GED — All Questions

Which of these is an example of local public policy?

• a.A federal court interprets a national statute
• b.A city council sets a limit on building heights✓
• c.A company raises the price of its product
• d.A family decides to move to another state

Public policy is a course of action adopted by a government for the community it governs, and a height limit voted by a city council is exactly that at the local level. A family's move is a private decision, however much local policy may have shaped it. A company's pricing is a business decision made in a market, not a governmental act. And a federal court reading a national statute is federal and judicial rather than local policymaking.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was aimed chiefly at—

• a.lowering the voting age in federal elections
• b.removing barriers that kept Black citizens from voting✓
• c.setting a single national date for all elections
• d.requiring states to use identical ballot designs

The Act attacked the devices, literacy tests above all, that southern states had used to keep Black citizens off the rolls, and it put federal enforcement behind the Fifteenth Amendment. It did not create a uniform election date; federal election days were already fixed by earlier law. It said nothing about ballot design, which remains a state matter. And the voting age was lowered later, by the Twenty-Sixth Amendment in 1971.

The Great Compromise of 1787 settled a dispute over—

• a.how the states would be represented in Congress✓
• b.whether a bill of rights would be added
• c.how federal judges would be appointed
• d.how the President would be chosen by electors

Large and small states deadlocked over representation, and the compromise gave population its due in the House while giving every state two seats in the Senate. The method of electing the President was worked out separately in the Electoral College provisions. A bill of rights was rejected at the convention and added afterward as the first ten amendments. And judicial appointments were never the subject of that particular bargain.

In Federalist No. 51, James Madison wrote that 'ambition must be made to counteract ambition.' He was defending—

• a.the admission of new western states
• b.a single strong national executive
• c.checks and balances among the branches✓
• d.the direct election of senators

Madison's argument is that each branch must be given the motive and the means to resist encroachment by the others, which is the case for checks and balances rather than for trusting officeholders to be virtuous. Direct election of senators came far later, with the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913. A single strong executive is argued elsewhere in the Federalist and is not what this sentence is about. And the admission of new states is not a subject of Federalist No. 51 at all.

Article VI provides that the Constitution and federal laws made under it 'shall be the supreme Law of the Land.' This means that—

• a.the states may not write constitutions
• b.state courts may not hear federal claims
• c.federal law needs no state enforcement
• d.a conflicting state law must give way✓

The supremacy clause settles conflicts in favor of valid federal law, so a state statute that cannot be squared with it is unenforceable. It does not close state courts to federal questions; state judges are expressly bound to apply federal law. Every state has its own constitution, and nothing in Article VI forbids that. And a great deal of federal law is in fact carried out with state cooperation.

The Fourteenth Amendment forbids a state to 'deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.' A state law that did what would raise a question under this clause?

• a.Create a new court of appeals
• b.Raise the state sales tax by one cent
• c.Treat two groups of residents differently✓
• d.Move an election from spring to autumn

Equal protection is about classification: the clause is triggered when a law sorts people into groups and treats them unlike one another. A uniform tax increase applies to everyone alike and raises no such question. Shifting an election date is a scheduling choice with no classification in it. And adding a court of appeals reorganizes the judiciary without treating any person differently.

In Brown v. Board of Education (1954) the Supreme Court held that—

• a.separate public facilities may be kept equal
• b.public schools must be funded by the states
• c.segregated public schools are unconstitutional✓
• d.school attendance may be made compulsory

The Court held that separating schoolchildren by race denies equal protection, and in doing so it rejected the separate-but-equal rule of Plessy v. Ferguson for public education. Keeping separate facilities equal was the doctrine Brown overturned, not what it announced. Funding schools is a state matter the case did not address. And compulsory attendance laws long predated the decision and were not at issue.

Which action would violate the separation of powers?

• a.A President vetoing a spending bill Congress passed
• b.The Senate rejecting a nominee for a cabinet office
• c.Congress holding hearings on an agency
• d.A federal judge writing a new criminal statute✓

Writing statutes is the legislative power, so a judge who created a crime on his own authority would be exercising a power the Constitution gives to Congress. A veto is an express constitutional power of the President. Rejecting a nominee is the Senate exercising advice and consent. And congressional oversight hearings are a recognized legislative check on the executive branch.

