South By North Strategies, Ltd.

Catherine Rampell of The New York Times discusses the ludicrous debate over the future of the American Community Survey and the Economic Census, two of the US Census Bureau’s most important and useful products. Bottom line: never let facts get in the way of preconceived notions.

“Knowing what’s happening in our economy is so desperately important to keeping our economy functioning smoothly,” said Maurine Haver, the chief executive and founder of Haver Analytics, a data analysis company. “The reason the Great Recession did not become another Great Depression is because of the more current economic data we have today that we didn’t have in the 1930s.”
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She added that having good data about the state of the economy was one of America’s primary competitive advantages. “The Chinese are probably watching all this with glee,” she said, noting that the Chinese government has also opted not to publish economic data on occasion, generally when the news wasn’t good.
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Other private companies and industry groups — including the United States Chamber of Commerce, the National Retail Federation and the National Association of Home Builders— are up in arms.
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Target recently released a video explaining how it used these census data to determine where to locate new stores. Economic development organizations and other business groups say they use the numbers to figure out where potential workers are.