Let’s play – Are you smarter than a politician?

A Yahoo! news story discusses the abysmal rankings of US Officials on a civics test. Civics! As in, the one thing politicians are supposed to know and understand. Here is a blurb:

Asked about the electoral college, 20 percent of elected officials incorrectly said it was established to “supervise the first televised presidential debates.”
In fact, the system of choosing the US president via an indirect electoral college vote dates back some 220 years, to the US Constitution.

The question that received the fewest correct responses, just 16 percent, tested respondents’ basic understanding of economic principles, asking why “free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than
government’s centralized planning?”

Lovely. Furthermore the average public did not fare much better, read the full article for details.

What I find to be most striking however is the fact that so much emphasis has been placed on higher education degrees and intelligence of elected officials. A lot of stink has been raised about Bush’s so-called stupidity, yet his IQ score and College grades were in fact better than John Kerry’s. His perceived stupidity may or may not have impacted his failed policies and I argue they did not, but leave it to the media, late night TV and even conservartive talk show hosts to trounce on the matter on a regular basis. Correlation is not causation.

So the next time some ‘intellectual’ points out the remarkable coincidence of blue states being more intelligent and voting democrat, or so and so holding a higher degree – retort that none of it means a damn thing.

In fact, I bet that blog readers (as of now) are on average more knowledgeable than the very politicians they are forced to elect. Government suffers from intellectuals and higher degress, because of the inherent desire to centralize and plan instead of trusting the free market. Some of our greatest socialists were and are Harvard graduates. Woopty-freakin’-do.

So take the quiz and let me know how you did!
http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/resources/quiz.aspx
If you score above 50%, then you are not only smarter than the average American, but also the average elected official. So be happy, then be sad.


Note: One of the questions I have a serious problem with is that it assumes a Keynesian approach rather than supply-side. While this debate still rages, it has come to my attention that even college texts on Economics are starting to favor supply-side over Keynes. This quiz should NOT be preferring one theory over another. That being said, I got 30 out of 33.