1) Gerrymandering
2) Identity theft
3) Fraud
4) Burglary
To demonstrate this point, let's take a look at some of the questions from the American Community Survey. The Census Bureau claims that these answers are necessary to "distribute resources". See if you can figure out how the following questions will help them do that. But to make it more interesting, I'll include some other random questions that I made up. Let's see if you can tell which ones don't appear on the census.
- Name
- Date of birth
- Are you Hispanic?
- Social Security Number
- Highest education level attained
- Degree
- Amount borrowed in student loans
- Where did you live 1 year ago?
- Do you have health insurance?
- How much does your health insurance cost?
- How much does your homeowner's/renter's insurance cost?
- Do you rent or own?
- When was your home built?
- How many bedrooms does your home have?
- How many bathrooms does your home have?
- How much is made annually in the sale of agricultural products from your property?
- Does your home have a garbage disposal?
- Does your home have a flush toilet?
- Does your home have a refrigerator?
- Do you use a gasoline lawn mower at your home?
- How many cars do you have at home?
- What was your electricity bill last month?
- What was your telephone bill last month (including cellular, mobile, and other non-landlines)?
- What was your heating bill over the last year?
- How much are your HOA fees?
- What is your home's value?
- What is your monthly mortgage payment?
- Do you have difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions?
- Are you blind?
- Do you have difficulty filling out forms?
- Do you have difficulty dressing yourself?
- How many times have you been married?
- What year were you last married?
- What year were you last divorced?
- Do you have minor grandchildren living with you?
- How long have you been the primary care giver of your minor grandchildren?
- How many minor grandchildren are you responsible for?
- If you served in the armed forces, during what era/wars did you serve?
- Do you have a VA service-connected disability rating?
- Were you wounded in combat?
- What is your employer's name?
- What is your employer's address?
- What is your employer's industry?
- How many people (approximate) are employed by your employer?
- What time do you leave for work?
- What is the approximate cost of jewelry and electronics in your house?
- How do you get to work?
- What time do you return from work?
- How many hours did you work last week?
- What was your gross salary last year, including wages, tips, commission, and bonuses from all jobs?
Were you able to figure out what questions the government "needs" to know to "distribute resources" in your area? Here are the question numbers that I made up:
4, 7, 10, 15, 17, 20, 23, 30, 34, 37, 40, 44, 46, 48.
Yes, the Census Bureau seriously, with a straight face, asks if you have a flush toilet. I guess to, um, distribute toilet resources? They also seriously want to know when you leave for work. I guess so they know the best time to come by and ransack your house, looking for valuables.
So, my readers are all extremely smart and clever, and since I'm so dumb and un-clever, I'm sure you all will be able to enlighten me and help me understand why the Census Bureau needs to know all these things. Because, I mean, the government wouldn't ask unless it was important, right? And considering that in 2006, the Census Bureau lost several laptops filled with personal information, they wouldn't risk my extremely private personal information unless it was really, really important to have, right?
I just love the explaination that your information will be "protected by law" as if that will stop the damage when someone steals that info.
ReplyDeleteHey about pet peeve #378... What's there to confuse? You say "Go to 'C:\'" and they say "Ok, I see 'All Programs'..."? How do you screw that up?
ReplyDeleteHoly cow. I hope people aren't seriously answering these questions.
ReplyDeleteWell, we sure as hell didn't. And then we started getting the phone calls, and the visits, and the threatening letters. Meh, we've ignored them all.
ReplyDelete~ The 'Defiant' Murloc
I don't get much of an opportunity to post since the IT department at work is quite strict, but last night's dinner has disagreed with me and provided an early morning opportunity.
ReplyDeleteYou certainly aren’t stupid or un-clever, but I think you suffer from the same ignorance and the often-deserved lack of charity that many people (especially conservatives) display towards the Federal Government.
Blogger limits forbid from giving my full reply, so I'll stick with the bigger issues.
I was able to spot some of your false questions.
*SSN should never be necessary.
*For #10, I’d be shocked if they ever asked such a question, since I doubt most people would know, and the nonresponse and response errors would be so great that the answers would be useless.
*On #30, filling out forms would be odd, since you’re filling out a long form.
*Questions 44, 46, and 48 all seemed very unreasonable to me. I also think #45 is strange, yet it’s real.
*For 44, 46, and 48, I thought they were unreasonable simply because that information is almost impossible to capture on the ACS form, not because I think the Federal Govt wouldn’t want to ask it.
However, I wasn’t surprised by most of the questions you mentioned, and for a variety of reasons (not all of them good). As for toilets, this question may very well be important for the purpose of collecting information on poverty levels--information that mere income ranges may not tell you.
It’s also important to keep in mind that the Census Bureau collects some information at the request of Congress, and I think this is true for most or all Fed Statistical agencies. For example, one Federal survey wanted to remove a question on Women Workers because: 1.) it was somewhat hard to collect, and 2.) almost nobody bothered citing the statistic over the last 10-15 years. However, after lobbyist pressure Congress ordered the agency to reinstate the questions--regardless of all the pain and difficulty it would eventually cause.
I think a little bit of charity goes a long way towards Fed Statistical agencies. There are a lot of brilliant people working at these agencies, and they’re often trying to solve very difficult problems or collect very difficult information within some very limiting constraints. Don’t assume that a question has no purpose (which is what it seems that you’re doing) because you don’t understand it. Some questions are only asked in certain conditions. Some questions are asked to filter people towards more specific questions. Some questions are asked because Congress told them they need to collect the information. And some questions are asked simply due to inertia, but I think these are very few. Each question goes through a surprisingly long process of evaluation before keeping it on a survey.
Again, all of this said, I think the heart of your rant is absolutely right. The Federal Govt. should not be involved in collecting most or any of this information for the sake of appropriating funds. That duty should be left to States and local areas in light of subsidiarity. However, I think it is good to have a central group collecting the information to help guarantee that it is collected in a cohesive manner. Exactly how these two competing interests interact is a question I haven't worked out.
@ Murloc, you received threatening letters for the ACS?!? For the Decennial Census I can see how they might try to verbally jostle (but not threaten) you, but not for a survey. I don't think the ACS is mandatory.