MOAR HATEFollow

So we should base social policy on what you believe, what you figure and all that **** rather than silly things like actual data? No wonder you oppose census taking. We are supposed to form things on what people figure.

Well, I figure buying me ten dresses will win the cubs the world series. BY ZEUS, IT SHALL BE SO!

Yeah, but that study shows an average of 14% of long form recipients who say it's an invasion of privacy (with only a 65% polling response rate during the highest periods of complaint). That's a fairly small subset of an already small subset there.

The dropping rate of response versus the rising rate of complaint also creates the possibility that the rate of complaint was somewhat artifical. If people with an axe to grind against the census are more inclined to response than people who don't really care about the census than you'll see a greater concentration of complaint responses in the diminished response pool. The study itself admits that the falling rate of responses puts a question mark on the study's findings.


Because it's enough of a minority opinion that I need to be hearing from some guy on the other side of the country to hear someone complain? Not that no one I know might have that opinion but I doubt most people are all that vocal about it to begin with.

Oh, wait. I'm sorry. Liberal media conspiracy. That's what kept us in the dark.

Edited, Oct 8th 2009 12:14am by Jophiel

No, but insane GOP Congresscritters implying (but they're not really implyin'...) that Obama's gonna come and get'im if they fill out the census is new. You're right though... there's always been a batshit crazy lunatic fringe. It used to just be more heavily composed of people claiming the CIA was sending radio signals through their tooth fillings.


No, it's not safe at all to think so. As I pointed out, one could also say "it's safe to think" that people who wanted to complain would be more likely to seize the outlet than people who didn't give a shit about the census. Which is correct? Who knows? So when you try to say "at least" 1-in-7, I could just as easily say "at most 1-in-7" when the real answer is that the study admits that its sample was somewhat flawed by a declining response rate.


So your argument is that no one had heard of the census prior to internet bloggers due to media suppression? Well, that makes sense. Silly me, I thought the census was pretty big news back in 2000.


Oh, wait... you only want to talk about big media stories about people crying over the census. That's right. Because, unless I'm seeing that in the news, it's impossible for me to know and talk to people who were filling out their census forms and saying "Boy, this census thing really grinds my gears." Oh, and it was 14% of the 16% of Americans who received the long form. People who received the short form likely had a different opinion of the census due to both less questions being asked and because the census in general was less of a pain in the *** for them. For someone who "studies the data!" you'd think you'd pick up on such a basic fact

And I can safely say I know more people without health insurance than people who whine and ***** about the census.

Edited, Oct 8th 2009 7:23am by Jophiel

Only if you buy shoes to go with them.

Yes.



Yes. That's part of the point. If your agency manages something, you'll have the data relevant to that something. I'm not seeing how that is a problem.



Is there a need for the IRS and SS to know anything about people who have never worked? Is there something they do which requires this information? They only need to know what they need to know to do the job for which they were created. I'm still not seeing a problem, nor a reason why this limitation of knowledge requires that the census collect it.



There's pretty much zero information collected in the census which has any real relevance to specific law enforcement or national security issues. Broad policy? Maybe, but that would again be based on demographic information, which might not really be a great idea. Unless you think that the US government should be apportioning it's national security resources based on where concentrations of different ethnicities live inside the US? Is that really what you think is a valid use of census data? So much so that it justifies its collection?

I think that's a way of treating ethnicities (and the neighborhoods they live in) via stereotype. And while that's "bad" when it's done by individuals, it's down right dangerous when it's done by your own government.

I'm still waiting for the valid reason why we have to collect anything more than a headcount in a census.




I don't think you're understanding the data though. Remember, the details of the census data aren't made available for something like 70 years. So no one's gaining access to details like "Mr Smith, living on 1414 Albatross Lane, owns 3 handguns and has a drug addiction problem". What the census does is provide very broad data about the percentage of people in this ethnic group, or that gender group who live in this area or that area. And what income range percentages exist for those different groups. And what percentage of people do X, or don't do Y, etc...


That data is *only* useful for broad social policy. Nothing more. And for the most part, the legitimate "broad" statistics upon which we might wish to set policy are available from other sources (and are much more likely to be accurate and up to date than those collected in a census). If I want to correlate handgun ownership with rates of crime in an area, I don't need census data to do this. Handgun registration statistics in an area are available, as are crime statistics. And those will be "real" numbers as opposed to the survey results the census will obtain.


