The individual data is kept confidential for 72 (70?) years. The data, grouped by political boundaries, age, race, sex, etc., are available as soon after the Census as the Census Bureau can package it and make it available. That won’t be until sometime in 2001, at the earliest.
Second Place (tie), Most Valuable Poster (GD)
Second Place, Best Scientific/Expert Explanations (GD)
Not that it’s gone to my head or anything.
Where?
Olentzero, how did you get the information on your grandad? I would like to get some info on my grandfather too.
Everybody get their Census 2000 advance letters this week?
The mark of a truly great mind isn’t whether you’re right or wrong. It’s how well you can weasel out of a jam. - Unca Cecil
I got mine yesterday.
I love fuckin’ with these people every ten years! I think this time I will be a humble Serbo-Croatian immigrant pearl diver, named Milos Kruczac, with eight children and two goats.
…send lawyers, guns, and money…
Warren ZevonGot ours today.It was stuck in the back door. The census taker must not be afraid of dogs. They both have impressive grins.
Mine was just in the mailbox, I assumed they were mailed, but didn’t check to see if there was a stamp…oh, I don’t care, it’s here, but I didn’t open it yet. I’ll do it this weekend.
“It’s hard to avoid reading because ever wheres we go, reading is there.”
I got my preliminary letter this week, and there’s something I don’t understand. (Besides how it found its way to my house, one thousand house numbers away from the address on it. Can you beleive the government sends out 120 million letters to the wrong address? Why do they need to be addressed in the first place? Just have the post office send one to every address in the United States! Or use the same list that AOL uses.)
Sorry, I drifted. It’s late.
Anyway, this letter from the census has a postage-paid return envelope in it. WHAT FOR? I read the letter several times. (well, the english parts) Nowhere is this envelope mentioned, except under Kenneth Prewit’s name is the word ‘Enclosure’. So they knew it was in there, right? Or is this the really, really short form; I just scribble the number of people here next to the address on the letter, stuff it into the prepaid envelope, and I’m done for ten years?
“If I pinch my nose with my fingers, close my mouth tight,
and blow real hard, I can make my ears bleed. It’s
not as cool as Superman’s X-ray vision, but it’s my own
special talent.”
A woman came to the door while I was in Alaska and delivered the forms. She asked for a name of an adult who lives at that address, I told her that the guy I was visiting is 46 years old but I wouldn’t consider him an adult.
Not very original and maybe rated a 1 1/2 (at best) on a humor chart, but she laughed her ass off.
Made me wonder what type of people they hire for this thing.
You turn me on. But maybe it’s because I just spent 20 years in the jungle, getting it on with anything I could attract with a piece of fruit.
For what it’s worth, the only question I will be answering will be “how many people live in your household.”
That’s all they need to know…oh and not to make this a political discussion, but the Libertarian Party is sort of endorsing this, there was an editorial in the Party’s monthly newspaper.
Legally, all the government NEEDS to know is the amount of people, not your species, not your social class, not your nosepicking habits…so for a 'sposed $100.00 fine I will only answer that question 
then donate it to my favorite charity since they wont come after me for it…like they can force me to pay it…
Nicky - the parts that were in those five other languages instructed the recipient to use the return envelope if they wanted a form in the language they could read. (Sneaky, huh?)
Diane - where in Alaska were you? (Out in the boonies, I gather.) Hope you don’t mind my asking - I’ve got a professional interest in all this…
Techchick - I’m sure enough that you won’t get fined, I’ll volunteer to pay the fine in the incredibly unlikely event that it happens.
You’re right - the Constitution only requires the government to find out the number of people, and where they are.
However, as I understand it, the Census Bureau didn’t just decide over coffee one day to collect all that other stuff to justify their existence; our elected reps in Congress have instructed them to find out this, that, and the other thing. (That still doesn’t mean that you have to tell them, of course.)
Also, since it’s possible to count some people in more than one place, some other answers are used to help ascertain whether an apparent duplication is one person counted twice, or two distinct people.
FWIW, the Census’ being nosey is hardly a result of ‘big government’. I just pulled out Margo J. Anderson’s The American Census: A Social History; it’s got copies of forms from 1840 and 1850. In addition to stuff like age and gender, they ask: white or colored? (For coloreds: slave or free?) Native or foreign? Which people in your household are deaf and blind? Idiots or insane? (In private or public care?) State/country of birth? They count people by profession and industry, how many people are engaged in various levels of schooling, what churches of what denominations there were in each county, and a bunch of other stuff. This doesn’t make it right or wrong; I’m just saying that this sorta stuff went on well before the era of Big Government.
That probably won’t convince you to respond any differently than you otherwise would, but if you’re determined to toss a spanner in the works, it never hurts to have a more precise idea of what you’re rebelling against. 
Enough of voting for the lesser of evils - vote Cthulhu 2000!
techchick - that editorial wouldn’t be online anywhere, would it? I’d like to see what they say.
Enough of voting for the lesser of evils - vote Cthulhu 2000!
Why would they even need to know that? I mean, why would you tell the government how many people live there, but refuse to say how old they are, or what language they speak? I guess I don’t quite get the reasoning there.
Arnold, I think the logic runs: the government is constitutionally mandated to count the population to determine how many Congressional representatives each state gets. So they have a legit reason for knowing how many people are in a household. But all that other stuff thy ask isn’t required by the Constitution.
Am I reading you right, techchick?
