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You are here: Home / Open Threads / McInsights from McMegan

McInsights from McMegan

by Tim F|  July 19, 20133:40 pm| 67 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

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I bet you will never guess who keeps falling upward, from unwashed blogs to The Atlantic to Tina Brown’s Hindenburg Newsweek to economics and business policy at Bloomberg. There is no such thing as a dumb question, but boy howdy are there a lot of dumb columnists.

Roy Edroso covers her inagural effort. Insofar as a McArdle piece ever counts as an argument, it more or less argues that you can live just fine on McDonald’s wages as long as you also collect welfare, stay with your parents, don’t eat and live somewhere where the heat is free (in Alabama you get humidity at no extra cost!).

Going two for two against me ever giving up drinking, McArdle has discovered unfairness in people who pay extra for speedy lanes at the amusement park.

Perhaps the reason they’re so obnoxious — and hers wasn’t the only family I saw pushing through the line while we waited to get to our entrance — is that more people are living a fast pass Life. Getting a special queue with special service isn’t a rare treat, something to indulge in on your first vacation in three years. It’s a permanent condition. Jump the security queue at the airport because you’re a frequent flyer. Walk straight into your rental car because you’re a Hertz#1 Club Gold member. Don’t like the kids your children are hanging around with? Push them into an elite program, or buy a house in a more exclusive school district. Join a gated community so the wrong people can’t even walk near you.

The economic elite used to just buy more of the things we all enjoyed. Now they have access to a different set of experiences entirely. No, that’s not quite true — of course the rich used to be able to afford better vacations and nicer cars. But increasingly they’re enjoying an exclusive version of the things we all do — right there in front of us, where we can resent them for it.

Increasingly. Because we all loathed Gatsby and Paris Hilton for their poor driving and video production values.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for a point, you will die.

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Reader Interactions

67Comments

  1. 1.

    The Moar You Know

    July 19, 2013 at 3:44 pm

    I prefer my hatred towards the working class to be infused with actual malice. She doesn’t have that. She’s merely the walking, breathing incarnation of Antoinette’s “let them eat cake!”

  2. 2.

    schrodinger's cat

    July 19, 2013 at 3:45 pm

    Why do economics bloggers for MSM know next to nothing about economics or math. I am looking at you MY and McMegan and Adam Davidson.

  3. 3.

    BGinCHI

    July 19, 2013 at 3:46 pm

    Wait. What??

    Isn’t this Megan’s class of people??

    I’m really confused. Does she suddenly think she’s working class or something?

  4. 4.

    Xecky Gilchrist

    July 19, 2013 at 3:48 pm

    Yeah, I was gonna say. Hard to imagine a life more fast-tracked than Ms. McArdle’s.

  5. 5.

    Marc

    July 19, 2013 at 3:49 pm

    Boys, boys, the point is that economic inequality is only a problem when McMegan finds herself on the wrong end of it. Living on the minimum wage? You’ll just have to economize! Using a fast-pass lane–WHY, THE NERVE!

  6. 6.

    Eric U.

    July 19, 2013 at 3:50 pm

    Why does McMegan hate people that God has blessed with money to throw away on fast passes? Is she one of those Occupy people or something?

    the price for those fast pass things is ridiculous, especially on top of the admission. But if I’m wasting my day at the park anyway, it’s fast passes for the entire family.

  7. 7.

    IowaOldLady

    July 19, 2013 at 3:50 pm

    Is she the pink salt lady? I don’t read these fools. I’m old and my veins would pop.

  8. 8.

    max

    July 19, 2013 at 3:51 pm

    Don’t hold your breath waiting for a point, you will die.

    ‘If you think I’M insufferable, you should get a load of this guys I am totally not like.’

    max
    [‘She’s not rich, she’s ‘moderately well off’. If only she had the brains to go into stealing banking.’]

  9. 9.

    batgirl

    July 19, 2013 at 3:51 pm

    @Marc:

    Boys, boys, the point is that economic inequality is only a problem when McMegan finds herself on the wrong end of it.

    Bingo!

  10. 10.

    Omnes Omnibus

    July 19, 2013 at 3:52 pm

    I know I am not the first to say this but hasn’t her whole life been lived via fast pass?

  11. 11.

    Aimai

    July 19, 2013 at 3:54 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: no. She probably can’t afford some of the perks her owners can. That’s why she’s just noticed.

  12. 12.

