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Confidentiality Expires For 1940 Census Records
Hugh Pickens writes writes "In spring of 1940, the Census Bureau sent out more than 120,000 fact-gatherers, known as 'enumerators,' to survey the nation's 33 million homes and 7 million farms. Now as the 72 years of confidentiality expires, the National Archives website buckled under the load as the 1940 census records were released and 1.9 million users hit the archives servers in the first four hours the data went public and at one point, the Archives said, its computers were receiving 100,000 requests per second. Data miners will have the opportunity to pick and chip through more than 3.8 million digital images of census schedules, maps and other sociological minutiae. What will we learn from this mother lode? The pivotal year 1940 'marked the beginnings of a shift from a depressed peacetime to a prosperous wartime,' says David E. Kyvig, author of Daily Life in the United States, 1920-1939. The vast data dump, Kyvig says, will allow historians 'to look closely at particular communities and how people within them were doing in terms of employment, income and material comforts.' The 1940 census was the first Census that looked deeper into the details of much of American life. 'As we see how the country evolved over the subsequent 20 years, where we have aggregate census data ... we ought to be able to see more clearly how government spending bettered everyday life, confirmed Keynesian economic theory and revealed that, before the war, the New Deal did too little, rather than too much, to stimulate the U.S. economy.""
Get all 18TB of it while it's hot.
Just because the government was able to implement a Keynesian solution to that economic problem, does not mean that it holds the solution to every economic problem, for instance one that involves post - peak natural resource production.
Because it's somewhat sensitive information.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Someone gonna torrent that?
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
This is called "The Broken Window Fallacy", but is essentially a cornerstone of alot of economic policy, because rebuilding things (that were destroyed) creates jobs. In fact I hear alot about 'creating jobs', for example recent talks in my state for a casino, even though its a negative sum game. Even part of our throw away culture is defined by the measurement of GDP for economic success, since the sale of a single part contributes less than the sale of a whole new device. Now its no surprise that warfare, exploitation of and shipping resources around the world, may have not been the most efficient use of our time. But I have a belief that had the greedy capitalist pigs, not gone to war to protect their 'private property' from the 'communist looters', we would have ended up with a more 'free market' than we have now. Furthermore the more homogeneous development and lower diminished returns on both natural and human capital, would have increased aggregate human development and economic productivity, and probably have reduced the population and factored resource inefficiencies.
America has a god given right to demand a bigger piece of the pie, even if that means destroying some of it in the process, because were exceptional and gods chosen people. Which is essentially our 19th and early 20th century intellectual rhetoric, we found what was essentially virgin land that we exploited, in order to create our version of order in the world.
Technically speaking all money is now a form of debt, and what governments tend to do anymore is issue debt in their currency, and then inflate the currency to keep the debt/gdp level low enough to prevent default.
Its mathematically impossible for everyone to pay off all debt in the system that we currently have now, the inflation is what makes the active pursuit of money (and therefore production) obligatory.
I have gathered that point, however there is more than one way to get rid of debt.
I think that is kind of tangential to what I was asking though. Keynes advocated "counter-cyclical" spending, correct? Inflate during recession and deflate during boom times (yes, people and businesses will default because of this policy). What we have instead is constant inflation.
Because that was the law under which the sensitive information was collected. The average US life expectancy in 1935 was 61.7 years, so 72 years would mean that the privacy issues would be moot for most of the folks enumerated in the Census -- they weren't expected to be around to complain 72 years later. The laws that established the Census go way back -- I don't know when the 72 years criterion was established. Life expectancy was even shorter the farther back you go.
Against stupidity, the Gods themselves contend in vain. --Friederich Schiller
LOL human death back then, as now, was a bathtub distribution, like electronics parts. So most people died as little kids or elderly. Back then pretty much all preemies died as a general rule, for example, unlike now. All the "average" means is the ratio of how many died as a baby vs died as an old man. I'd guess that means about two kids died young for every 8 or so that died elderly, which seems to fit in with actual genealogical data I have on my ancestors...
