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> The comments that this rather expensive endeavour should just be about getting a head count are also amusing to me. The data collected was such an important baseline of common understanding, and this will not be a good thing for its future quality.

Even without considering the Census data products alone, Census demographic data underlies virtually all extrapolation from other survey research. Everything from national opinion surveys based on tens of thousands of respondents, to small community surveys. A Census product with the most diverse participation pays off almost infinitely for America. It benefits everyone from national newspapers to rural counties.

If the smallest communities lose what little trust remains in the privacy of the Census, they have the most to lose in all of these ways.

That's my thought when I see the Census downplayed -- a massive amount of social sciences research revolves around the ACS. And it gets worse! Census data doesn't just control reapportionment (and/or gerrymandering), it directs how federal dollars trickle down to huge programs like Medicare and Medicaid that are then administered by states. Eroding more detailed household data like income throws programs designed to help people more out of whack, likely harming civic engagement even more.

I did similar and you summarized the feelings well. It's really sad and hard to rebuild that trust

And disheartening that people continue to gravitate to a political party that proudly announces desires to abuse this data.

>And disheartening that people continue to gravitate to a political party that proudly announces desires to abuse this data.

The same party that promotes distrust in the government (that is justified by the abuse the same party does when in power).

Amazing, innit.

The premise of the Republican party for half a century now has been: "The government can't do anything right, and if you elect us we'll prove it!"

And it's something of a coin flip whether people prefer that philosophy to the other mob. Trump has made it to a seconds term and is talking about a third because of the stunning policy failures of the US government over the last 50 years.

Were you alive in 2024?

Trump won by <1% against an incumbent in a time that incumbents lost by >10%.

It's absolutely not that people like Trump, it's just that democrats are inept. Literally all democrats had to do was run somebody that didn't have a record of losing primaries.

They're not legislatively inept, it's simply that viscerally, the electorate knows both mobs are guilty of the same representational transgressions. The GOP was always the party of big biz, while the dems were fronting as the hoi poloi's party, and everyone kinda figured that out as Trump played that irony and the anger behind it, masterfully.

How do you get out from behind that, is what renders them inept.

I think the big difference between the Republicans and Democrats is that the R-electorate votes for R-candidates because they want what the R-candidates are promising, while the D-electorare votes for D-candidates because they don't want what the R-candidates candidates are promising.

It's one of the reasons why "both sides" arguments are so frustrating. You can find R-voters who will defend Trump all day, in equal numbers to D-voters who will criticize Biden/Harris. You can see it in the number of R-voters you encounter online who think it's a "pwn" to bring up Clinton going to Epstein's Island, while D-voters respond, "yeah, and? Lock him up, too." We don't want these people who lie to us and glad hand for corporations, but it's marginally better than the alternative.

The mob has been convinced of these things. If nothing else, Trump is a master of convincing gullible, desperate people that when he lights the town on fire, only the people they don't like will get burned.

The Democrats did fail, but it's not a both sides situation. They failed to vigorously engage in a simple and honest way with the fact that their opponent is a conman and a crook.

... or spend four years dancing around the idea of imprisoning a man who did quite a few things that should have earned him a prison sentence.

New York state's judiciary is spineless.

He's arguably in worse shape than FDR in his last term. I've come around to seeing such talk as yet another clever and effective bum rush to stave off hisgetting written off as the lame duck he actually is.

Think what you want about him, he is if nothing else, a manipulative genius, so it tracks.

Trump came to power because too many people have forgotten what kind of man it takes to tear it all down. No more, no less. It's like a clock.

One generation bleeds and dies on a battlefield somewhere so that eventually a few generations later their ancestors can make the same conditions arise again.

The worse things get, the better they do. It's an insidious, vicious cycle.

No, this isn't a natural law of the universe. Sometimes thing get worse and then stay bad for a long, long time. We happen to exist in a relatively stable, prosperous period. We have used that prosperity to build a system that is more complex and brittle than any time in the history of the species. It won't be pretty when we reach the inevitable crisis.

