In my mailbox yesterday, addressed to “Resident”: You probably got one too! Apparently, it’s Next-Week-Is-Census-Day Day! Once the initial “you have got to be kidding me” response subsided, I called up the folks at the Census Bureau and they were kind enough to send me their canned response to the “are you freaking kidding me?” calls and emails they have been getting all day. Excerpted below: Thank you for your email. We here at the Census Bureau certainly understand your concern, and I want to assure you we care a great deal about being good stewards of the taxpayer’s money…. Based on historical response rates, we expect roughly two thirds of households will mail back their form. The rest we will have to send an enumerator to collect the data required by the Constitution. You can imagine that follow-up is an expensive proposition. In fact, every one percent increase in the number of households who mail back the form saves the taxpayers about $85 million in expensive door-to-door follow up. That’s why we advertise and promote, to increase the mail back response rate and help save on expensive labor to follow up.
Here is the original:
Census Bureau Misses Chance to Create Make-Work Jobs
