Comment by harrall
1 day ago
Laws aren’t made that way and laws made that way usually aren’t good. Like a farmer writing rules for people in the city or vice versa purely based on what they think the other side wants.
It’s much better if the farmers directly tell you what they want and the city folk tell you what they want and together they figure it out.
Census details is great for understanding long term trends. It’s not to be used directly for decision making, even if the intention is good, and the intentions have also been very bad.
> It’s not to be used directly for decision making
It was literally introduced for the decision making I mentioned. The US Census was introduced for the reasons of creating better representation for the actual, specific populations in the US.
In 1810, the Census started collecting information on manufacturing and manufactured products, and later agriculture. In 1850, it collected social data, including religious information. It has expanded many times over the years, in order to collect the data needed to more accurately serve the needs of the people. It started counting Native Americans in 1860, stopped counting Slaves in 1870, and started counting Native Americans living on Reservations in 1890. Over the years additional entries have been added as different peoples have immigrated, changes to the country (like the Great Depression), and in 2020 for the first time, questions asking about same-sex couples/spouses/partners.
These questions may seem invasive, but they actually help protect vulnerable people, by showing the number of people who are impacted by the economy, by policy, and more.
> Laws aren’t made that way
That's basically exactly how they get made. You don't know anything about the agriculture checkoff in the US, do you?
Every single pound of pork sold or produced in the US sent a tiny amount of it's sale price to the "Pork. The Other White Meat" campaign: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork._The_Other_White_Meat
> laws made that way usually aren’t good.
I don't think anyone said they were good laws.
what a bizarre comment, of course census data is used for decisionmaking and policy.