Self Check Quiz

Standard FCAT GR10.MA.A.3.4.3 Practice Test

	1.	What change does the line graph show for the percentage of income saved by the American people between 1981 and 2000?

		a.	the percentage dropped by almost 9 points
		b.	the percentage rose by approximately 3 points
		c.	the percentage dropped by 6 points
		d.	savings fell from 8 percent to 3.5 percent

	2.	Tobacco Companies Settle Suits The New York Times OVERVIEW In 1998, one of the country's biggest battles against smoking was ended when tobacco companies agreed to settle lawsuits brought by 46 states by paying an amount of $206 billion. Four states had already reached settlements in 1997. Some critics called the plan too weak, but the settlement underscored the tobacco industry's responsibility for undermining the country's health. Portions of the news story in the The New York Times announcing the settlement appear here. The New York Times, Nov. 21, 1998 The largest legal and financial threat to the tobacco industry ended yesterday when 46 states accepted a $206 billion plan to settle state lawsuits filed against cigarette makers to recover Medicaid money spent treating diseases related to smoking. The agreement, which the companies said they would sign on Monday, apparently brings to a close one of the most dramatic chapters in the history of the nation's long war on smoking, one that accelerated in 1994 when several states filed damage suits against cigarette makers and that crested when four of those states reached multibillion-dollar settlements in the last year. Those four states – Florida, Minnesota, Mississippi and Texas – settled their suits for a total of $40 billion to be paid over 25 years. The new plan would pay $206 billion over 25 years to 46 states and 5 United States territories that have remaining claims against the industry or have not filed lawsuits. In the cases involving the four states, tobacco corporations found themselves under public scrutiny as thousands of secret industry documents spilled into view, revealing how the companies had suppressed research on the health hazards of smoking and had sought to attract teen-agers as "replacement" smokers. In June 1997, in an effort to protect itself from potentially bankrupting state and class-action lawsuits, the tobacco industry reached a $368.5 billion accord with attorneys general from 40 states. When Congress last spring took up legislation required for ratifying that agreement, the bill was raised to $516 billion and cigarette makers were denied the legal immunity they had sought in return. That resulted in the legislation's defeat and eventually this week's settlement without the participation by the Federal Government, ending anti-smoking groups' hopes for a broader agreement that would more aggressively combat teen-age smoking and bring nicotine under Federal regulation. . . . Companies will likely pass the settlement's cost on to smokers, who may see prices rise by 35 to 40 cents a pack. Gary Black, a tobacco industry analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein in New York, said major price boosts might come as early as next week. That price hike is far less than that called for under the defeated Senate bill. Under the settlement plan, cigarette makers will take down billboards and make other marketing changes, finance educational campaigns intended to stop young people from starting to smoke and pay for research intended to help smokers quit. But the agreement does not prevent cigarette makers from continuing a number of practices that would have been restricted under last year's plan, like advertising in stores and in magazines. They will also be permitted to continue to sponsor sports events, but with restrictions. The agreement, which does not require the approval of Congress, also does not provide the industry with special legal protection or end all litigation against it. The tobacco companies agreed to pay $206 billion to 46 states and 5 U.S. territories over the next 25 years. If all recipients received an equal amount of money, approximately how much would each receive per year?

		a.	$16 million
		b.	$160 million
		c.	$4 billion
		d.	$40 billion

	3.	Which country on the North American continent has the highest GNP per capita?

		a.	Australia
		b.	Canada
		c.	United States
		d.	Honduras

	4.	Add up all the popular votes cast in 1996, and compare this figure to the total number of votes cast in 2000. How many more votes were cast in the 2000 election?

		a.	4,451,254
		b.	14,443,598
		c.	110
		d.	206,990,122

	5.	Approximately how many more executions were there in 1930 than in 2000?

		a.	1,300
		b.	400
		c.	550
		d.	1,600

	6.	According to the chart on Congressional campaign spending, which was the first year in which the losing candidates spent more money than the winning candidates?

