"The cost of the census is outrageous" by Mad Man

The cost of the census is outrageous

Blog: Mad Man

April 12, 2010

One of the first things President Obama did when he took office was pull the 2010 census under the control of the White House, rather than leave it as an independent government agency. In keeping with his policies to count government spending as a sign the economy is getting better, he hired tens of thousands of census workers and pointed to job gains. Aside from the political implications of taking direct control over this Constitutional mandate, and what mischief could be done with it, there is a simple matter of the extraordinary cost in this census that makes you wonder if government is capable of running anything on a budget. The process that will cost an estimated $14,000.000.000 to count an estimated 310,000,000 people, even though the detail the census is getting this year is much more limited (10 questions) than in the past two or three decades. In case you are wondering, that equates to $45.16 per person counted. How is that possible, when most of the census is being conducted through the mail, and the government owns the U.S. Postal Service? As a reference, the census cost $1 billion when Richard Nixon was president. That's a 14X increase in cost, while inflation has been about 2x. Is it any wonder people want to know who's minding the store on our behalf?

Easygoing 3 years, 1 month ago

Pat, first of all you should try to get your facts right. 1. The cost of the census was about $1 Billion in 1980 when Carter was President, not Nixon. 2 The Government does not own the Post Office, it’s an independent agency and no taxpayer dollars are used to run the Post Office. 3. If you are using Nixon as your base point then you will find by using the CPI inflation numbers compounded per year that $1 in 1970 (when Nixon was actually President) is now about $9. That’s an inflation number of about 9X not 2X as you state. Yes the cost of the census has far outstripped inflation and it seems to be far too expensive. But then take a look at some other things that have gone up way beyond the inflation rate (examples are medical costs and college tuition). Maybe you should get all mad about these. If you want to rant, make yourself miserable, and get mad over something please try to keep you obvious political bias out of it and try getting your facts correct.

publius 3 years ago

Actually, Easygoing, according to official inflation calculators, $1 billion in 1980 is equivalent to $2.7 billion in 2010. The increase in real costs are quite substantial. I hope it reflects the cost of manipulating the data and making sure we get an accurate count. I tend to agree with Pat.

daisygirl 3 years ago

However it is handled, whatever way it is paid for, the census is one way that you as an individual is counted. We all know that the census will come every 10 years, and what hasn't gone up in price in the last 10 years? But what if your census papers never came? That's what happened or didn't happen for me. Now what? I just want to be counted in this world!