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Posted by David Sherman [216.18.131.165] on Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 11:51:29 :
In Reply to: OT more Govt Stupidity $$$ posted by mike stone [71.39.211.44] on Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 10:09:56 :
Only the government would send out letters telling people they're going to send them a letter. I know someone who's working on the census -- driving all over testing and recruiting people to work on the census -- and it's mind-boggling the amount of money they're spending. They're creating an entire organization pretty much scratch just to go and count people once, and then they disband it. She's one level up from the actual "census workers" but she still gets a full time salary plus mileage, hotels, and meals. Even when she has more than enough "census workers" signed up they want her to keep giving more tests even though there's no chance most of the people tested will get any work. Of course there's also piles of special government stationary and equipment bought just for the occasion, conferences to go to, and plenty of forms to fill out documenting everything.
The main pitch is that the more people you can prove there are in your area, the more goodies you'll get from the federal government, up to and including gaining or losing a representative in congress. I remember in past censuses they talked about why it was important to be counted, but they're really heavy on the federal money part this time. They've hired one man whose job it will be to sit at a hotel 8 hours a day for the duration of the census in case anybody has trouble filling out the form and they need him to help them. They don't expect that anyone will actually utilize his services since there's lots of other census-filling-out help available, but they'll still pay him to sit there just in case.
So far the numbers I've heard have it costing somewhere around $20 per person counted. I suppose it's "economic stimulus".