When no one was looking, the federal government’s National Assessment of Educational Progress sneaked up on 11,500 high school students across the country and gave them an economics test.
Oddly enough, the kids did a bit better on the economics test than they did on the 12th grade reading and math tests.
An evaluation of the questions determined that Connecticut students had gained special knowledge of what is known in the field as “economic stuff” by watching their state government in action.
Here are a few of the questions, and an aggregated sense of how they were answered by Connecticut students:
What Are “Barriers To Entry?”
Barriers to entry impede the entry of competitors into an existing marketplace. For example, in certain baby states, such as Connecticut, you can’t buy wine and liquor anywhere except in a licensed liquor store. No grocery stores, no discount department stores, no gas stations. The regulatory good-old-boy system offers no advantage to the consumers. Too bad.
If You Begin To Accumulate Too Much Debt, Should You Cut Back On Spending To Ease The Accumulating Burden Of Interest On That Debt?
No. You should go to the State Bond Commission and ask for $47 trillion to build a new senior center in Voluntown. Bonded debt doesn’t, like, you know, actually count as, like, debt.
What Is The Impact Of “Competition” On Markets?
“Competition” is to be feared and squashed like a bug. For instance, if you have a nice home in a nice Connecticut suburb, and you want to sell it, the last thing you want is competition from shiny new homes built by some developer who gobbles up farms and stuff to build on. So, you go to state and local government and demand that vacant land be “protected” as “open space,” to protect the squirrels and the sale price of your home.
What Are The Benefits, If Any, Of “Living Wage” And “Minimum Wage” Laws?
These laws are really cool because while they discourage hiring real workers at the bottom of the economic pecking order, they provide extra money to lots of suburban teenagers working a few hours on weekends, so their parents stop hassling them about being lazy dolts. With the wage artificially boosted, kids can buy iPods and lots of neat stuff.
Why Do States Such As Connecticut Provide Financial Incentives To The Film Industry To Make Movies In Their States?
Because lots of other states and countries do it, which, by the way, is an argument that doesn’t work with my mom, when, like, I say that lots of kids get to go to sleepover parties with boys and girls together; and lots of kids get to knock down a few beers at Sweet 16 parties, and other stuff like that.
The Hartford Business Journal analysis reveals that the only question Connecticut’s students flubbed involved a definition of “disposable income,” which, as sophisticated economists know, is the money left over to spend on gratuities to your favorite newspaper columnists, after the important bills are paid. The Connecticut student answers:
Disposable income is all the money you make that state government will dispose of through sneaky, below-the-radar taxes on gasoline and cigarette and utility bills; and sneaky “prevailing wage” laws that artificially jack up the costs of public construction projects.
The only real disappointing failure of the economics test was the lack of a question about the “Invisible Hand of the Market,” the famous Adam Smith notion that even if you just write a newspaper column to get rich and have lots of pretty girls ask for your autograph, the end result is that your wisdom has inadvertently benefited thousands of readers – even if you don’t really care about them.
That scenario is, of course, hypothetical. I love you very much. If your subscription check doesn’t bounce. That’s economics.
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Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