The people in charge have never seen suffering and don't understand the essential role they have in preventing it. Instead they're disassembling the plane for parts while we hurtle toward the ground.

Iran, Haiti, Russia, Syria, Lebanon, Argentina have been at the "worse and worse" stages for decades and there is no "better" in sight.

> Iran, Haiti, Russia, Syria, Lebanon, Argentina have been at the "worse and worse" stages for decades and there is no "better" in sight.

Unless I’m completely misunderstanding things, it’s "better for the party". Our new Nazi party in Germany (AfD) even said something like that openly.

>Russia ... have been at the "worse and worse" stages for decades and there is no "better" in sight

What do you mean? In the last 25 years life expectancy in Russia has risen by almost 10 years

[0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.MA.IN?locat...

The numbers since 2022 are to be taken with a bucket of salt.

And it's undeniable that the whole country is falling backwards - the economy is in tatters with high inflation, high interest rates , severe economic and kinetic damage to the main revenue generating activities (export of oil, gas, raw materials, military equipment), a poorly hidden ballooning debt crisis. And worst of all, a leader who cannot admit defeat so can't get the country out of the quagmire. So things will get a whole lot worse before there's any chance of them getting better.

Since your other comment got rightfully flagged, I'll respond to you here.

The numbers from 2024 are reflective of the complete disappearance of russia from global markets. For instance, there have been no military procurement deals after 2023, only deliveries of previously ordered stuff.

The poorly hidden debt crisis is within the regions paying the death and recruitment bonuses, and the military contractors forced to sell at a loss and being propped up by state backed loans (one went bankrupt recently). Neither of those show up on official state debt numbers, but are unquestionably a problem for the state budget to fix. The one where 50% is being wasted to achieve nothing in Ukraine. At the best of times there are a few kilometres here and there, but even that is over now.

Ukrainians still unequivocally support keeping the war until russia agrees to leave them the fuck alone, and they get security guarantees (if you think you have polls saying otherwise, look again in the questions and answers, a tiny majority are ready to surrender Eastern Ukraine to end the war now, but practically nobody is willing to do so without guarantees). Those are achievable objectives. On the other side the leadership cannot admit defeat or they'll get toppled, and has no hope of achieving anything they could spin as a victory. So they keep wasting human lives to prolong the inevitable defeat.

Why is this account still not banned

Because it's futile. This person was banned before, this is their new account.

This is why I don't trust libertarians in office. They're incentivised to do a bad job.

Your comment brought the song lyrics from Murder - Sepultura:

  ...
  Same hand that builds, destroys
  Same hand that relieves, betrays
  Same hand that seeds, burns
  Same peace that exists, here lies
  ...
  Same religion that saves, damns you!

I got no comment on the essence of your comment, but (in your implied meaning), the very last of the song was matching what you wrote.

> The same party that promotes distrust in the government (that is justified by the abuse the same party does when in power).

Perhaps because they know how corrupt they, themselves, are, they assume everyone else is the same way:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusation_in_a_mirror

Perhaps the possibility that others are more altruistic does not enter the realm of possibility in their minds.

You're playing party politics. That's the risk you take: that the party has goals beyond your (dareisay naive) utopian ideals for civic engagement.

Parties are not universally evil, when I malign them in this way it is in full acknowlegment that organization is the nearly singular path to "effect on target" as regards society-scale politics. What I mean is the party per se becomes a superorganism that has always as its first priority self-preservation (a la homeostasis) and it is very worth remembering this when subsuming oneself into their structure.

> The comments that this rather expensive endeavour should just be about getting a head count are also amusing to me

Countries conduct censuses so they can understand, in great detail, what is going on with the people who make up the country.

With this accurate information, improvement plans can be made, and life can be improved for everyone.

The comments about just making it a head count give a very interesting window into the mentality of many these days. They don’t want to - it can’t fathom how to - make life better.

It’s sad, really

Or worse, they actively don't want to make life better for the "wrong" kind of people.

Eh, that’s the ‘if people do the right thing’ approach.

Many countries use census data to target (or even round up and murder) specific groups of people by religion, ethnicity, etc.

"Many countries"? Do you have any evidence for this statement?