The "real story" (in quotes because even pages of and pages of this stuff is still merely a summary of the real sources) can be read at
http://www.census.gov/history/www/reference/genealogy/the_72_year_rule.html
The exact number 72 was selected because in 1952 they wanted to give away the 1880 census information. Essentially declassify it by transfer from the BC to the NA. I think you can see the math there, 1952 - 72 = 1880 The exact 72 year range has stuck since then.
The legal BS behind the general range of "more than 70 years" was selected, as you'll read at the link above, because the census officers had to / have to take an oath to never release the data. Assuming someone lied on their application and got hired anyway at 10 (unlikely), and assuming that even in extenuating circumstances there are no govt employees of any sort over the age of 82 (unlikely), that means waiting 72 years means the oath takers successfully did their duty and while it was in their power, blah blah blah, they never released the data. Essentially its your usual govt corruption. Technically according to the rule of the law the folks who gathered your 2010 census data will Never permit the release of the 2010 census data .... Never ... of course they'll be dead or retired eventually at which point it'll be released anyway in 2082, assuming the country doesn't self destruct first, at which time the oath takers will all be dead or retired.
Its legal bullshit because if you're convicted of a crime by a judge, just because a judge dies or retires doesn't mean you're a free man. Another example would be the priest who married me and my wife about a dozen years ago by the process of signing the marriage license recently died... that does not automagically make us single. Also from my military experience the death of a guy who classified a document doesn't automagically free that document.
If someone invents an immortality treatment, we'll have to come up with some new legal technicality bullshit. But for now 72 years works and is the tradition.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I'm not claiming that all regulation is good. The examples you cite (regulating price of electricity, the TSA) are clear examples of stupid, counterproductive regulation.
My position is that without Federal law to suppress a host of discriminatory practices, the bigots would still be in charge. Without Federal law to prevent dioxin in the ground water, companies would still be dumping toxic waste. The quality of life we take for granted did not magically emerge as we all became enlightened. It required the big stick of government regulation to stop the elite from abusing the rest of the public.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
No, he doesn't. He's said the right kind of war would help the economy, not that any war is a good thing. Krugman is consistently anti-war. He's also said an arms built-up to fight an alien invasion would be good for the economy and have great secondary effects (from research and whatnot.) He's also not seriously advocated that we arm up to fight an imaginary alien invasion.
But you can sit their in your smug, self-righteous libertarianism and keep pretending Krugman is a hack who hasn't consistently made very accurate predictions and the Nobel prize in economics is a fraud
The economics nobel prize is pretty strange. It is actually the "Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel".
Essentially its your usual govt corruption.
I like how you just equated people following the law with government corruption. No bias here! Good show.
The main claim is that government often creates more problems than it solves, then gets stuck in a loop of never ending quick fixes each generating more unintended consequences.
Anybody else find it interesting/sad that the time limit on copyrights is longer than the privacy time limit on the Census records? Just a clear indication that corporations are valued above people.
If the central bank prints up 20 trillion dollars and it doesn't help anything, Krugman and his ilk simply shrug and says "Eh, must not have been enough."
No, Krugman says it wasn't spent correctly and yes, the $700B of the stimulus was half what he prescribed. Instead of being injected at the bottom of the economy (working folk and main street businesses), it was piled on to the top, where it was used to keep paying out bonuses to the very people that caused this mess in the first place.
When the financial industry makes up 40% of the economy, purely by shuffling paper and gambling, that's actually acting as a drag on the economy and not helping things. The TBTF banks should have been broken up *and* liquidity should have been aimed at jobs creation. Instead, you have a gov't that's heavily influenced (run?) by bankers and financiers who can't see any further than the edges of Manhattan. No idea how we're going to get out of this one, unless they go and dig a moat around New Yawk and stop listening to all the yammerheads over there.
I drank what? -- Socrates