Flawed Federal Land Use Report
Encourages Unnecessary Spending
by Wendell Cox and Ronald D. Utt
The recent discovery of serious flaws in a U.S. Department of
Agriculture land use survey, which compiled data by sampling national
land use trends, illustrates why extreme care must be exercised by
the federal government in processing, compiling, and reporting the
data it derives from the decennial census now underway. Because the
2000 census utilizes both enumeration and sampling techniques, it is
essential that both the process and the results obtained are screened
to ensure that the type of errors plaguing the USDA's National
Resources Inventory are not replicated in the 2000 census. As the
immediate response to the NRI's release shows, the skewed results
of error-plagued surveys can induce government to react with costly
programs and regulations that address problems which may not, in
fact, exist.
Available at Heritage Foundation website:
http://www.heritage.org/library/backgrounder/bg1368.html
(c) 2000 www.demographia.com --- Wendell Cox Consultancy --- Permission granted to use with attribution.
Demographia is "pro-choice" with respect to urban development.
People should have the freedom to live and work
where and how they like.
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