The Twenty-Second Amendment limits a President to—

• a.three elected terms
• b.one six-year term
• c.two elected terms✓
• d.ten years in office

The amendment, ratified in 1951 after Franklin Roosevelt's four elections, bars anyone from being elected President more than twice. A single six-year term has been proposed at times but never adopted. Three terms is more than the amendment allows. And while a successor who finishes part of another's term can serve up to ten years, the limit the amendment states is on elections, not a flat number of years.

Which power belongs to the federal government alone?

• a.Chartering local schools
• b.Setting up traffic courts
• c.Coining money✓
• d.Issuing driver's licenses

The Constitution gives Congress the power to coin money and forbids the states to do it, which makes currency an exclusively federal matter. Driver's licensing is run entirely by the states, which is why the rules differ across state lines. Schools are chartered under state law and administered locally. And traffic courts are creatures of state and local judicial systems.

A group that gathers voter signatures to put a proposed law directly on the ballot is using—

• a.an impeachment petition
• b.the initiative process✓
• c.the recall of an official
• d.a legislative referendum

An initiative lets citizens themselves place a measure before the voters by petition, and many states provide for it in their constitutions. A recall also begins with signatures but its object is removing an officeholder, not enacting a law. A referendum is referred to the voters by the legislature rather than gathered by citizens. And impeachment is a legislative proceeding with no petition or ballot step.

A campaign advertisement paid for by a candidate is best treated as—

• a.a neutral summary of a public record
• b.a secondary source written by a scholar
• c.a persuasive source presenting one side✓
• d.an official document of the government

The sponsor wants a vote, so the advertisement selects whatever helps and omits whatever does not, which makes it evidence of the candidate's argument rather than a balanced account. It is not neutral, precisely because the person it describes paid for it. It is not scholarship, which is written to be checked by other scholars. And it is not a government document; a campaign is a private organization.

In a unitary system of government—

• a.power is divided between two sovereign levels
• b.the national government holds the main authority✓
• c.the states may leave the union at will
• d.the courts hold authority over the legislature

A unitary state concentrates authority nationally and creates local units that exercise whatever power the center grants them and may withdraw. Dividing sovereignty between a national and a state level is federalism, the contrast the question is drawing. A right to secede belongs to a confederation, and even there it is a matter of the compact. And judicial supremacy over the legislature describes a relationship among branches rather than a distribution of power between levels.

In an authoritarian one-party state, elections are usually—

• a.held with no real competition allowed✓
• b.held more frequently than elsewhere
• c.used to choose among rival parties
• d.decided by an independent judiciary

Such a state may hold elections and count votes, but rival parties are banned or crippled, so the outcome is settled before polling day and the vote serves to display support rather than to allocate power. Courts in these systems are usually controlled rather than independent, and in any event judges do not decide elections. Frequency is not what distinguishes the system. And choosing among rival parties is the one thing the arrangement prevents.

Which is the strongest reason a historian would treat a soldier's wartime letter home as a primary source?

• a.It agrees with most later accounts of the war
• b.It was written during the events by a participant✓
• c.It was published by a university press
• d.It contains no obvious factual errors

What makes a source primary is its position in time and its author's relation to the events, and a soldier writing home satisfies both. Agreement with later accounts is a question of reliability, and an unreliable letter is still a primary source. The publisher matters not at all to the classification. And being free of error is likewise about accuracy rather than about when and by whom the document was made.

The colonial slogan 'no taxation without representation' objected to—

• a.taxes laid by a Parliament the colonies did not elect✓
• b.taxes used to pay for local roads
• c.any tax whatever laid on goods imported into the colonies
• d.taxes voted and collected by their own colonial assemblies

The grievance was about consent: colonists accepted taxation by legislatures they chose and denied that a Parliament three thousand miles away, containing no member they had elected, could tax them. Taxes voted by their own assemblies were exactly what they defended. The objection was not to import duties as such, since colonial governments levied them too. And the purpose of the money was not the point; who imposed it was.

