“Nearly one in three Americans failed to return their census questionnaires by Friday’s official deadline,” reports the New York Times. Using the same methods of accounting for returned mail and such, that’s a 4% increase in non-compliance over the 2000 census.
A surge of conscious resistance to the state? Not as likely as simple apathy, but I still find this news encouraging. The “I don’t have time for your nonsense” shrug is in some ways at least as significant as the “I don’t recognize your authority” raised middle finger. That’s especially true given the vast environmental and experiential change in America over decade separating the two head counts.
The 2000 census may have been advertised and publicized, but not the way this one has been. In my neck of the woods — the St. Louis, Missouri metro area — it’s virtually impossible to travel more than a block without seeing a “Stand Up And Be Counted!” or “Send It In!” sign. It looks like the Census Bureau must have bought up half the online advertising industry’s banner inventory for the last month or so, too. I don’t watch a lot of TV, but it seems like every time I walk past one, there’s a census commercial running.
My household got a postcard in the mail to let us know the census form would be coming. Then we got a letter to let us know that we’d been sent the card. Then we got the actual census form. Then we got another card hectoring us to fill the thing in. Last week, we got another census form.
Our town government’s monthly newsletter has touted the census for the last four months, reminding us that Greendale might not get “its fair share” of tax loot if we don’t fill out the forms and mail them back.
Assuming that we’re not special, i.e. that pretty much every household with a mailing address in one of Uncle Sugar’s database got the same metric ton of mail and such, it seems unlikely that one third of the country just completely missed or forgot the fact that the census was happening.
A general laxity or lack of intimidating presence on the part of government itself certainly isn’t to blame.
Over the decade between the last census and this one, Americans have learned all about queueing up, removing their shoes, and submitting to everything from electronic wanding to cavity searches just to indulge in the “privilege” of traveling by air.
If we prefer to drive, we have to produce our “papers,” apparently in a connected chain running all the way back to the Domesday Book or the scrolls of Confucius, in order to renew our “licenses.”
Heck, as of this year, the President of the United States even claims the power to have any or all of us who happen to rub him the wrong way assassinated.
Despite this advertising blitz and general transition toward totalitarianism (or perhaps because of it), the public perception of government’s moral authority to demand, and practical ability to enforce, compliance with its census continues to decline.
I doubt that we’ll ever see hard numbers on “actively resistant response” — how many people sent the census form in, but declined to provide all the information demanded by Big Brother — but I strongly suspect that if non-returns and resistant returns are added together, they constitute a majority of households.
This may not be a sign of nascent revolutionary consciousness, but it’s at least a sign of residual cultural health. A plurality — perhaps a majority! — of Americans are either ignoring or resisting the state’s demands that it participate in what’s advertised as a key obligation of citizenship. That’s a good thing.
I don’t remember the source, but someone says the state is like Santa Claus. He goes away when you stop beliving in him/it. Ignoring the state will hopefully have the same effect.
It is an interesting statistic. One in three Americans. If we were to suppose that the government could ever count, which based on their apparent inability to balance their own cheque book seems a doubtful proposition, we could arbitrarily assign their number of expected Americans roughly 309 million as an acceptable hypothesis. Using that figure, we would find 103 million non-compliant.
But, some would say, it isn’t clear that the Americans under 18 are expected to respond to the census form. So, I suspect that the figure involves “households” with one census form per “housing unit.” This approach seems consistent with some of the text on this press release:
http://2010.census.gov/news/releases/operations/second-round-forms.html
By the way, that release says that 60 percent have so far complied by mail, meaning that 40% have not. This appears to be worse compliance from their view than in 2000. It also says that in 2000 your housing unit or the area where you now live may have been non-compliant since you got the second form. Those went out to 40 million households.
Of course, if we multiply households by average occupants, we’d get right back to the one in three estimate above.
Now this 103 million non-compliant seems familiar, to me. For example, in November 2008 there were about 131 million votes cast in the national election. Add in 75 million or so persons under 18 years of age and arguably 8 million disqualified due to mental incapacity, current imprisonment for felony conviction, or formerly convicted of a felony, say, and you get about 214 million, out of a then-population guesstimate by the feral gummint of around 308 million. Which puts about 94 million people in the category “not bothering.” Some high proportion of these 94 million are not registered to vote they are so convinced the system does nothing for them.
Similarly, I read a few months back that the 138 million who filed tax forms in April 2008 (including extensions) was remarkably high and almost certainly due to the anticipated “stimulus” cheques that were going out to individuals. Can’t get the scam money without participating in the scam. Compliance was down in April 2009, to about 130 million filing. Again, remarkably similar to the number voting, huh? (In fact, I would not be surprised if as many as a million votes were manufactured by the election outfits in various corrupt counties (but I repeat myself) around the country. The only reason I don’t discount the election total by a million is that I figure there were also about a million ballots, including many write-in ballots, that weren’t counted. So, more or less the same.) If we add in about 75 million youngsters, we are mistaken, because millions of persons age 10 to 18 have jobs on farms, in family businesses, or otherwise, and many of these poor choosers have filed income tax returns, especially those 16-18 who think they get an important “refund” if they file. Let’s guess 70 million? And add in about 3 million incarcerated, etc. This gets us about 203 million filing or not expected to file, and about 106 million not complying.
Obviously, these are all rough figures, they are based on government statements in many cases, and I don’t believe the government would tell the truth even if it didn’t “need” to lie in some particular. But the figures involved are all quite close as an astronomer would see them: 94 million is about 103 million is about 106 million.
It seems to me that these people, roughly 100 million of them, are the target market for a stateless society. If only someone were presenting the ideas of how to make a stateless society for themselves to those hundred million individuals…”what a wonderful world this would be.”
A friend on the inside tells me that during training, Enumerator Crew Leaders were told by the instructor that, depending on the area, anywhere from 30 to 70% *failed* to mail in the questionnaire. Sounds like your “one in three” figure is their floor.
Sennett