So you are saying that the average high school graduate is smarter than Barney?

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and guess that the reason HS student literacy is so much higher in Econ than in math, history, or geography, is because the schools don't teach economics.

So when do all the politicians return to High School so they can catch up with the mental capacity and sophistication of an 18 year old?

So you are saying that the average high school graduate is smarter than Barney?

Apparently so. Smarter than Barney and all his cohorts in here. Whew. That's a relief.

"because the schools don't teach economics"

It's funny ... cuz it's true.

Best line of the day.

Just like to note that if "(a) Taxes" was phrased as "tax cuts", the correct answer would still be the same - "(b) economic growth".

That's because, as we can see by the current example, the US poverty rate has continued every single year during the Bush tax cuts.

The more interesting nuance to (b) is, **what kind** of economic growth? Because as we can clearly see if we look at the facts, the current form of US economic growth has not helped the poor, it has hurt them worse.

So, yes, tax cuts definitely don't help poverty. The students are right. Hope you guys realize this too.

OTOH, if the NEAP folks are recent public school grads, they may simply have added the figures incorrectly . . .

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Poverty is a poor attempt to hijack the thread. The poverty rate has stayed within a fairly narrow range since WWII, despite nearly $4 trillion federal taxpayer dollars having been tossed at it since then. Of course, one reason it remains so steady is that we refuse to count the in-kind benefits - Food Stamps, free school lunches, Medicaid, etc. - as income.

Now, working folks have to report any in-kind benefits they receive (except health and life insurance, because those benefits are tax-favored) such as company cars, club memberships, etc. on their income taxes. Go figure.

So we have a situation where our average "poor" single mother owns a car and two or more televisions, has cable if available in her area, has air conditioning, free medical care for her kids, and plenty to eat for her and her family. In most countries in this world, they call a person with such a situation "rich."

$4 tril spent on the War on Poverty, to no avail...

Time to call it a hopeless quagmire, and cut off the funding.

That's because, as we can see by the current example, the US poverty rate has continued every single year during the Bush tax cuts.

Don't think that's quite accurate. Poverty is a widely changing and abstract value that really doesn't mean much these days, if it every did -- I mean, honestly, they even have the same poverty dollar values for Chicago as Dayton, despite the former having nearly twice the cost of living. The average family in poverty has a car, has a home, has air conditioning in their home, has a computer and internet. It's a pretty significant difference from thirty years ago. That's no proof that poverty in real terms has gone down, but it makes the opposite kinda questionable.

This is deeply sad. I've always liked business myself. Many young people also have a poor grasp of history as well. But many young people have proven skills at drinking or being a consumer of goods, with only the consumption of goods a good thing for retailers like myself.

So you are saying that the average high school graduate is smarter than Barney?

Caused me to spit Pepsi onto my screen.

$4 tril spent on the War on Poverty, to no avail...

Time to call it a hopeless quagmire, and cut off the funding.

Heh. That's the lowest number I've ever heard for the war on poverty. Just a year or so ago, George Will quoted 6.3 trillion dollars in one of his columns. And that's only since LBJ's Great Society

Recently el Rushbo read something on the air that put the number at 10 trillion.

Poverty is a poor attempt to hijack the thread.

Well, as the subject of the whole article is whether or not the students correctly diagnosed the roots of "poverty", I am of course inclined to disagree.

Poverty is a widely changing and abstract value that really doesn't mean much these days,

I certainly agree that some of the particulars of poverty may be different now. And there certainly are a bunch of different factors that come into measuring it.

But there has to be some way to measure it, even if it can be vague or slippery; and by this measure the Bush administration has done far worse for the poor than the Clinton administration.

We have a society where 99% of households have at least one television. When you look at census data for households that are below the poverty line and look at the personal goods and assets they possess, it really is astonishing.

Using the word "poverty" for lower income households in the United States is really ridiculous.