<p>The breakdown of correct responses by age was very interesting. The younger you were, the more likely you were to know the correct answer to the question about federal minimum wage. If you were over fifty, the less likely you were to answer correctly about the federal government’s largest category of expenditure. </p>
<p>It was also interesting that younger people were more likely to answer correctly on the Sunni/Shia question than middle-aged people.</p>
<p>I got 12/12 but expected way lower, though I do read Harper’s. It is interesting that some of the questions had lower than 25% correct, less than what you would expect from blind guessing. I doubt my kids would get even half of these right.</p>
<p>I got a 12/12, most of them were pretty easy (I wasn’t quite as certain of the poverty rate). I suspect if you did this in the broad population a lot of people would score a lot lower than people on here. It doesn’t even take a lot of in depth reading for these questions. The one about SS versus debt is interesting, and I bet a lot of those yelling about federal spending got that one wrong. For example, someone on here said SS had its own source of funding was correct, but SS is included as part of the overall federal budget, has been for well over 40 years. The question also was not about the debt (which obviously dwarfs the federal budget, the debt is >17 trillion dollars, the budget is around 2 trillion), but rather of the federal budget, how much we pay in interest on the debt (which was around 370 billion last I checked) </p>
<p>Usually people who read multiple news sources do well on quizzes like this, the worst are those who depend on single sources of any kind (Fox News is the worst of that lot, people who say Fox News is their only source of news were more ill informed then people who said they didn’t pay attention to the news at all). </p>
<p>12/12. I am a news maniac, too.</p>
<p>I got 12 out of 12, but the irony is that I nearly hit the wrong sex at the end. Oops. </p>
<p>
I have to admit that I nearly always flunk the weekly Wall Street Journal news quiz - get maybe two or three if I’m lucky. Of course, I don’t read that paper cover to cover. But DH reads it and he doesn’t do much better.</p>
<p>Hey abasket! I got a 9/12 also. We must read/watch the same news. I’m actually surprised I did that well.</p>
<p>11/12, tripped by Sunni/Shia.</p>
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</p>
<p>I have paper subscription to:
The Economist, Int’l NYT</p>
<p>I regularly read online:
WSJ, Wash Post, Drudge (my guilty pleasure)</p>
<p>I watch:
BBC, CNN</p>
<p>I knew the answers because I watch the Daily Show!</p>
<p>TMZ for new news.</p>
<p>Newspaper: Sacramento Bee. Radio: NPR. TV: CNN, MSNBC, C-SPAN. Online, I go to Google News and start clicking according to the headline and first sentence. I often seem to end up at NYT, HuffPo, Slate, and SFGate.</p>
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<p>Perhaps it may be due to having recently taken high school or college courses during the time Iraq was a current event that was discussed in class. Or knowing Muslim students who can explain that, since there are more now than when older generations went to high school or college. Or serving in the military in Iraq or knowing someone who did.</p>
<p>While people in the US may not think much of how different denominations of a different major religion matter, they do matter in the conflicts today, much as the seemingly minor (to a non-Christian, at least) differences between Catholics, Lutherans, and other Protestants were the seeds of the Thirty Years’ War (which did see intervention from a predominantly non-Christian country, the Ottoman Empire).</p>
<p>11/12 like many people I got tripped by national debt or SS. I didn’t know for sure answers to sunni/shia, minimum wage, and poverty line. Guessed them right.</p>
<p>10/12, missed the expenditure and national unemployment in pessimistic directions. I have to say the Fed chairman question was silly. I’d usually have only a faint idea that it might be Yellen, but I know that Sotomayor and Roberts are justices and Greenspan isn’t current. I guess that requires some knowledge.</p>
<p>Most people probably know off the top of their head that the interest on the U.S. national debt for fiscal year 2014 was $430,812,121,372.05, but really, how many folks knows the exact dollar amount for social security obligations? 
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<p>Interest rates are low now, if interest rates were a little higher the $430 billion would jump to over a trillion in nothing flat. When annual expenses get into hundreds of billions and trillions, it is difficult for me to relate to. </p>
<p>I missed the % in poverty although I have to admit to taking a few educated guesses.</p>
<p>9/12. Not bad for someone who really doesn’t watch the news regularly.</p>
<p>12/12. A few were educated guesses but I was not expecting a perfect score.</p>
<p>I took a couple of educated guesses too, tom, including the % poverty question.</p>