It might help to think of government as something you buy.

Over the course of 5 years I’ll end up paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for my government services during that time.

Spending a few minutes every 5 years to ensure they know what my needs look like is a pretty small investment to ensure my “purchase” is working well.

I’m sure filling out this census once every 5 years takes less time than you’ve spent on your last major electronics purchase (which I would guess was a fraction of the cost, unless you’re buying a truckload of gold-plated uni-directional ethernet electron guide cables).

Also: nowhere do I spot the specific inane question that you posited. Care to reference a specific page?

In case you've been living in Layton UT for the last 3 months you've realized by now every commercial on TV and every website has finished or is about to finish changing its strategy to focus on "architecture". Just a nugget of career advancing vocabulary you should tack onto your "solution", "commerce", and "appliance" words of 1999, 2000, and 2001 respectively.

Whew. Thank gods. For the last 4 years, I've been working on a commerce appliance solution architecture.

(hey, it's Friday, give me a bre -- *thwack* )