The Louisiana Purchase of 1803—

• a.added Florida to the United States
• b.ended British claims in the Pacific Northwest
• c.opened California to American settlement
• d.roughly doubled the size of the United States✓

Jefferson bought the Louisiana territory from France, and the acquisition about doubled the national territory while securing the port of New Orleans and the Mississippi trade. Rival claims in the Pacific Northwest were settled later by treaty with Britain. California came from Mexico decades afterward. And Florida was acquired from Spain in a separate treaty in 1819.

The Missouri Compromise of 1820—

• a.paired a slave state with a free state to keep the Senate balanced✓
• b.abolished slavery in the southern states
• c.granted statehood to the whole of the Louisiana Purchase at one stroke
• d.brought the Atlantic trade in enslaved people to an end by federal law

Congress admitted Missouri with slavery and Maine without it, preserving the even number of slave and free states in the Senate, and drew a line across the rest of the Louisiana Purchase. The Atlantic slave trade had already been prohibited by federal law in 1808. The territory was admitted as states gradually over many decades, not all at once. And abolition in the South came only with the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.

The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 declared free—

• a.enslaved people in the states then in rebellion✓
• b.enslaved people in the border states alone
• c.every enslaved person in the United States
• d.only those who enlisted in the Union army

Lincoln issued the proclamation as a war measure, and it reached the enslaved population of the areas still in rebellion rather than the whole country. It did not free everyone: slavery in the loyal border states was untouched and ended later by amendment. Enlistment was encouraged by the policy but was never the condition of freedom. And the border states were the one place the proclamation deliberately left alone.

The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870—

• a.made freed people citizens of the states
• b.barred denying the vote on account of race✓
• c.ended the system of racial segregation
• d.gave women the right to vote nationally

The amendment forbids the United States and the states from denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, though states found devices to evade it for nearly a century. Women's suffrage came with the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Segregation was not ended by any Reconstruction amendment and persisted by law into the 1960s. And citizenship for the freed people was conferred by the Fourteenth Amendment two years earlier.

The Homestead Act of 1862 encouraged western settlement by—

• a.offering public land to settlers who farmed it✓
• b.paying railroads to carry settlers free
• c.buying farmland back from private owners
• d.exempting western settlers from federal law

The Act let a settler claim a parcel of public land and gain title by living on it and cultivating it for a period of years, which drew hundreds of thousands onto the plains. Railroads did receive enormous federal land grants, but that was separate legislation and not free passage for settlers. The government was giving land away here, not purchasing it. And no settler was ever exempted from federal law.

Between the 1890s and the 1920s, Ellis Island in New York Harbor served mainly as—

• a.a customs house for imported cargo
• b.a military fort guarding the sea approaches to the harbor
• c.the chief inspection station for arriving immigrants✓
• d.a prison where immigrants denied entry served sentences

Ellis Island was the federal immigrant inspection station through which millions of new arrivals, mostly from Europe, were processed and either admitted or turned back. It was not a fort; harbor defense sat elsewhere. A small number of arrivals were detained there while their cases were decided, but the island was a processing station rather than a prison. And cargo was cleared through customs houses on the mainland.

In the Progressive Era, writers known as muckrakers were mainly—

• a.journalists exposing corruption and unsafe conditions✓
• b.editors opposing the expansion of suffrage
• c.government officials who defended the railroad companies
• d.novelists writing romantic stories of the frontier past

Muckrakers were investigative journalists whose reporting on political machines, industrial practices and slum conditions built the public pressure behind Progressive reforms. Frontier fiction belonged to a different literary current entirely. The muckrakers attacked large corporations rather than speaking for them. And they generally supported broadening the vote, not restricting it.

The United States entered the First World War in—

• a.1919, just before the peace conference
• b.1916, immediately after a declaration
• c.1914, at the very start of the fighting
• d.1917, nearly three years after it began✓

The war began in Europe in 1914 and the United States stayed formally neutral until Congress declared war in April 1917, with unrestricted submarine warfare the immediate cause. It was not in from the beginning; that is the point of the long neutrality debate. By 1919 the fighting had stopped and the Paris conference was writing the peace. And 1916 was an election year fought partly on staying out.