    PeakVT

    July 19, 2013 at 3:55 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat: They’re good clickbait generators who write well enough to sound like they understand economics, without actually informing the public about economics.

    Anyway, it’s not entirely true. Felix Salmon and that Krugie guy both write for MSM outlets, and they’re pretty good. And the cast at the NYT Economix blog is good, Mulligan and perhaps Lowrey aside.

  13. 13.

    BGinCHI

    July 19, 2013 at 3:56 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: Yep. Worse part is that she has the chip implanted in her head and thinks everyone else stole theirs.

    It’s so sad when the privileged get punked by the super-privileged.

  14. 14.

    schrodinger's cat

    July 19, 2013 at 3:56 pm

    Forget econ bloggers even tenured econ professors use percentages haphazardly to score points when writing for a popular audience.

  15. 15.

    Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937

    July 19, 2013 at 3:56 pm

    “where we can resent them for it”

    Wow, someone doesn’t get the paycheck she feels that she deserves. Maybe if she got a second job.

  16. 16.

    ? Martin

    July 19, 2013 at 3:57 pm

    What a strange argument out of McMegan. I’d have expected her to go on about how those looters were sullying the theme park experience for our job creators by accepting the subsidized ticket price, and instead should be saving their money to buy a better cardboard box to live in.

    Next up, McMegan discovers that people with higher incomes also get no-annual fee credit cards, free checking, and lower mortgage rates. When did this happen!

  17. 17.

    Poopyman

    July 19, 2013 at 3:57 pm

    I wish to contest your assertion that Bloomberg is a step up from Newsweek. I think they’re both trashrags.

  18. 18.

    dan

    July 19, 2013 at 3:59 pm

    Ignore the messenger. I agree with her.

  19. 19.

    Walker

    July 19, 2013 at 3:59 pm

    I am confused. FastPass is free to everyone. Sure, you can only have one active at a time, but there is no extra charge for FastPass (there wasn’t one when it rolled out, and I just checked the website to make sure it has not changed).

    Is she confusing this practice with the use of hiring people with disabilities?

    EDIT: Okay, I see that she is complaining about some low rent amusement park, not Disney.

  20. 20.

    kuvasz

    July 19, 2013 at 4:00 pm

    “Noblesse oblige, or we’ll cut your fucking head off” is a perfectly fine attitude for a social contract.

  21. 21.

    schrodinger's cat

    July 19, 2013 at 4:01 pm

    @PeakVT: Agree about Krugthulu, the guy who writes for Atlantic is good too, perhaps my comment was overly broad.

  22. 22.

    NickT

    July 19, 2013 at 4:04 pm

    McInsights – also known as McSmugits.

  23. 23.

    Tim F.

    July 19, 2013 at 4:04 pm

    @Poopyman: It certainly is a step up from newsweek now.

  24. 24.

    schrodinger's cat

    July 19, 2013 at 4:04 pm

    BTW I am doing a series of posts leading up to the five year anniversary of the Lehmann bankruptcy and the financial crisis. I also welcome suggestions.

  25. 25.

    No One of Consequence

    July 19, 2013 at 4:06 pm

    @kuvasz: Golf clap. Well played sir.
    – NOoC

  26. 26.

    Redshirt

    July 19, 2013 at 4:07 pm

    And what’s up with these handicap people getting parking spots close to the entrance? Aren’t we all Americans in equality?

  27. 27.

    scav

    July 19, 2013 at 4:07 pm

    Oh, that number two is so sweet. Mommy, Mommy those mean people are ordering More Expensive Food than us In Public and In Our Faces! Stop sneering at those hungry people at the door, the maitre d, doorkeep and valet will deal with the rabble but that girl is eating a bigger dessert and her salt is Pinker!­!­!­!­!

  28. 28.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    July 19, 2013 at 4:08 pm

    I thought Tom Buchanan was the guy to hate from that novel, not Gatsby.

  29. 29.

    Omnes Omnibus

    July 19, 2013 at 4:09 pm

    @kuvasz: It brought on the New Deal.

  30. 30.

    cmorenc

    July 19, 2013 at 4:09 pm

    @TimF:

    Actually, for once in an extremely rare while, McMegan DOES seem to have correctly absorbed and articulated an important socioeconomic insight about the 99%ers vs the priviliged 1%ers. Not only that, but even as she rationalized the worthy value to patrons like herself who could afford to purchase the special jump-the-line passes, she clearly recognized emotionally that she was being something of a selfish jerk in doing so, and that it made her uncomfortable rather than satisfied to have so many other people regard her that way. Bottom line: for a little while in that column at least, she identified with the 99% rather than the 1%, though I expect this sympathy for the masses will disappear as quickly as the dew in morning sun, and she’ll be right back to right-wing economic quackery by her very next column/ tv panel appearance.

