Pulp Economics:
Antitrust and Labor Law Quiz
Yes, it is time once again for a Pulp Economics quiz. Make no mistake: this one is not easy. In fact, this one could very well qualify as a head-banger, the kind a professor gives without fair warning only when he doesn't mind having the tires on his car slashed. Fortunately for me, you who are about to take this little exam don't know where I park my car, so I'm feeling pretty secure right now. All in all, this is going to work out pretty well, except maybe for the hurtful comments that might follow in the thread for this post. We shall cross that bridge when we come to it.
Just remember: this is for fun... provided, that is, anyone can really have fun taking a quiz on antitrust and labor law.
Enjoy.
The Dark Wraith thanks you for taking this rather brutal little test.
Published 10/28/2006 10:48:00 PM
<< 29 Comments Total
OK, so where do I sign up, and do you provide student loans?
nice quiz. well, nice because i did ok. the low end of informed citizen. i'm surprised at how much my geezer brain retains. i'm sure that my modest score does not indicate a deep understanding of anything.
thanks. your virtual tires are safe, from me anyway.
your commenting system seems not quite right. nothing shows on the main page.
A respectable 80%, it should have been 90 but Ii didn't check my answers and one of my page downs accidentally moved my answer.
#9 made me think of Wal-mart and the Knights of Labor was obvious, given your background. I've always loved the name Samuel P. Gompers and I almost made a mistake but I caught myself.
That was fun, and comments aren't showing on the main page.
Good morning Mr. Wraith,
I recall years ago taking a differential equations class in grad school. First test of the semester rolls around, I take the test, and end up walking out after 20 minutes. Yes, I did finish it, and the professor was surprised enough that I was done that he asked for ID, thinking I was a ringer. I ended up with the high score for the class, with a near perfect test.
Alas, this was not to be repeated this morning. Given that I guessed on all of your questions, my 10% fails even probability.
When does open enrollment start?
As you can probably see, I only scored 30%; but that is because I answered some questions wrong on purpose--so eager that I am to enroll in one of your courses.
Hello Dark Wraith:
Wow! I've got a 70 percent here--does that make me a surprisingly informed citizen since I pretty much guessed on all the answers? Perhaps I need to take one of your economics courses on labor?
Well, 30%, though most of it was guessing. Considering I've never taken an econ course, and history class was looooong ago, I'm not surprised. Imp... was peering over my shoulder, and if I'd gone with her answer of Knights, instead of my guess, I would have done better. I had thought that #9 was the tie-ins answer, simply because I thought that one was legal, therefore it couldn't be prohibited. I'm almost certain I've heard of companies using that or something similar enough to confuse me as a business practice. Oh well. One cannot always be good at everything.
Good evening, my friends.
Forgive the absence and the problems with the commenting system. My server was once again the target of a distributed denial of service attack, but this time I got through the disaster much more quickly, although I'm still concerned that some regulars here got swept up in the IP trap the firewall used to defend against the bogeys. I'll go back and see what IPs are listed on the firewall to get anyone still blocked back in shape.
Now, about that quiz. I'm just about floored that people were scoring anything at all above zero. That's encouraging because many of the questions still have pertinence and relevance to this very day, although I shall concede that some were more or less historical trivia. Then again, it never hurts to know that the Knights of Labor were the early birds in organized labor movements. (They were Socialists, and they had some rather surprisingly modern platform positions, like workplace equality for men and women.)
Anyway, my tires are still good on my Jeep, so I guess things worked out for the best on this quiz.
The next one won't be so rough.
Okay, maybe it will be.
The Dark Wraith still wants to do a couple of hard-core economics quizzes.
Good evening DW!
Would you believe a totally uneducated man such as myself-well, uneducated in the history of Unions and economics in general, I actually got 50%!
Some days, I really do amaze myself.
It said I got 60 but I got 70 because one of the answers didn't register. Hey I still remember this stuff. Why?
50%...not too shabby, I suppose. All of the "terms" looked familiar, but I couldn't remember the specifics. I need to enroll in your refresher course!
DW - I scored 40%, which was surprising since I never set foot in an economics classroom and barely finished high school, what with all the, you know, rules and everything. Still, I think 40% is about right if you're simply listening, don't you agree?
Good Afternoon Dark Wraith
Drat and Darn, only 30% - your quizzes are sooo hard! Esp since I never studied anything like this; but I should have done better, Hubby was a Steward for the machinist's union for years...
Nefarious, I say! Verbage at thirty paces! Now there's the true test of a man's mettle, by thunder! Economics, indeed! Balderdash, says I!
Can you tell I didn't do so hot and am only trying to obfusticate the issue a bit? Rats!
40% with 2 I knew, PATCO (too easy and Knights of Labor. And got 25% on guessing.
ECON was easy. STAT was beyond difficult.
40%. Well, too smart to be a Republican seems generous...
I was surprised about the Knights of Labor - I think I'll try to find out more when the kiddo goes to sleep. Of course, I have the United Mine Workers Union to thank for keeping my grandfather alive long enough for me to get to know him.
Labor law sounds interesting. Ugly, but interesting.
Well, I got 40%.
That's not bad given that my social history classes tended to focus on the Treaty of Waitangi rather than the American Revolution...
Good morning, Phoenician.
'The Treaty of Waitangi', you say. Well, yes, that would be notable in New Zealand, although I hope you studied the English version rather than the Maori one.
Although students in the United States are exposed (at least, ideally) to both American and European treaties, those of the Southern Hemisphere are almost never mentioned, even though there is quite a bit of interesting history down there, particularly for the anglophonic world. Chalk that up to Euro/American centricism, I suppose.