The Social Security Act of 1935 created—

• a.old-age benefits paid for by payroll taxes✓
• b.a national health insurance program
• c.a guaranteed job for every applicant
• d.federal ownership of the largest banks

The Act set up a contributory system in which taxes on wages fund retirement benefits, along with unemployment insurance and aid to certain groups, and it remains the largest surviving New Deal program. National health insurance was discussed in the 1930s but not enacted. The banks were regulated and insured rather than nationalized. And although New Deal agencies employed millions, no statute guaranteed a job to anyone who asked.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941—

• a.ended the fighting in the Pacific theater of the war
• b.opened a Japanese occupation of the Hawaiian islands
• c.brought the United States into the Second World War✓
• d.followed an American declaration of war

The attack on the Pacific Fleet ended the argument over neutrality, and Congress declared war the next day. It opened the Pacific war rather than ending it; the fighting there ran until 1945. Hawaii was never occupied, and the raid was a naval and air strike, not an invasion. And the declaration came after the attack, which is what made it so decisive politically.

The Marshall Plan of 1948 was designed to—

• a.resettle refugees in the United States
• b.collect war reparations from defeated nations
• c.create a permanent military alliance in Europe
• d.help rebuild the economies of western Europe✓

The plan sent American money and goods to help western European economies recover, on the view that prosperity there would resist communist appeal and sustain trade. The military alliance came separately with the founding of NATO in 1949. Reparations ran the other way and were not its purpose. And it was aid sent to Europe rather than a program of resettlement here.

The Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 and 1956 was a protest against—

• a.a rise in the price of bus fares
• b.segregated seating on city buses✓
• c.a tax on public transportation
• d.the closing of a city bus line

Black residents of Montgomery stayed off the buses for more than a year to protest a segregated seating system, after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat, and the campaign ended when the Supreme Court let stand a ruling against the practice. Fares were not the issue. No line had been closed. And no transportation tax was involved.

The GI Bill, passed in 1944, helped returning veterans mainly by—

• a.paying for schooling and backing home loans✓
• b.exempting them from all federal taxes
• c.granting them land in the western states
• d.guaranteeing them their former jobs back

The Servicemen's Readjustment Act paid tuition and living costs for veterans in school and guaranteed mortgages for them, which expanded both college enrollment and suburban home ownership after the war. Reemployment rights came from separate wartime legislation. Land grants to settlers belonged to the nineteenth century. And veterans received no blanket exemption from taxation.

The opportunity cost of a choice is—

• a.the money actually paid for the item
• b.the tax charged on the transaction
• c.the value of the best option given up✓
• d.the total of all options not chosen

Opportunity cost measures what you gave up, which is the single most valuable alternative you passed over, and it is why a free afternoon spent one way still has a cost. The cash price is an accounting cost and may be zero while the opportunity cost is large. A tax is one component of price, not the concept. And adding up every rejected alternative double counts; only the next best one is forgone.

Economists say that all societies face scarcity, meaning that—

• a.poor countries lack natural resources
• b.most goods are sold at high prices
• c.wants exceed the resources available✓
• d.money supplies are always shrinking

Scarcity is the gap between unlimited wants and limited resources, and it is why every economy must choose what to produce rather than simply produce everything. High prices are one symptom of scarcity in a particular market, not the definition. The condition applies to rich and poor countries alike, whatever their endowments. And it is about real resources, not about the quantity of money.

A country's gross domestic product measures—

• a.the amount of its currency in circulation at any one time
• b.the value of everything its people own
• c.the value of final goods and services it produces✓
• d.the total savings held by all of its households together

GDP adds up the market value of the final goods and services produced inside a country over a period, which is why it is reported quarterly and annually. Household savings is a stock of accumulated wealth rather than a flow of production. Currency in circulation is a monetary measure. And the total of everything owned is national wealth, a different and much larger quantity.

