U.S. 2010 Census
OMG – let’s talk about something other than the iPad! Census Day, April 1, 2010. The U.S. Constitution requires it; a requirement that every 10 years, the country recalculates which states gets how many representatives. Disgusted with politics and lawmakers in general > if it weren’t for the $400 billion per year in federal aid (from jobs to roads to schools) proportionately allocated to the population, I would trash the dumb thing. BUT, this thing is important!
Population Clocks – According to the U.S. Census web site http://www.census.gov/ the U.S. population has almost reached 309 million people compared to the World population of 6.8 billion people. [22:56 UTC (EST+5) Apr 01, 2010: U.S. 308,983,091; World 6,812,183,474]
More census trivia:
- Census comes from the Latin censere (roughly meaning to estimate versus to count).
- Many centuries ago, the penalty in Rome for refusing to reveal how many people were in your household, your slaves, and livestock was forfeiting it all and becoming a slave yourself.
- Our U.S. Founding Fathers realized that if you are going to have government by the people, you need to know who and where they are.
- In 1790, 650 federal marshals on horseback began going house to house. It cost $45,000 and took a year and a half to count 3.9 million people.
- Today, the Census is estimted to cost (according to some estimates) about $15 billion or about $48.55/person.
- Census ads are produced in 28 languages.
- Census workers can be fined up to $250,000 for inappropriately disclosing information to any outside party, court, or governmental agency.
- Participation is mandatory; failure to comply is a misdemeanor and subject to a $5,000 fine
For help in completing the census form, call the toll-free Telephone Questionnaire Help Line at 1-866-872-6868 or visit www.2010census.gov.
Tags: Public service
I don’t understand why the government spends so much time and money on printing and mailing census forms when it would be so much more convenient and far cheaper in my opinion to let people just fill out census forms online. If you can file taxes online, why can’t you fill out a census form online?
If nothing else, they could at least give people the opportunity to do it online first, then they could send out the mailings (which would be far less in number since most people would probably have already filled out the online form) and finally, they could send out the army of census takers to the few people that did not fill out either the online or mail in forms.
All I hear these days is how green we need to be, so lets be green and save some trees!
I am not sure I agree… Being a subscriber to the “great conspiracy” theories I like the old fashion way > U.S. Mail. No hacker (or corporation) will get my info other than the folks that should have it. Speaking on which… when preparing your taxes with Quicken (and others), besides the IRS, do you think these companies sell that data to credit card companies, credit bureaus, marketers, and others? When agreeing to use their software, you may have agreed to allow them to do this. Have you ever read the “small print?” Even if they did this without attaching our names > it sure is scary!
Big brother is watching and it only cost $48.55 to be counted…
Oh I love our bloated bureaucracy.
summer jobs for us college students!