Census

There is the same thing in my country.
It is useless to answer anyway, so throw it away immediately.

Here, it's more like voting. It's a duty. That doesn't mean everyone does it, though. (I do!)

We are having a census next year and you cannot get out of answering the questions....

It's a duty to reply, but the more right-wing this country gets, the fewer people do it. There used to be door-to-door census people hired by the government and you had a right to refuse, but almost no one refused. It helps determine things like government programs in the states and for different things like school and highway funding. In the old days, like '50s-''60s, they asked things like how many toilets are in your house, do you have a telephone, etc.!

I know there were widespread protests in Germany against the census some 20 years ago, but now everything has gone quiet here. The problem is, they already have most of the data...

I can understand why many people in the States don't reply, I would also try to avoid it if I were in your shoes.

When the news about the orange one trying to buy up that German biotech firm developing a vaccine came up, nobody here was surprised... I know, he denies it now, but why then did the firm quickly replace their American CEO with the German founder? I suspect that some insider leaked the news thus heading off the takeover.