I think that actually the US is an outlier.

Here is a case study from Greece in the ‘20’s, but all you need to do is google ‘ethnic cleansing’ and dig in, and you’ll see government data sources (including census data) all played a part.

[https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11208589]

“The census was conducted in a period of successive wars and rapid territorial expansion. We focus on the handling of the census data for Macedonia, a newly annexed territory that would soon become the site of the first instance of large-scale ethnic cleansing in modern Europe.”

In the original comment, you used the present tense. I think that's what was being questioned.

As I said, look around. China has been (and still is) doing it today with Uighurs. It’s not a new behavior.

Of course. But the specific claim you made was about many countries currently using census data to "round up and murder" some "specific groups of people by religion, ethnicity, etc."

I'm not arguing that you don't a valid point - broadly speaking. You do.

But you made a very specific claim, and that was what was being questioned. That's all.

Reading is fundamental. I made no such claim. I said many were using it to target people (which they are), and some are even using it to murder people using that data. Which they are.

Or do you think that is actually not happening right now?

>Many countries use census data to target (or even round up and murder) specific groups of people by religion, ethnicity, etc.

You were asked to back up this claim but haven't cited an example of any country currently "using census data" to "round up and murder" people.

Is China currently using census data to do horrible things? Are other countries? Maybe. I have no idea. I wouldn't be all that surprised TBH. You may be correct for all I know.

But that's not the point... The point is that you made a very specific claim and you still haven't provided any specific examples or evidence.

Lol, yet there is the evidence right in the thread. Talk about obtuse. You even admit you aren’t even looking into them.

What’s the point?

really? bosnia 1990s, turkey early 1900s, pogroms all over europe in the 19th century, holodomor, china with tibet and uighurs, germany tabulating data on the jews with the help of ibm...

When Germany invaded the Netherlands they found it extremely convenient that the Netherlands had a nice centralised paper filing system telling them exactly where all the Jews lived. The Holocaust proceeded more efficiently in the Netherlands than it had in Germany.

Maybe an example that isn’t almost 100 years old ?

That papertrail mattered less than how you make it sound.

France also sent people to the Germans during the occupation, and there was very little info needed. The gov wasn't caring much about due process or lengthy and accurate investigations anyway.

These arguments are bizarre.

Is it easier and more convenient to round up people when you have a literal list of people, along with the attributes that someone might want to round them up based on? Of course.

Is it still possible to do it without said list? Yes, of course. It is just harder.

And more likely some or many will be missed, if those attributes aren’t super obvious and impossible to change.

So why make it easier?

It is indeed a bizarre discussion: nazis round up people with or without these lists, anyone could point the finger at a neighbor and they'd be gone tomorrow.

The question becomes if it mattered whether the people sent in were actually Jewish or depraved or whatever motive was invoked. To me it doesn't matter, it is was horrible either way.

The bizarre part is that someone like you seems to think making a nice convenient list isn’t helping them in a material way.

I can't think of any such event where the issue came down to having a list or not.

We can see a similar thing happening with ICE raids: do they have clean and tidy lists? No, they're supposed to know what they're doing, but in practice they're just going after anything they want, anyone that crosses their path, and they don't stop at any specific criteria. We had testimony of arrest quotas, and random people shoved in to clear the numbers.

There will always be a convenient target when the point is cruelty.

[edit: rephrased last part]

Do you really think handing the loaded gun to the chimpanzee is ethically ok, and the same as if you didn’t?

The reason ICE is flailing around is because the information we are talking about doesn’t exist. They’re changing data gathering to collect it.

That is literally the point.

To my eyes the chimpanze's "loaded gun" is the actual guns and the impunity to use them, and they're pulling the trigger because they can. Having accurate lists would be more of a painted targets instead of randomly shooting in the pack. Basically the kind of people shor would be different, but someone would still be shot.

I'd argue that raiding the data center is theatrical more than anything, and they're not flailing by lack of data, hundreds of arrest have been made at each major raids.

I'd look at this piece with both aspects: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/23/maine-immigr...

