I got seven right (I missed the newspaper one), but I made a lot of lucky guesses.

First 3 wrong, the remaining 5 correct.

That was tough. I only got four correct.

7 of 8, so all those things I learned before law school aren't gone yet:

[Don't read any farther if you don't want to see spoilers]

1. I went straight with population on this one.

2. Didn't think this one would be in here unless it were counterintuitive.

3. Population again.

4. This one I got wrong, but went with the most high strung (IMO).

5. Same as 2.

6. flat-out guessed between A&B

7. I knew this one for some reason

8. I knew this one as well.

Wow, I'm pretty embarrassed - I read the NY Times daily, the Economist weekly, and I am studying IR as an undergraduate, but I couldn't manage to pull through on a single one.

Does anyone know what the actual minimum wage number is? I ask because their number seemed a bit low. I did a quick google and found that the Economic Policy Institute says 5.5 % of the workforce

http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/issueguides_minwage_minwagefacts

of course they are lefties. Heritage foundation says the number is 2.5 %, (plus many of them get tips!) and I assume that is where FP got their data.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm1186.cfm

Anyone know a source that explains what is going on here?

If you didn't get any with that background, I don't feel so bad about only getting two (largest stockpile of firearms & who contributes the most UN peacekeepers)... but I'm a little unclear on exactly what this is supposed to demonstrate, other than that the staff of Foreign Policy thinks labor issues are extremely important, and security issues somewhat less so.

Counterintuitive? The answer to Question 2 goes against everything I've ever heard about that country's labor market. Please tell me the Weekly Standard hasn't been lying about that too.

I'd like to know how they were defining "expensive" in that second question. Like, if you don't have to give an employee a lot of severance pay, but you do have to wait 2 years between the decision and the actual firing and meanwhile let the employee appeal the firing to two or three different arbiters, how is that figured into the expense, if at all?

BLS Minimum wage statistics:

http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2004.htm

That's not "knowledge," that's trivia.

Sure, it's trivia. No argument.

Now, how many of the questions did you get right?

[g]

I got 4 of 8 , but outsmarted myself on the cheapest fire question (I figured it was France, as an obvious 'conventional wisdom *wrong* answer , so went for Ireland instead) .

I will say the minimum wage question is BS . They don't specify *federal* minimum wage ($5.15 / hour) . Many states, including several of the most populous, have min. wage set higher than the Federal standard , including NY, CA, FL, IL (in the $6.50 to $7.00 range) . A quick analysis is interesting -- a higher percentage of whites earn minimum wage than blacks, hispanics or Asians -- probably because most of the high hispanic population states have minimum wage laws (with the big exception of Texas). In other states, you probably have American kids working for minimum wage doing everything from mowing lawns to flipping burgers to busing tables. In Cali (and I am sure elsewhere with high immigrant pops) , those jobs are done by 30 year old males and females . Their ethnic kin politicians push for high minimum wage laws to in essence subsized their immigrant clients. You'd think that would give open borders libertarians pause to rethink the political economy of immigration, but such people never let reality intrude on their theories.

This quiz is so incredibly stupid. It is a bunch of random trivia questions. The fact that so many readers actually post their results is just pathetic. People, please!