To me, that’s creating an artificial dichotomy between the Constitution, and the laws passed under the Constitution. Some of those laws require that various agencies of the government gather various other pieces of information, and those agencies go out and try to collect it. I’m sure they’ve got a reason for making that distinction, but I don’t know what it is. techchick, any help?
Enough of voting for the lesser of evils - vote Cthulhu 2000!
RTF,
Here’s the link to the LP’s National Director’s editorial: http://www.lp.org/lpn/200003-director.html
I should rephrase the “sort of” to is endorsing…
Essentially, as a Libertarian, answering those questions equates to spending money on programs the Libertarian Party is against. AKA the big government issue pops into it.
Arnold,
The main reason the census was compiled was for proper representation in congress…if I remember my history correctly. Yes, taxes are a part of this however many of these taxes go to government programs that are above and beyond what is outlined in the Constitution.
What race I am serves no purpose, what marital status I am serves no purpose, what sex I am serves no purpose…All these questions do is help along programs that should not be a part of our government.
Some things that are on this questionaire, veteran status…if the government doesn’t already know about those that have served in the armed forces (employees of the government) what are they doing?
Hours worked in a year? Huh? They need this to understand income data…isn’t that what the IRS compiles each year? Income data, it’s already at their finger tips…hours worked is none of their damn business…sides this is a question I couldn’t answer truthfully. I may work 8 hours a day, some days none and some days 4. Five years ago, if they asked me this question it would have been pretty clear cut so the data becomes false.
Automobiles, vans, trucks…HEY, they could get an accurate count via vehicle registrations, this is public record already.
Bedrooms? Why is this important to know? Mostly for Agriculture (according to their site) some for government loans…but bedrooms? I know of many immigrants that are from eastern countries that house as many as 11 people in a 4 bedroom home, not because they can’t afford to have less people in a single house, but their culture is such their entire families live in close proximity. Some of them drive pretty nice cars too.
Etc…
techchick, I guess I don’t see how your objections are very significant.
Some of them are “the government already knows this stuff, so why does it ask again?” If the government knows it, what is the harm in asking a second time? Otherwise the federal government would have to gather states records from many different states and collate them, which might very well be a task as complicated as the census.
I fail to understand that either. Suppose someone asks the question “what percentage of the population in county X is female?” for the reason of, I don’t know, building women’s prisons, or the advisability of starting a school for midwives, or whatever other reason. Another example: population of descendance X (e.g. chinese) suffers more from disease Y. In which area would it be most beneficial to organize an educational campaign concerning ways to prevent disease Y? How are you supposed to find that information? Blind guess? I’m sure smarter people can come up with many other examples for asking about such things as race or marital status.
etc…
As far as relying strictly on the constitution, I guess I don’t agree with the argument that the writers of the Constitution were legal geniuses that could plan for all the exigencies of a society 250 years in the feature. I view them more as legislators and politicians, not much more different than the legislators and politicians than we have today, who did the best they could for the conditions of society during their time. So I’m not ready to dismiss out of hand any law that was adopted after the bill of rights.
techchick:
Decisions on where to spend your tax dollars is certainly one major use of Census data. But the money’s going to be spent anyway, just less efficiently. If that’s what you want…that helps make the libertarian case in the long run, but not very honestly.
Now to address the editorial you cited:
Let’s take them one by one:
Privacy. Yeah, the Census gathers info on each individual and household, but nobody sees it in that form for seventy years. Until then, not even other government agencies get to see data on individuals or individual households. What’s available is information by geographic region and by various demographic strata.
Now you probably know more about data mining and whatnot than I do, so you’re aware that a fair amount of detailed information is available, in private hands, on most of us, and that such information is a very marketable commodity these days; if you want to know everything about someone, all you need is money - and not that much of it, probably. So where’s the substantive threat to our privacy coming from? To me, this looks like the usual libertarian blind spot with respect to the private sector.
Equality. In putting together a remarkable database of demographic information and making it available to everyone, regardless of ability to pay, the Census Bureau is certainly striking a bigger blow for equality than if such data is only in the hands of those who can pay what the market will bear. If someone is starting up a business of some sort, for instance, access to Census data won’t put the new entrepreneur on an even footing with the big boys, information-wise, but it certainly helps close the gap, and gives the new guy a better chance of making his idea work.
Liberty. Hell, I’m not even sure of what this one’s about. Since the Census Bureau doesn’t let anyone see its data on individuals, how the data the Census collects represents a threat to liberty is beyond me. If another government agency wanted to build up dossiers on private citizens, their best bet would be to go to the private sector, not the Census Bureau. For a fee, there are data-mining outfits who could give such an agency reams of individual info that they can’t and won’t get from the Census. So again, where’s the threat to liberty? (Out, out, damned blind spot!)
You made some other points that I’d like to address, but I’d better get some work done first. Later… 
Enough of voting for the lesser of evils - vote Cthulhu 2000!
I got a letter from the Census the other day informing me that Im going to get the Census in a week. They just mail it to the address. They put a one in front so instead of 500 avenue, it said 1500 avenue. I asked the post guy about this & he said that’s how they do it & it’s just fine. Well, I hope they do better when the real thing comes.
handy
handy,
I live an ocean away from your census, and I have read about the extra ‘1’ on your address. I had read about it even before reading the start of this very thread.
I hope you do better at reading and comprehension when the real thing comes.
Russell