The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
NOTE: James Taranto is on vacation. The excerpt below is from the April 2, 2010 BOTW archives.
Outsource the Census!
“India began a yearlong census of its billion-plus population Thursday [April 1st] in which it plans to photograph and fingerprint every citizen over the age of 15 to create a national database and then issue its first national identity cards,” the Associated Press reports from New Delhi:
“It is for the first time in human history that an attempt is being made to identify, count, enumerate and record and eventually issue an identity card to 1.2 billion people,” Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said.
The total cost will reach $1.2 billion, the government said.
The fingerprinting, photographing and issuance of ID cards would go against the American grain, but maybe we have something to learn from the Indians about how to conduct government operations efficiently.
According to our calculations, $1.2 billion to count 1.2 billion people amounts to approximately $1 a person. By comparison, according to a March 2009 report in Computerworld, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates the cost of its current enumeration at $14 billion. The Census Bureau’s Web site currently estimates the U.S. population at just under 309 million–so counting Americans costs roughly $45 a head.
The U.S. Constitution mandates that legislators authorize a census every 10 years, “in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.” There’s no provision that says Americans have to be counted by Americans. It’s too late for this year, but Congress could save the taxpayers a nice chunk of change by hiring a call center in Bangalore to conduct the 2020 census.
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