    Even McMegan can be right once in awhile, and so can broken clocks, and for just about as long.

  31. 31.

    Amir Khalid

    July 19, 2013 at 4:12 pm

    @Poopyman:
    Newsweek has rung down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible. It is an ex-magazine. It is now no more than a logo the Daily Beast puts on some random storiest.

  32. 32.

    Tom Levenson

    July 19, 2013 at 4:15 pm

    I just want to thank Tim F. for lancing a boil that would have had me slaving for hours to prove, once again, that someone on the internets is wrong.

  33. 33.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    July 19, 2013 at 4:16 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat: I have no idea but it’s true – even for the reporters, not just the columnists. I work for a federal Agency and we published a regulation that said that the cost of the rule was a third of a percent of total revenue. This guy writing a story for the Wall Street Journal asks what total revenue is, and worse, proposes the following formula to get there: multiply 0.3 x 100 x cost of the rule. Seriously. He starts out with thirty percent instead of a third of a percent and multiplies instead of divides.

    The Wall Street Journal – your #1 financial daily – and they can’t do basic percentages. You wonder why they print every piece of bullshit investment bankers feed them? Because there’s no way they have the math skillz to figure out they’re being lied to, that’s why.

  34. 34.

    Tim F.

    July 19, 2013 at 4:20 pm

    @cmorenc: She got the emotional point just fine, and then wrote the column like she discovered it. Increasingly? Has she lived in a cave since birth? Nice to see that there are forms of entitled behavior that embarrass even her, but yeesh.

  35. 35.

    PeakVT

    July 19, 2013 at 4:25 pm

    @What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Dean Baker bangs on about innumeracy in WaPo and NYT reporting regularly.

  36. 36.

    aimai

    July 19, 2013 at 4:25 pm

    @NickT: I love the concept of the McInsight as measured in Smugs. Example “Did you see the latest McInsight? It was chock full of smugs! I think it was fifty percent more smugged than the last one.”

  37. 37.

    Mnemosyne

    July 19, 2013 at 4:25 pm

    @Walker:

    Disney FastPasses are free, though I think there’s a thriving black market of people who will stand in line for your FastPass for the super-popular rides (right now, that’s the Radiator Springs Racers at Disney California Adventure, where the FastPasses are generally gone by 9:00 am).

  38. 38.

    John O

    July 19, 2013 at 4:33 pm

    Outside of politics and opinion, it’s very hard for me to say I hate a person without actually knowing them. And even then it is rare.

    McArdle is one I hope the fickle finger of fate is very large and uncomfortably implanted her way one day. What a clueless, un-self aware c**t.

  39. 39.

    boatboy_srq

    July 19, 2013 at 4:33 pm

    @Marc: Isn’t it interesting that the same ones who whinge at 1%er privilege will fight to the death to preserve the 1%ers’ right to that same privilege? Because Free Markets™ or something.

  40. 40.

    RobertB

    July 19, 2013 at 4:38 pm

    Just looking up Cedar Point (since I like the roller coasters), the Fast Lane Plus pass costs $75 for unlimited passes that will skip you to the front of the line. That’s different from the Disney ‘get in the short line at this time’ pass.

  41. 41.

    piratedan

    July 19, 2013 at 4:52 pm

    can we officially declare McMegan a national disaster, because the brain bleach required after reading even excerpts of her shit has to cost us all a whole lotta moolah…..

  42. 42.

    elmo

    July 19, 2013 at 5:06 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    When I lived in Southern California, I was also a puppy raiser for Canine Companions for Independence. *That’s* the way to get whisked onto a ride – bring a puppy to the park! Head to the front of the line and nobody even resents you for it, they’re too busy cooing at the adorable Lab puppy.

    Of course, you can’t go on any of the fast rides, but Pirates of the Caribbean and Jungle Cruise are boss!

  43. 43.

    Barney

    July 19, 2013 at 5:07 pm

    I love what they’ve used for McArdle’s ‘About’:

    How much can we actually know about the economy? When does data signify, and when is it merely noisy and uncertain? Megan McArdle writes about business and economics, looking at the latest news, research and market trends and engaging with the biggest questions of the day.

