When Twenty-Five Million Meets the Calculator

My library card objects to calling 25 million people a headcount when the paperwork contains encounters, expulsions, and estimated gotaways. Those are different categories, and some may overlap. An encounter is not automatically a unique person, an expulsion is not a new arrival, and an estimate requires the modest qualification that it is, in fact, an estimate. The calculator remains unimpressed by the volume of the announcement.

This is how political number inflation works: collect every large-looking figure, place them in one bucket, and announce that the bucket is a population. The public gets a frightening total; the media ecosystem gets a louder segment; ordinary people get another argument built on accounting performed with a fog machine. The practical rule is simple: before accepting a giant number, ask what it counts, whether categories overlap, and whether anyone can produce a receipt. In this case, the number appears to have arrived wearing a costume and left without paying the bill.