On the surface there is this talk about immigration status..We try to draw a somewhat reasonable narrative that makes sense, and I get the sentiment.

The witness comments consistently tell another story though:

> “The book and the movie do not line up,” Joyce told reporters on Thursday. “We’re being told one story, which is totally different than what’s occurring.”

> “It is clear the overall operation is anything but targeted,” said Sue Roche, ILAP’s executive director. “People are being racially profiled on the streets and in their cars. As is their playbook, ICE is doing everything they can to inflict maximum cruelty and chaos.”

Previously, the data didn’t exist. Which is (a large part) of why they are running around in total chaos.

They want to ‘fix’ this, by now gathering the fine grained data, and storing it.

See the problem?

Do you want them to be more effective with their terror tactics?

My main point is that they are already fully effective.

What you call "running around in total chaos" is exactly what the organization was built for, its actions follow its structure and the only improvement they'd benefit for is more people more guns and less scrutiny.

If someone says the holocaust happened, do you demand evidence of the claim? Because that’s exactly what you’ve done here

Can you give an example of an extermination program which was thwarted by a lack of accurate census data?

"The Nazis used a data source to implement an extermination program" is not a statement which proves that your problem was the existence of a data source.

The claim was not that the census is instrumental to e.g. ethnic cleansing, simply that the (micro?)data can be used that way.

And it of course helps, if accurate, as it tells you exactly where to go, how many there are, etc.

It’s basically cheating.

Ah yes, the old “bad guys did it 50+ years ago, therefore we shouldn’t collect data that will improve our country”

It’s no shock the standard of living continues to fall in what was once ostensibly the greatest country.

‘Gov’t consistently threatens to do x which is bad, does x which is bad. collecting data which makes it easier to do x is… good?’

Do you even listen to yourself? How would collecting that data in this environment actually improve the country, instead of clearly being used to do bad things - which will make the situation worse?

Notably, this is the gun registry problem, and exactly why gun registries are also bad.

Sigh.

There is only one OECD country where this conversation has any merit.

Your gun registry example is great proof.

Hardly. And talk about moving the goal posts.

Everything I said can just as easily be said about Brazil.

Indeed, the very word "statistics" originates as an understanding or description of the state [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics#History

The real decline started after Edward Snowden and all the information that came out about the NSA. It really sparked distrust in the government. Trying to get people to respond to surveys was already hard, why would those general people believe the Census Bureau is actually keeping their data safe? Doesn’t matter when it comes to laws and the constitution, if you work for an Agency. You are the government. Response rates keep going down, now we have attacks from the President on statistics about the economy. I’m a little cynical and I just assume they will continue to shrink the statistical agencies and make the statistics more useless (which is what this recent policy change does), and they will shift to the private industry. Even though the private industry cannot do the work in the Field that the government does.

> The real decline started after Edward Snowden and all the information that came out about the NSA. It really sparked distrust in the government.

Do you have evidence of this? Because I'd bet 90% Americans have no idea who Edward Snowden even is.

I’ll take the under on that bet any day. Maybe around 75% is where I would feel more confident. 25% of a country is more than enough to meaningfully shift perception.

I buy the argument that a functioning democracy requires the populace to believe that the government is honest, competent, and working in their interests. Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the Vietnam war (respectively) undermined those notions. As of ~2016, half of the US voting population had come of age after those events.

I respect that you recognize that the sample you were given for investigation may not be representative of your community in all respects. Does the Census Bureau publish statistics on the people they have to send interviewers for? Just asking, maybe I'll have to go check their site.

Other comments here about Germany and whatnot falls flat, and short. This is America, and part of it is being ok with your neighbors (unless they're truly insane and release plagues of rabbits or burn themselves out of their homes, but I digress), try to find some common ground even if it's awkward and you have to look the other way about some slights and trespasses.

I don't know how much trouble they went to to "fit" you to the cohort they tasked you with, or how much of a natural fit there was. Did you grow up / do you live in the area? There's an element of "liking" (Cialdini) each other which colors participants' perception of tasks. OTOH nothing like talking to perfect strangers to flex that muscle or find out you really don't have it.