The unemployment rate counts people who are—

• a.working fewer hours than they would like
• b.enrolled full time in a school program
• c.retired after a long working career
• d.without a job and actively looking for one✓

To be counted as unemployed a person must be jobless and searching, which is why the rate can fall either because people found work or because they gave up looking. Someone working reduced hours is employed, and is captured instead by measures of underemployment. Retirees are outside the labor force. And full-time students who are not seeking work are likewise not in the labor force.

Interest on a loan is best described as—

• a.the amount originally borrowed
• b.the price paid for the use of money✓
• c.insurance against the borrower's death
• d.a tax the lender owes the government

Interest is what a borrower pays a lender for the use of funds over time, and the rate is the price expressed as a percentage. A lender does owe tax on interest received, but the interest itself is not a tax. Insurance on a loan is a separate product with its own premium. And the sum borrowed is the principal, which interest is charged on top of.

A government runs a budget deficit in a year when—

• a.it borrows from foreign lenders
• b.prices rise faster than wages
• c.it spends more than it collects✓
• d.its total debt exceeds its output

A deficit is the annual gap between outlays and revenue, and the accumulated deficits of past years are what make up the debt. Borrowing is how a deficit is financed, so it is a consequence rather than the definition. Debt compared with output is a ratio used to judge the burden, again not the deficit itself. And prices outrunning wages is a statement about real earnings, not about the budget.

A tax is called progressive when—

• a.the rate rises a little every year
• b.every taxpayer pays the same amount
• c.higher incomes pay a larger percentage✓
• d.the money is spent on public works

Progressivity describes how the rate varies with ability to pay: as income rises, the share taken in tax rises with it. A single flat charge on everyone is the most regressive shape there is, since it takes a larger share of a small income. A rate that changes over time is being raised, which says nothing about who bears it. And the use made of the revenue is a separate question from the structure of the tax.

Coffee and tea are substitutes for many buyers. If the price of coffee rises sharply, the likely effect is that—

• a.the supply of tea decreases
• b.the price of tea must be fixed
• c.demand for tea increases✓
• d.demand for tea falls as well

When two goods serve the same purpose, a rise in the price of one sends buyers toward the other, so the demand for tea shifts up. Demand for tea falling with coffee is what you would expect of complements, such as coffee and cream. Nothing about coffee's price changes the conditions under which tea is grown, so tea's supply is unaffected. And no price needs fixing; the market adjusts.

A firm's profit is calculated as—

• a.the price charged for each unit
• b.the value of its buildings and tools
• c.total revenue divided by output
• d.total revenue minus total costs✓

Profit is what remains of receipts after every cost of doing business is paid, which is why a firm with rising sales can still lose money. Revenue divided by output is average revenue, close to the price rather than the profit. The unit price is one input into revenue and says nothing by itself about costs. And buildings and tools are capital assets, a stock the firm holds rather than a flow it earns.

A borrower with a higher credit score can usually expect—

• a.a shorter period to repay the loan
• b.a larger down payment requirement
• c.a guarantee of loan forgiveness
• d.a lower interest rate on a loan✓

A score is a lender's estimate of the risk of not being repaid, and less risk is priced as a lower rate, which is the whole financial value of good credit. A stronger borrower generally faces a smaller down payment, not a larger one. Repayment periods are set by the type of loan rather than by the score. And no score entitles anyone to have a debt cancelled.

A minimum wage law is an example of—

• a.a legal floor under a price✓
• b.a legal ceiling over a price
• c.a subsidy paid to employers
• d.a tax on employing workers

A minimum wage forbids a transaction below a stated price, which makes it a price floor in the market for labor. A ceiling works the other way by forbidding prices above a level, as rent control does. It is not a tax, since no revenue goes to the government. And nothing is paid to employers, who bear the higher wage.

Lines of latitude on a globe—

• a.trace the paths of the major ocean currents
• b.run north and south and converge at the north and south poles
• c.run east and west and measure distance from the equator✓
• d.mark the boundaries between the world's twenty-four time zones

Latitude lines circle the globe parallel to the equator and are numbered by how far north or south of it they lie, which is why they are also called parallels. Lines that run north and south and converge at the poles are meridians of longitude. Time zones are based on longitude rather than latitude. And ocean currents are a physical feature drawn on specialized maps, not a coordinate system.