The Dark Wraith can't say that he is all that swift when it comes to Pacific Southern Hemisphere history, either.
Good morning, Karen M.
I do hope you have an opportunity to look into the history of the early labor union movement in the United States.
Before the Civil War, "unions" were really not much more than craft guilds that were most decidedly not all that interested in a broad-based labor rights movement. That is not to say, however, that the idea of worker rights was not in play; there were notable writers and even poets addressing such issues, but these people got very little traction. The poet Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton, who wrote the poem "I Do Not Love Thee," among others, was an advocate for protection of children working in factories (if I am accurately remembering the issues and their advocates).
Once Marx's writings were published and somewhat widely disseminated in the United States, Socialist ideas gave more than a little life to union efforts here, but the Knights of Labor never got the ball rolling like the American Federation of Labor. I discuss this matter in class, and ask students to assess whether it was merely a matter of organizational skills or if it had something to do with a "natural" tendency of rank-and-file American laborers to be ill at ease with the Socialist thinking that animated the Knights of Labor but not nearly so much the AFL.
It's very interesting history, both from a theoretical perspective and from the more human side. Some of the stories are just riveting, and far too little is written these days about what happened in those early years of the American labor movement.
The Dark Wraith ought to do more writing, himself, on the whole subject.
Good morning, Chief.
Yes, statistics (what we math jockeys used to call "sadistics") can be a lot like work. The introductory courses I teach in statistics (which are almost entirely descriptive statistics stuff) aren't all that difficult; but boy! when you get into the mathematical stuff at the higher level, you're talking about some really serious pain, especially if the statistics part of the coursework is underpinned (as it should be) by heavy-duty probability theory.
My philosophy is this: in order for people who use statistics to be allowed to do so, they should first go through the Hell of that probability theory, which will disabuse them of a whole lot of the nonsense that passes as "research" these days. In fact, I spend a serious amount of time even in a descriptive statistics course teaching the students how to call bullcrap on "studies," "research," and "results" that show up even in major scientific (especially medical and social sciences) journals, as well as in newspapers and magazines.
It's worth the effort to get at least a few students to the point where they become informed enough to assess on their own the legitimacy of all the numbers that are thrown at them these days. Obviously, the downside of this is that students become awfully darned cynical about science and the media.
The Dark Wraith does enjoy teaching.
Good morning, Jack.
Not to worry. We'll be having extra credit assignments to help make up for low quiz scores.
I'm thinking about something along the lines of one point of extra credit for each neo-con's head brought into class for Show and Tell.
The Dark Wraith will allow up to 20 extra credit points... okay, make it 50.
Egads! I'm going to be late for class!
The Dark Wraith races out the door.
[Look out, people! For God's sake, get out of my way!]
Good Morning Dark Wraith:
30% i claim extreme fatigue from an extra full work schedule (union bloody work too) which involved travel to crowded l.a. the unions have suffered mightily since taft-hartley.
'The Treaty of Waitangi', you say. Well, yes, that would be notable in New Zealand, although I hope you studied the English version rather than the Maori one.
Oh, Jesus, don't get us started on that. The English version differed from the Maori version because of several important semantic misunderstandings - the English thought they were getting "sovereignty", the Maori thought they were giving "governance". The English thought the Maori were granted "possession" of lands, the Maori thought they were guaranteed "chieftainship".
Mind you, I've argued with Americans on the net who were adamant that May Day should not be recognised, since it was clearly a Commie import and irrelevant to America...
Good Evening Dark Wraith:
Neocon heads? OK, but why not ask for something they use now and then?
Just askin' is all...
Only if I can use very thick surgical gloves during the removal process.
The Dark Wraith has his standards of sanitation, y'know.
Good morning, Mr Wraith.
A 40% score for me. Quite pleased to be too smart to be a Republican.
In fact, I am a member of a trade union, and I am very concerned about the future that trade unions have in the US. There are some significant problems in my own union, and I'm not so sure a procedure exists to address these issues.
Now, some unions issue transfer cards to members that work outside of their jurisdiction, and that member then transfers his/her membership to the new local. My union issues travel cards, where the home local remains the same, and work takes place in another jurisdiction. Each local then sets rules (by-laws, actually) on the transference of membership, typically 2000 hours worked (1 year) within their jurisdiction.
The jurisdiction of my home local covers 3 counties in Florida. Our current leadership is extraordinary. However, these people were voted in after a run of leadership which were somewhat on the incompetent or inept side (take your pick), but were nevertheless generally well-liked enough to win the election. And so, it was determined by the membership that competency in leadership was more desirable than a gregarious personality.
I have worked on a travel card for the past 2 years. I pay my dues to Florida, and deductions are witheld from my check for the local I am working under. I have vacation accounts (an evolution of the old "strike funds") scattered across the country. I can't even identify all of my bank accounts. Still wrestling with the national for the disbursement of my annuity funds to my local.
I have a contract, but no representation. I can call up the business agent here and talk to him, but if I say anything against a local hand, I'm cutting my own throat. I can attend meetings, but I am not allowed to speak or vote.
All of that I don't have a problem with. The cost of doing business, the way I call it.
But there are really big problems. And I would say that most of them boil down to 1) people being able to think ahead only to the next job; 2) business agents using their position as some sort of something other than representing the interests of the membership; 3) that personality thing, which is terribly aggravated by representing more than one job specification; and 4) travelers that cut deals with the company (ie "company men") rather than working through the local. And that's just a preliminary list.
I am indeed incredibly interested in your take on the current state of affairs regarding the unions in the US.
Sigh, I'm still smart enough not to be a Republican, but a little disappointed that I only got 50%.