Census taking

[Lilitu]

Pix, what happens is, in NZ theres a thing called the decile system, which categorises schools according to parental wealth. With zoning in place, this is calculated by the census economic questions.

When LibertariaNZ encourages mass civil disobedience by not filling in forms or incorrectly filling census forms, the decile system fails and because govt, funding is based on the decile system, schools are harmed.

While the fine is large, and I agree that it probably could be loosened, I don't believe what these people are doing is right. Fundamentally they shouldn't be disobeying the govt, and warping the govt's ability to govern us because they think they deserve 'privacy'. If they want transparency in govt. they can't deny the govt information on its people.

Lol sorry about all the bitching but if you'd seen these people on TV, you'd understand why I'm ranting. They are so flippant and annoying.

[Lilitu]

When people are complaining that the question asking whether you've ever been a smoker is intrusive, they need to get over their selfish 'right to privacy' and consider that maybe the ministry of health needs information on how many smokers there are. Maybe the government can't cater to your every need, and maybe there are other people in your country that are as or more important than you.

[Pix]

Pix, what happens is, in NZ theres a thing called the decile system, which categorises schools according to parental wealth. With zoning in place, this is calculated by the census economic questions.

When LibertariaNZ encourages mass civil disobedience by not filling in forms or incorrectly filling census forms, the decile system fails and because govt, funding is based on the decile system, schools are harmed.

I think NZ schools must be funded very differently from how American schools are funded. Nevertheless, I looked up more and it appears that even school officials have been known to engage in deceitful practices over it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-Economic_Decile

The Census is less important here as it's only once every 10 years and the facts change so fast as it can only be used as a "guestimate" at most, many even moving to other states on a regular basis (and the transient/homeless are also encouraged to move frequently, which can alter welfare rolls). People tend to lose and gain jobs pretty fast as well which also changes things, and then we've got the most citizens of any nation on Earth imprisoned at any time which means police actions also change the figures significantly pretty fast.

School funding here is rather byzantine at both state & federal levels but are generally based on political fiat (for example, robbing low population schools to the most popular regions which means the most votes for politicians supporting their schools) and social control (for example, "abstinence-only" sex ed gets extra federal funding, though the President has a tendency to affect that) as well as other wild experiments (like the "No Child Left Behind Act"). Property taxes pay for quite a bit (that is, people automatically pay into their local school, even if they don't have kids). It's so insane in California that it would probably take a page just to sum up the 2 bills (of which only one could be allowed to pass) offered to California voters in the last election about school funding and why they were seen as necessary, but suffice to say there's a lot of dysfunction and corruption present at about every level (which is perhaps why I find it very believable that people lie to favor themselves and their schools on the Decile system there despite that some claim that would be difficult to do and thus rare). It sounds pretty different from where you're at.

[historical]

without the census records I wouldn't have been able to trace my unknown family history back to the 1841 census