Political meddling at the Census Bureau damages the US statistical system

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• Hacker News
• Corruption in the US Census Bureau? No fuckin' way!
  by davesque
• Census bureau works pretty hard to get as accurate a count as possible, and hires mathematicians specifically to work on privacy. This is about the administration trying to put its finger on the pans
  by gumby
• Imagine how much more sense things would make if "Race [dropdown]" and "Hispanic? [Y/N]" weren't separate fields. Or if the available options made sense, or even allowed multiselect instead of having to pick only one. Or allowed for "all my ancestors that I know names of lived in the states, so stop trying to associate me with other places".

  .

  And, um, I can kind of understand thinking it's wrong to deliberately falsify results even in a controlled manner.

  by unwise-exe
• Hispanic isn't related to race.
  by engineer_22
• Absolutely insane how the USA is speed running into Russia.

  I was discussing BBQ with some friends the other day and living in Asia there are certain cuts that you basically have to get imported if you want to do it right. Basically every single person in that group, including Americans have decided they wouldn't trust or buy meat produce from the USA anymore as they don't trust it anymore...

  by bamboozled
• > running into Russia.

  except they also seem to speed running crashing the world economy, making it feels more like "speed running Russian government structures while speed running a soviet union future"...

  which isn't really "that" surprising, if you consider that, while most people will suffer from a sever world economy crash, the ~top 1% or so will long term profit. Mainly because even iff they lose a huge lot they still have enough left to buy up theoretically well working businesses crashed by the large scale economy crash. Sure that would be very evil, but you only need a few of the richest pushing for it while the rest "just" doesn't push against it for this to happen. Or a few of the richest having even way more money then the rest. And given that both (huge differences in wealth of the wealthiest & lack of morals) seem the case it's hard to believe that the current direction is fully accidental.

  Which brings use back to the topic of how any proper free market must not allow any to large concentration of money as it will break the market sooner or later. Or how democracies must not allow too much concentration of political power (or it break sooner or later very reliably historically speaking). Or how the one thing a society preaching tolerance can't tolerate is strong cases of intolerance. All the same kind of "naively it looks like a contradiction" cases where if you look into them it kinda start looking obvious that tolerating that is a bad idea.

  Problem is while preventing aggregation of power, wealth, etc. is very viable if properly perused by politics, it's to late for prevention.

  But also there isn't really a good fix once a country (or more like most of the world) failed to prevent it.

  Trying to forcefully size assets is a severely unpleasant idea. More importantly but it's a thing things which tend to end very very badly.

  And the ethical issues with that are pretty obvious, too.

  Through also this isn't about millionaires, or the top 10%,1%,0.1%, but about wealth "beyond reason". Not sure where that starts but probably lowest in the the 50-100 millions and definitely in the billions (or trillions). I.e. the point where your wealth gives you trivially more political influence then the votes of the majority of people... I mean in the end about protecting democracy and a (proper) free market. It isn't about communism, no matter how much certain propaganda channels will claim that supposedly wanting a working democracy and free market is communism (or socialism). Through iff, and only if, you put the vague limit of when something start being "unreasonable rich" at a much lower point, e.g. inflation corrected 2 million, then _that_ is making it about communism like stuff. So it's a slippery slope. (Sadly too many people seem to have lost the ability (or will?) to have well differentiated discussions or opinions, always falling into extremes, so discussing such things seems often pointless)

  by dathinab
• I believe that most people are in favor of fixing the problems caused by the improper allocation of additional congressional representation to areas with larger populations of non-citizens. This piece complains about the upcoming changes without going into any depth on the problems these proposed changes will resolve.
  by anonymousiam
• You mean the pigheaded interpretation of the constitution?

  Ignorance supports itself i guess.

  by cyanydeez
• That change really requires a constitutional amendment, since the relevant article talks about counting persons, not citizens.
  by amanaplanacanal
• If people are in favor of changing the law they can vote for folks to change it. Until then, the government needs to follow the law - especially the highest in the land.
  by conception
• Do you believe that? Do you also believe most people are in favor of ending prison gerrymandering?

  Maybe they are. But that doesn't mean it will get ended.

  If "improper allocation" problems are selectively addressed, expect division on partisan lines.

  by vintermann
• I think the burden of proof's on you to show that the "changes" mentioned by TFA will do the "resolution" you want. For now -- as a working statistician who uses Census products -- we have a lot of collateral damage that impacts our ability to reliably represent the status of the United States. As well as a sh*t publication with no one's name on it, and the expectation that the Census will publish fewer and slower going forwards.
  by nxobject
• the US statistical system is currently down, I'm estimating that we won't get an accurate picture of what systems have been wiped out until we can get some forensic analysts in there in 2029 or so once we solve a little HR issue we have in the executive branch.
  by cowboylowrez
• This shit aint never getting fixed.
  by voidfunc
• Would be nice to be in a stable country.
  by Isamu
• 2029? By then the pendulum would swing back to it being considered "deep state intervention" and a "waste of taxpayer funds" especially since "the national debt is higher than ever".
  by rchaud
• >"We need to check more carefully who is credited and who is accountable for statistical agency releases. We need to watch carefully, when the 2025 American Community Survey eventually comes out, whether the ban on noise infusion leads to less data being published and which tables are suppressed. We also need to question seemingly technical methodological changes and scrutinize them for political motivation more closely."

  I didn't realize they were delaying the 2025 ACS again and it seems things are just going to get worse if things don't fit the narrative of the administration.

  by usernomdeguerre
• I guess I'm going to have to be an even bigger stickler to my colleagues for computing those margins of error.
  by nxobject