts 2 mixed up.

 

Our country is failing because we are relying on knowledge rather than intelligence.

 

Knowledge is what is learned or observed.

Intelligence is knowing what to do with or about the information one has gathered to reach a desired outcome.

 

There's some really knowledgeable fucking idiots out there & they have the degrees to prove it.

[CPF 80]

Stupid obesity percentage question... I ended up with 10 out of 11 because of it. Too bad I thought it was 10% instead of 25%

[fromxtor 20]

If you miss more than three or four of those very easy questions, you probably shouldn't vote.

 

I disagree, I don't stay up on the "news", as most of it is useless garbage. I don't see why a voter needs to know what percent of Americans are obese, or how many of any party are in the senate/house.