We don't need to collect that data in a census. And we really don't need to justify the collection of yet more data (which doesn't really have a legitimate purpose) because we've been told that we need to collect that data in a census. For conservatives, the concern is the degree of social shaping which seems to result from said data. You don't need census data to measure the usage or success of an existing government program or department.


Again. I'm still waiting for a single example.

Maybe he's really a gorilla, ever think of that??!?

You actually have yet to explicitly state why you oppose collecting the data. You've really just been running around saying its bad with some sideways references to the government having too much information. I'd assume you have some explicit examples of this and that you're not just making things up, but:

A) You also have yet to provide a single source of someone in a medical field who moved internationally from their home country in order to make more money.
B) You also have yet to state the issues you know my exact view on, despite asserting that many of them side with the stereotypical liberal point of view.
C) You also have yet to say what it is about children in the homosexual family unit that makes them less important than children in the heterosexual family unit.
D) You also have yet to provide a reference that Hawaii is some bizarre repository for foreign birth certificates
E) You also have yet to state whether or not you, personally, consider waterboarding torture, with some reasoning for your opinion.

I guess we can just add running around screaming about all this data to the list somehow.

P.S. - Because you're going to demand I have a certain viewpoint on this already, I'm going to let you know right now that I don't. I can understand the worry that this data can be misused, but I don't see a reasonable, modern, application of said concern other than "AHHHH GOVERNMENT BAD." That's not very logical.

I'm also not going to by the Japanese internment camps nonsense. We didn't do anything similar after 9/11, and we had very recent census data at that time.

No, because what I was going for was specifics, not more hand waving statements. In addition, point two was yet another opinion that willfully ignores that the data is also used to create programs which do help society and actually bring it together.



Where is this conflict created? I certainly don't feel any. I've never talked to anyone who felt any. Are you that jealously angry that you don't get a social program because you're a straight, white, male? Or are you looking at the data and getting in some fury that Buffalo's inner city has a predominantly black population? Where exactly is this conflict?



To make this applicable to your terms of the current discussion, you'd be stating that society didn't care about race, gender, or religion until the U.S. Census Bureau started collecting data on it. That's not a very intelligent claim.

You asked for reasons. I gave an example already about how groups get tied to products or services via census data, which then makes everything about those products or services about the groups and not the things themselves.



Do they? Really? What evidence do you have for this? Has affirmative action helped society and brought it together? Has welfare? Have *any* entitlement programs?

Those programs serve to divide us into groups, and that division starts with the collection of data on those groups. The Census is one of the major points of collection of said data. Heaven forbid we live in a country in which all laws apply to everyone equally. Oh no! We've got to uneven the playing field in order to even the outcomes of the players...





You're kidding, right?



How many times have your heard someone talk about the "gap between rich and poor", or the "gap in pay between men and women", or "white and black", or "groupA and groupB". The conflict between different groups over social programs goes on constantly around us. I'm positive that you have engaged in exactly the same arguments in the past and almost certainly will continue to do so in the future. Every single time you point to a statistical difference between one group and another and use that difference to argue for some government intervention, you are engaged in that conflict.

You do it so often and so naturally, that you don't even realize that you're doing it. You think nothing of observing that inner city blacks drop out of high school at X times the rate of white kids in the suburbs and arguing in favor of some social program designed to fix that.



It's in you. You just don't see it, while I do. The fact that you brought up race, gender, and orientation and acknowledged a difference in terms of social programs shows you know this on some level. You're just not seeing what this means. We divide people into groups. We then target government money at those groups in different ways. This creates yet another difference between those groups and gives them a reason to hate/fear/fight the other groups.


There are enough reasons for people to hate and fear eachother, but deliberately dividing them up and treating them differently based on differences we should be trying hard to ignore socially? That's just stupid. Yet, for some absolutely insane reason, a whole lot of people think that this will somehow magically make us all learn to live together in peace and harmony. It doesn't work. It has never worked. It has overwhelmingly increased the amount of hatred between groups historically. It's one of many aspects of social liberalism which I just cannot figure out. Oh. I know perfectly well why the leaders want to do this. It exaggerates differences between groups in society, polarizes them, and makes it easier to organize them into active political groups to support them politically. What I can never understand is why the average self-described liberal who claims to be opposed to hate and racism and sexism and a host of other 'isms' would ever go along with it. It just boggles the mind.




No. I'm making a statement to illustrate the point that we make those problems worse by collecting the data. If you took a group of schoolkids and divided them up in a purely arbitrary manner, and then collected statistics on each group (and published them), what do you think will happen? Each group would look at the other group as an "outside group". They would note with pride areas in the collected data in which they outperform other groups and get angry when things they don't do well at are vocalized. You'll see the kids in groupA taunting the kids in groupB: "Well, we may not be able to gets runs in baseball as well as you, but we're better at kickball... Nyah!".


