Today's Non-Button Poli-Poll: National IDsFollow

But all still affected by the census polls.

Information pertinent to taxation should be collected (Art. 1, section 9 has one specific clause that references taxes and the Census).

This, unfortunately, leaves the door wide open for data related to any sort of federal spending.

ALSO: The comment about "people complaining about the existence of the Census" wasn't directed at you. It was directed at people who complain about the existence of the Census, some of whom may be reading this thread, and was included only because the first sentence made it relevant. Reducing the data collected by the Census... fine. Getting rid of it entirely... start writing an amendment, fucknuts.

Edited, May 3rd 2010 8:28pm by MDenham

Liberals count for 2/5 of a person.

Which also requires no more than a head count. I'd have to do some digging, but I'm pretty sure they were talking about taxes on the states, not individuals at that point. The idea being that the federal government would charge the states different amounts (for services rendered basically) based on the population of the states themselves. So a state with 2Million people would pay more for their share of military expenses than a state with 500k. Obviously, individual income taxes actually removes the need for this, but that's really not the issue. There's still no need to collect more than just a count of people.



Yes. And that door has been abused until it's hanging half off the hinges. How about we just not do that? We don't need to, and the Constitution absolutely does not require it.



Ok. But then you're arguing against a strawman. While I'm sure you can find some lone nutter out there who wants to just eliminate the Census entirely, that's hardly a mainstream conservative position. The vast majority of conservatives have issues specifically with the data collected via the census beyond that needed to fulfill it's constitutional mandate, and all they want is for us to do nothing except count heads.


You could argue about how wrong conservatives who believe that Elvis is still alive are and you'd probably be hitting a larger number of people.

You were replying to *me*, not some undefined "other people" who want to abolish the census. It was you who created the false relationship between my stated position and the need to abolish said census. Dork! ;)

You (yes: you!) don't really think anyone's buying that dodge, do you?

You're kidding, right?


Ok. How about we just ignore this and get back to the beginning? Do you have a problem with the position that we should be collecting only a head count with no other data during a census? Yes or no? Because I don't really care if you agree or disagree with some imaginary position you've dreamed up to argue against. I care if you agree or disagree with the one I actually wrote in this thread.


So? What do you think? Should we be collecting data on race, age, etc, or just head counts of people of voting age? Or perhaps something in between? Do you have an opinion on the actual issue at hand?

School districts are pretty good about collecting that information, and more often than once every 10 years. It's kinda part of the issue here, most of the data collected in the census can and is collected via other means. I think the thing that gets people riled up is that it's collected directly by the federal government instead of some local thing, which then may get collated and combined for state data, and then combined for national data.

It's just kinda unnecessary and it's something the federal government shouldn't be doing. The only thing it actually needs is a head count of voting age people so it can determine relative population levels of states for representation purposes. There is simply zero reason to collect anything more than that, and I'm glad you agree. Progress at last! ;)

Yes. But if you're one of those who believes that the federal government shouldn't be doing this sort of thing in the first place, you can see how the use of the census to collect that data is problematic and might ruffle some feathers, right?