Admittedly much has improved since the first census in 1790 when 650 federal marshals went house-to-house unannounced, writing down the name of the head of the household and counting the other residents. The census cost $45,000, took 18 months and counted 3.9 million people. (more on census chronology)
Yes the letter was intended to get us excited to receive our “fair share”, but could we have done without the pre-mailer? Moot point acknowledged but multiply an unnecessary action by every citizen in the country and you have some real cash.
The 2000 census told us there were 105,480,101 households in the United States. Each household received one letter with postage of $0.44. This comes to:
$46,411,244
Probable postage discounts and rounding errors aside, $46 million dollars was spent to send a letter that didn’t say anything! To put this into perspective, in 2010 we have budgeted $50 million to The United States Institute of Peace (USIP) whose mission it is to provide the analysis, training and tools that help to prevent, manage and end violent international conflicts, promote stability and professionalize the field of peacebuilding. That’s a pretty darn serious mission. If we couldn’t return the money, could we have at least doubled their budget instead?
I do suppose it was worth while if it props the post office up for a few more years and keeps Saturday delivery around?
This reminds me of a particular Futurama episode…
| Futurama | Weeknights, 9p/8c | |||
| Bureaucrat’s Joy | ||||
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
We just got the same letter – and I saw one in the mail (exact same wording) before. If you add the cost of the paper, envolopes, postage and humans that wrote, printed, addressed and stuffed these – that puts the "pre-notification" costs at well over $100 Million!! Sheesh – I know of a school or two that could use that…
Amelia
Good point, there sure is a lot more effort and energy involved in this process than mere postage… Hold that thought though, I just found an interesting quote to ponder:
The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty. – Eugene McCarthy
I agree! What a waste of money. I guess the USPS needed the business.
I believe they are doing this to increase the response rate, with the hope being that the increase in responses will offset the extra cost. If people are notified that the information is coming, they will be more likely to respond to the census form when it arrives. And the more people who respond via mail, the fewer people who need to be surveyed door to door, which I'm guessing would carry a much larger price tag than an extra letter.
to add insult to injury, you may receive a postcard type communication from the Census Bureau AFTER you get your form..a follow-up that costs quite a few dollars…sent out to remind you to send back your form. Despite the cash the government is spending this year to get people to send back forms so that they don't have to send field workers out, thus spending more $ – here in the northern part of Michigan the census form return rate is lagging behind the 50% or more response. 2 letters and all…with a whopping response rate of 38%. Hmmm, seems like this might be a case of too many variables in the soup. Is it the increased paperwork that the US Gov sent out that is causing people to send back their forms? Is the increased paperwork a waste of cash as it seems to be in Northern Michigan? OR is the real culprit of 2010 Census an overall anti-government cooperation type thing? Geez.. I wouldn't want to be writing that software.