The equator is the line of—

• a.zero degrees latitude✓
• b.the international date line
• c.the tropic of Capricorn
• d.zero degrees longitude

The equator is latitude zero, the reference circle from which distances north and south are measured, and it divides the Northern from the Southern Hemisphere. Zero degrees longitude is the prime meridian, which runs through Greenwich. The international date line follows roughly the 180th meridian, on the far side of the globe. And the tropic of Capricorn lies about 23.5 degrees south.

Climate differs from weather because climate describes—

• a.the temperature at a single moment
• b.storms that cross a region quickly
• c.conditions expected in the next week
• d.average conditions over many years✓

Climate is the long-run pattern of temperature and precipitation for a place, compiled over decades, which is what lets you pack for a city you have never visited. Next week's conditions are a forecast, the province of weather. A single reading is one observation of weather. And individual storms are weather events, however dramatic.

Urbanization refers to—

• a.people moving between different countries
• b.population shifting from rural areas into cities✓
• c.cities spreading outward into their suburbs and beyond
• d.farmland being divided up into ever smaller plots

Urbanization is the growth of the share of a population living in cities, usually as people leave the countryside for urban work. Cities spreading outward is suburbanization or sprawl, a pattern within urban growth rather than the concept itself. Dividing farmland is a change in land tenure. And movement between countries is international migration, which may or may not end in a city.

In the study of migration, a drought that ruins a region's harvests is—

• a.a chain migration of relatives
• b.a push factor driving people away✓
• c.a pull factor attracting new arrivals
• d.a physical barrier blocking movement

Push factors are conditions in the place of origin that make leaving attractive, and crop failure is a classic example. A pull factor is something in the destination that draws migrants, such as jobs or safety. A barrier is an obstacle in the way, like a mountain range or a closed border. And chain migration describes newcomers following relatives who went before them.

Which ocean lies between the east coast of Africa and the west coast of Australia?

• a.The Indian Ocean✓
• b.The Arctic Ocean
• c.The Atlantic Ocean
• d.The Pacific Ocean

The Indian Ocean fills the basin bounded by eastern Africa, southern Asia and western Australia. The Pacific lies on Australia's other side, to the east. The Atlantic is west of Africa, not east of it. And the Arctic Ocean sits at the top of the globe, far from both coasts.

The Sahara, the world's largest hot desert, lies in—

• a.southern Africa
• b.northern Africa✓
• c.southwestern Asia
• d.central Australia

The Sahara stretches across northern Africa from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, separating the Mediterranean coast from the lands to the south. Central Australia holds its own large arid interior, but not this one. Southwestern Asia contains the Arabian Desert. And southern Africa has the Kalahari and the Namib.

The world's time zones are based on—

• a.ocean basins
• b.lines of latitude
• c.national boundaries
• d.lines of longitude✓

Because the Earth turns on its axis, places at different longitudes meet the Sun at different moments, so the zones are laid out along meridians. Latitude runs the wrong way for this: everywhere on one parallel does not share a clock. Zone boundaries are indeed bent to follow borders for convenience, but the underlying scheme is longitude. And ocean basins have nothing to do with it.

On a topographic map, contour lines are used to show—

• a.elevation above sea level✓
• b.the density of population
• c.the boundaries of counties
• d.yearly rainfall totals

Each contour line joins points of equal elevation, so closely spaced lines mean a steep slope and widely spaced lines mean gentle ground. Rainfall is mapped with its own isolines on a climate map. Population density is normally shown by shading on a thematic map. And county lines are political boundaries drawn on a political map.

A region with large deposits of iron ore and coal close together is most likely to develop—

• a.an export trade in timber
• b.a center of banking
• c.a large fishing fleet
• d.a steelmaking industry✓

Steel is made by smelting iron ore with coke produced from coal, so having both nearby cuts the cost of the heaviest inputs and has drawn steel industries to such places repeatedly. A fishing fleet depends on access to productive waters. Timber exports depend on forests. And banking follows capital, communications and law rather than mineral deposits.