		a.	1992
		b.	2000
		c.	1986
		d.	1996

	7.	The "Other" Americans Michael Harrington OVERVIEW The problems of the poor in the United States became a common subject for discussion following the publication of Michael Harrington's The Other America in 1962. Taking issue with people who claimed that the economy was good, Harrington called attention to Americans who did not share the wealth, especially those in large cities. He also described the plight of African Americans, and portions of that description appear here. If all the discriminatory laws in the United States were immediately repealed, race would still remain as one of the most pressing moral and political problems in the nation. Negroes and other minorities are not simply the victims of a series of iniquitous statutes. The American economy, the American society, the American unconscious, are all racist. If all the laws were framed to provide equal opportunity, a majority of the Negroes would not be able to take full advantage of the change. There would still be a vast, silent, and automatic system directed against men and women of color. To belong to a racial minority is to be poor, but poor in a special way. The fear, the lack of self-confidence, the haunting, these have been described. But they, in turn, are the expressions of the most institutionalized poverty in the United States, the most vicious of the vicious circle. In a sense, the Negro is classically the "other" American, degraded and frustrated at every turn and not just because of laws. There are sympathetic and concerned people who do not understand how deeply America has integrated racism into its structure. Given time, they argue, the Negroes will rise in the society like the Irish, the Jews, the Italians, and all the rest. But this notion misses two decisive facts: that the Negro is colored, and no other group in the United States has ever faced such a problem, and that the Negro of today is an internal migrant who will face racism wherever he goes, who cannot leave his oppression behind as if it were a czar or a potato famine. To be equal, the Negro requires something much more profound than a way "into" the society; he needs a transformation of some of the basic institutions of the society. The Negro is poor because he is black; that is obvious enough. But, perhaps more importantly, the Negro is black because he is poor. The laws against color can be removed, but that will leave the poverty that is the historic and institutionalized consequence of color. As long as this is the case, being born a Negro will continue to be the most profound disability that the United States imposes upon a citizen. . . Negroes in the United States are concentrated in the worst, dirtiest, lowest-paying jobs. A third continue to live in the rural South, most of them merely subsisting within a culture of poverty and a society of open terror. A third live in Southern cities and a third in Northern cities, and these have bettered their lot compared to the sharecroppers. But they are still the last hired and the first fired, and they are particularly vulnerable to recessions. Thus, according to the Department of Labor in 1960, 4 percent of Negro employees were "professional, technical, and kindred workers" (compared to 11.3 percent for the whites); 2.7 percent were "managers, officials, and proprietors" (the white figure is 14.6 percent). In short, at the top of the economic structure there were 6.7 percent of the Negroes – and 25.9 percent of the whites. And this, in itself, represented considerable gains over the past two decades. Going down the occupational scale, Negroes are primarily grouped in the bottom jobs. In 1960, 20 percent of the whites had high-skill industrial jobs, while the Negro share of this classification was 9 percent. Semiskilled mass production workers and laborers constituted around 48 percent of the Negro male population (and 25.3 percent of the white males). Negro women are the victims of a double discrimination. According to a New York State study, Negro female income as a percentage of white actually declined between 1949 and 1954 (and, in 1960, over a third of Negro women were still employed as domestics). In part, this miserable structure of the Negro work force is an inheritance of the past. It reflects what happens to a people who have been systematically oppressed and denied access to skill and opportunity. . . . Take, as an example, the problem of automation. This has caused "structural" unemployment through the American work force, that is, the permanent destruction of jobs rather than cyclical layoffs. When this happens, the blow falls disproportionately upon the Negro. As the last significant group to enter the factory, the Negroes have low seniority (if they are lucky enough to be in union occupations), and they are laid off first. . . . All of this is immediate and automatic. It is done without the intervention of a single racist, yet it is a profound part of racism in the United States. However, more is involved than the inevitable working of an