“In those days a decree went out from Caesar that all people of the world shall be enrolled…”
Now, as we all should know, every decade or so in this country we have a Census. This is outlined in the Constitution, and is a necessary part of our representative democracy. The Census helps determine the proportion of representation for each state in the House of Representatives. This is a good thing.
However, I have two gripes this morning. Recently I received in the mail a letter from the Census Beaureu (The Department of Economic Development or some such thing, I think they actually call it) informing me that I would be receiving my Census form in the mail, and not to ignore it. So, in essence, they sent me a piece of mail to tell me I’d be getting…a piece of mail. Wow, nice work there. Times 100 million households, that probably cost, what, 50 million dollars to send out all those pointless letters? That’s the silliest, most wasteful and pointless thing since all those infernal “Save the Date” cards engaged couples are sending out these days.
Second, while the Constitution does call for a regular counting of citizens, it does not provide for collecting all of the sundry personal data that the forms now ask. Race? Gender? I don’t see how those are relevant to the task at hand, namely, determining representation. We no longer count “non-whites” as 3/5 of a person, and women have also been granted equal status as citizens, so why does the Census persist with its own discrimination?
I’m going to do my patriotic duty. When the Census comes, I’m going to give the government an accurate count of the number of people residing at my house. And that’s all I’m going to give them.
I haven’t seen the new forms for the 2010 census, but I understand that they’ve cut it down to ten questions or so. Apparently the longer form from the 2000 edition had a pretty low response rate.
I’m with you, though, they need to know how many people live in my house and that’s it. Although I usually check “Native American” — I mean, hell, I was born in Rochester, right? How much more native can I get?
Oh, as for the wasted postage issue – here in New York, there was a program called STAR – School Tax [something or other] Rebate. Essentially, it was a kickback of a few hundred dollars right around election time, to make people feel better about being robbed of ridiculous property taxes.
A couple of years ago, they destroyed and reprinted 80,000 checks at a cost of thousands of dollars. Why? Because they forgot to put the “This check brought to you by Governor Whoever and the NYS Senate” verbiage on there so that the election-time bribe would be credited to the right people. Nice, huh?
People seem to fail to grasp the reality of numbers out of their normal realm of dealings. In my day to day, I rarely deal with dollar amounts of more than a few hundred, maybe a thousand dollars. About the largest amount of money I’ve ever had to fathom was my mortgage, and even that seems a bit nebulous and unreal. So, what’s 50 million dollars? 50 million here, 50 million there…pretty soon you’re talking real money.
50 million? Oh, I dunno, that’s probably enough money to give every homeless person in America a month’s worth of hot food.
@Pitt
I read an interesting thought one time — news media should be required to represent all numbers in a particular story with the same “scale”. For example, you couldn’t talk about something having $700 million worth of benefits at a cost of $2 billion, but would have to represent the cost as $2 thousand million. The thought being that people would compare 700 to 2000, rather than 700 to 2.
I think that would help at least keep things in relative perspective. Not that I can actually fathom the idea of two billion of anything any better than you can.
Update: I just got my census form in the mail last night. It does in fact ask for my Race and Gender, as well as my age, whether I own, rent, pay a mortgage, or am “living rent free”, and my Name. And this information for all people dwelling in the same residence.
As far as I’m concerned, there are only two pertinent questions on the entire census form: How many people are there in your household? Are there any other people that you didn’t count in the previous question? (even though it seems redundantly redundant, its not asking me any infomation I wouldn’t provide.)