It's a natural human reaction. Ever played little league baseball? In most leagues you're assigned a team pretty randomly. Yet they still "hate" the other team(s). They have rivals which are purely arbitrary. This year, you're on the Orioles and your hated rivals are the Cardinals. But next year, you'll be on a different team with different rivals and whatnot. Why? It's purely arbitrary, yet the very act of dividing people into groups tends to have this effect. You could argue that this is beneficial since it motivates them to work harder and do better, and you'd have a point. Here's the problem though. When the stats collected are game stats, and the way to win is to do well at the game, that works. But when the stats collected are broader and social in nature, and short term actions have little or no impact on the overall stats, all it really does is breed resentment and hatred.


Of course, we compound that by dividing people into groups, collecting performance stats on them, and then making programs designed to even out the stats. Imagine what would happen if the team that scored the least points last year gets free points each game this year? Now imagine that the dividing criteria is not arbitrary but based on some differences which already exist and are already a source of potential tension? That's what we're doing. And it's monumentally stupid.

Todays NYT's has an story on a study the Census did for the first time last year and released last month.

Since it shows the relationship between one's state and district and how people voted in the last election, I can understand why gbaji doesn't like the idea of the census collecting any data that goes beyond population.




After reading through the article I'm sure he's go on about the poorest districts in certain states, having both Democrats congress members and lower levels of health insurance rates. Then it couldn't be due to the fact that their states may cover fewer people under Medicaid then blue states?

Sure we could. You could certainly hypothetically create a program that ensured some minimum value of foodstuff per person was subsidized by the federal government. It would be a pretty large governmental project for sure. And it's also obviously skating much closer to the communism end of the spectrum.

But a better solution to some people having difficulty putting food on the table would be to target the group of people who is having difficulty and finding some way to rectify it, either with food stamps or some other method or group of methods that would ensure that they can obtain it.

I could just as easily ask what evidence you can provide that these programs divide society other than "let it be so!" and "well it seems like it would, doesn't it!", but I think it's cruel to intentionally add to your already expansive list of issues you avoid.



It's truly laughable that you feel a program like affirmative action is the reason we have modern racial division.



No. I've never felt any giant divide in society. You know what has been the only cause of some "anger" on my part about affirmative action? When I was joking with my friend about how I was more of a minority than she is because I'm gay.



Oh, I get it. You're trying to change the topic from "collecting the data creates social conflict!" to "social conflict exists!"

You could just say "I actually have no proof that collecting data on race serves to divide racial groups further." I mean, there would be a lot of jubilation at you finally admitting you make sh*t up, but you'd be a better person for it.



No, I would think twice about just saying "THEY DROP OUT MORE WE NEED TO FIX THAT." We'd have to investigate why they drop out and attack those issues. I understand that you absolutely despise the fact that I refuse to look at a situation and pass judgment without investigating further, but you're going to have to get over that somehow.



Actually, you brought up race and gender. I just added orientation because I didn't feel like guessing at your religion.

As a general response to a lot of your post:

You keep discussing the programs created from the data. As you have happily pointed out, the data is easily available elsewhere. These programs are going to be created anyway. If you have an issue with those, that's a policy issue, not an issue with the data being collected.

Had you come in here and flat out said "I feel the census is an outdated mechanic that served its purpose a while ago, but now has its various compenents adequately handled by other government insitutions", that would be a fully respectable opinion. I'm sure there's situations where there isn't sufficient overlap in data collection, but none of them are at the top of my head and I'm far too lazy to do the research on the topic right now. It's nonsense for you to come in here and disguise your dislike of social programs behind claims of privacy and "social divide" in relation to the census/



To an extent? Yes. For the most part? No. You have this bizarre need to look at the negative side of everything and pretend the positive side doesn't exist in order to prove your point.

Does affirmative action help people it is targeted towards? Hell yes. Is it unfair to certain groups under certain circumstances? Another hell yes. What is your magical cut-off for denying people help? If I told you that 10% of the students in the EOP program at my university weren't really driven and were selected by the EOP staff as not deserving of the help, would you claim the other 90% should just lose their help? How about 25-75? 50-50? How do you decide this fairly along all programs? Is your solution that none of the programs should exist in the first place, so those that really do need the assistance are just stuck there on an uneven playing field?

Edited, Oct 10th 2009 1:23am by CBD