impersonal system. The Negro lives in the other America of poverty for many reasons, and one of them is conscious racism reinforcing institutional patterns of the economy. In 1960, according to the report of Herbert Hill, Labor Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Negroes made up only 1.69 percent of the total number of apprentices in the economy. The exact figure offered by Hill has been disputed; the shocking fact which he describes is agreed upon by everyone. This means that Negroes are denied access precisely to those jobs that are not low-paying and vulnerable to recession. The main cause of this problem is the attitude of management, which fundamentally determines hiring policy. But in the case of apprenticeship programs, the labor movement and the Federal and state agencies involved also bear part of the responsibility. In the AFL-CIO, it is the politically conservative unions from the building trades who are the real stumbling block; the mass-production unions of the CIO have some bad areas, but on the whole they pioneered in bringing Negroes into the plants and integrating local organizations. With the companies, one of the real difficulties in dealing with this structure of racism is that it is invisible. Here is a huge social fact, yet no one will accept responsibility for it. When questioned as to why there are no Negroes in sales, or in the office, the personnel man will say that he himself has nothing against Negroes. The problem, he will claim, is with subordinates who would revolt if Negroes were brought into their department, and with superiors who impose the policy. This response is standard up and down the line. The subordinates and the superiors make the same assertion. Indeed, one of the difficulties in fighting against racist practices in the American economy is the popularity of a liberal rhetoric. Practically no one, outside of convinced white supremacists in the South, will admit to discriminatory policies. So it is that the Northern Negro has, in one sense, a more personally frustrating situation than his Southern brother. In Dixie, Jim Crow is personified, an actual living person who speaks in the accents of open racism. In the rest of the country, everybody is against discrimination for the record, and Jim Crow is a vast impersonal system that keeps the Negro down. . . . But perhaps the final degradation the Negro must face is the image the white man has of him. White America keeps the Negro down. It forces him into a slum; it keeps him in the dirtiest and lowest-paying jobs. Having imposed this indignity, the white man theorizes about it. He does not see it as the tragic work of his own hands, as a social product. Rather, the racial ghetto reflects the "natural" character of the Negro: lazy, shiftless, irresponsible, and so on. So prejudice becomes self-justifying. It creates miserable conditions and then cites them as a rationale for inaction and complacency. One could continue describing the psychological and spiritual consequences of discrimination almost endlessly. Yet, whatever the accurate theory may be, it is beyond dispute that one of the main components of poverty for the Negro is a maiming of personality. This is true generally for the poor; it is doubly and triply true for the race poor. . . . If, as is quite possible, America refuses to deal with the social evils that persist in the sixties, it will at the same time have turned its back on the racial minorities. There will be speeches on equality; there will be gains as the nation moves toward a constitutional definition of itself as egalitarian. The Negro will watch all this from a world of double poverty. He will continue to know himself as a member of a race-class condemned by heredity to be poor. There will be occasional celebrations – perhaps the next one will be called in twenty years or so when it is announced that Negroes have reached 70 percent of the white wage level. But that other America which is the ghetto will still stand. There is a bitter picket-line chant that one sometimes hears when a store is being boycotted in the North: If you're white, you're right, If you're black, stay back. It is an accurate sociological statement of the plight of the Negro in American society. At the top of the economic structure, what is the percentage point difference between whites and blacks?

		a.	18.7%
		b.	7.3%
		c.	22%
		d.	19.2%

	8.	How much did the federal debt grow between the election of Ronald Reagan and the election of George W. Bush, according to the graph below?

		a.	almost $5 trillion
		b.	approximately $6 billion
		c.	about $1 trillion
		d.	$2.1 trillion

	9.	Which two government programs together almost equal the amount the government spends each year on interest?

		a.	Health AND Education, Training, and Employment
		b.	National Defense AND Transportation
		c.	Transportation AND Veterans
		d.	Education, Training, and Employment AND Other

	10.	By what percentage did the population of San Francisco increase between 1847 and 1853?

		a.	156%
		b.	300%
		c.	15600%
		d.	1560%