Census are being mailed out and filled out this week so I decided to give you, surprise, a few words on sampling and the census along with some ideas for the 2020 census. So here we go.
While there are undeniable flaws in the Census system we have now, I don't think that sampling is a fair solution. I do not say that for political reasons, on the contrary my political party would be helped by sampling, I just have this crazy idea that when you count you should start at one, go to two, and then to three, and so on. I believe that no matter the expense we should make sure that everyone is counted. The government needs to reach out to leaders in the minority communities to help with getting minorities counted.
When you think about it there is really no reason why the census should cost 2.6 Billion Dollars. I mean basically you're(yes I know I'm talking directly to the government while before I wasn't, deal with it) mailing a ton of letters. I mean, come on, you guys own the post office can't you say to your employees “ don't charge us for these. We pay your salary after all.”? The government paying for postage is like a restaurant owner having to pay for dinner. It's crazy.
You could also probably find High School or College kids to volunteer or work minimum wage ringing doorbells or reading the letters or whatever it is census workers do. Then you get a paper company to donate paper for you, they can put in their commercials “Official paper of the U.S. Senate.” and find an ink company to donate the ink. So basically you're not paying for postage, paper, ink, or help. So it won't have to cost 2.6 Billion anymore. While we're on the subject, how the heck did you manage to spend 2.6 Billion Dollars. That is, and I worked it out on a calculator, $118.308,879,863 for every person in the united states. Surely paper and ink and postage couldn't have cost that much. Now that you don't have to spend 118 bucks per person you can put more money into making sure that minorities are counted and that people aren't counted twice. Now that I've brought it up I just wanted to ask how did you manage to count people twice. I mean it's kind of hard to do it accidentally.
The Supreme Court ruled that sampling was unconstitutional and I don't see any need to stir up trouble, resentment and anger over something that will become unnecessary if we are able to make the current system cost effective and able to count everyone.
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3 comments:
well thats all well and good, and I agree with the court, the constitution said to count every one so sampling doesn't sound right
But just a few things to think about, one the post office isn't really part of the government so they don't have the ability to just say "do this for free because we are the government" any way # 2 Wow thats a lot of money per person! but hey, thats the government for you.
also I think that there are probably more expenses than you have mentioned.
There is actually a bill in the House of Representatives called H.R. 3167, sponsored by both a Republican and a Democrat, that would have the Government partner with the Post office to conduct the 2010 Census, obivously a little late now but still it shows that I'm not the only one having this idea. You can read the bill here
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.3167:
What I want to know is how one manages to not count millions of black people at all and count millions of white people twice. I can understand not counting anyone at all, but how could you accidentally count people twice? Accidentally send them two letters? Makes you wonder what else the government does on accident.
"Oh sorry. We just accidentally nuked Wichita. My bad."
I'm sure there are more costs but $118 for every man woman and child that they counted? Come on.
The post office must fund itself (nothing in the U.S. budget for the USPS) but is not allowed to set its own rates, choose its own hours nor determine its own internal policies...all of those must be determined by congress. Now what genius came up w/ that idea? That said...you are on the right track when you say the Census Bureau and the USPS should work together on this.
The problem w/ making sure that *everyone* is counted is that there are some people here who don't *want* to be counted (illegal residents, those who are highly suspicious of the government's need to know the info, etc.) and then there are those who are very difficult to count; homeless people, migrant workers, etc. Since it is impossible to accurately count everyone, I guess someone decided the most fair way to do it is to sample.
As for paying census workers, one idea would be to ask the unemployed to do this task as part of their unemployment package. It looks like most census takers (door to door) make about 1 1/2 time the minimum wage.
Another note; in most cases governmental agencies are *required* to use the U.S. Printing Office rather than go outside for paper/ink/printer. One of those ideas that was probably a good idea in theory, but turns out to be problematic in practice.
No easy answers to a problem w/ this many moving parts.!!!
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