Column 8 · The Rub
We counted the arrivals. We forgot to divide.
There is a habit, and I find it rather sloppy, of waving a very large number and calling it a conclusion. America takes the most migrants. Australia is "full". Someone has drawn an arrow. The comments then do what comments do.
Absolute intake measures the size of an economy. Openness is a per-person question. Those are not the same chart, and they will not rank countries in the same order. The United States leads on the first measure and sits well down the list on the second. Australia looks different again once you stop treating a continent as a queue.
If an argument cannot survive a division sign, it was not an argument. It was a poster with a number on it.
Which, if we are being precise, is the rub.