    It seems they’re pre-placing an apology – “look, we know she’s going to get her math wrong sometimes, and leave out important stuff when it suits her, but What Is Truth, Man? We didn’t hire her expecting accuracy, and you shouldn’t, either.”

    I for one await the next missive from Megan “noisy and uncertain” McArdle eagerly.

  44. 44.

    Josie

    July 19, 2013 at 5:08 pm

    @Mnemosyne: There is also a thriving business in which disabled people get fast passes and market them to not disabled people for a hefty fee. My daughter-in-law is a Disney travel agent and recently heard about this.

  45. 45.

    Da;vid Koch

    July 19, 2013 at 5:14 pm

    ha!

  46. 46.

    jake the snake

    July 19, 2013 at 5:19 pm

    Maybe McMegan is just bothered by earned privilege (someone paying extra for the privilege of moving to the front of the line)
    rather than the unearned privilege she has enjoyed her whole like.

  47. 47.

    Trollhattan

    July 19, 2013 at 5:24 pm

    I’ll believe Blenderella is fighting for the common folk the moment she takes a 2×4 to the noggin of a Rich.

  48. 48.

    Trollhattan

    July 19, 2013 at 5:26 pm

    I’ll believe Blenderella is fighting for the common folk the moment she takes a 2by4 to the noggin of a Rich.

  49. 49.

    Mike R.

    July 19, 2013 at 5:27 pm

    Reading the comments at Bloomberg is quite a horrifying experience but it seems that she’ll be truly appreciated by her new readers. What a truly horrible group of people except for 1 Canadian who tries his / her best to politely explain to them how fucked up they really are.

  50. 50.

    Skippy-san

    July 19, 2013 at 5:28 pm

    McMeghan-DUMBEST BLOGGER EVER. ( And in a world where Breitbart once existed-that is saying a lot).

  51. 51.

    NickT

    July 19, 2013 at 5:33 pm

    @aimai:

    That sounds more like a statistic than a hypothetical, if you take my meaning.

  52. 52.

    moderateindy

    July 19, 2013 at 5:39 pm

    @cmorenc: Exactly. This is the equivalent of the cons complaining about anything that comes from Obama, just because they hate him, even if it is something they supported before.
    Just because you despise the woman, you automatically have to disagree, and mock her even when she has a valid point. It’s really pathetic, because it just gives credibility to the both sides do it mantra.

  53. 53.

    Chris

    July 19, 2013 at 5:54 pm

    @Eric U.:

    Why does McMegan hate people that God has blessed with money to throw away on fast passes? Is she one of those Occupy people or something?

    Exactly what I thought. The funny thing about these people being chock-full of resentment is that occasionally that resentment will spill over into resentment towards the super rich for having nice things that they don’t – not enough to translate into political action (unless the super rich person can be tarred with some tribal label like “liberal,”) but it’s still there.

  54. 54.

    SteveM

    July 19, 2013 at 6:13 pm

    Walk straight into your rental car because you’re a Hertz#1 Club Gold member.

    Hunh? This is not some hugely exclusive club. You just have to sign up. I did it years ago on a princely salary of about $40K a year. All you need is a credit card and a pulse. It’s about as elitist as an EZPass. Putting that in the same category as sending your kids to an elite private school is insane.

  55. 55.

    Alabama Blue Dot

    July 19, 2013 at 6:32 pm

    @SteveM: Yep, me too. And the reason we rent cars is that we buy clunkers for cash so we have NO debt and then we rent a car to travel. Don’t hate me because I have some common sense, Megan.

  56. 56.

    Herbal Infusion Bagger

    July 19, 2013 at 6:38 pm

    The funny thing about these people being chock-full of resentment is that occasionally that resentment will spill over into resentment towards the super rich for having nice things that they don’

    The distribution of wealth and income is on a power curve. So while McMegan and spousal unit are pulling down income in the top 1-2%, she’s hanging out with people in the top 0.1-0.01%. Who are 1-2 orders of magnitude richer than her. So when/if McMegan spawns, expect a raft of postings on the tribulations of those only able to afford a single nanny.

  57. 57.

    mclaren

    July 19, 2013 at 7:31 pm

    Actually, McArdle has a point (for a change) and it’s a good one. Rich people get to avoid the hassles that afflict the rest of us in a way that effectively creates two different classes of citizen — the serfs (us) and the people who never have to wait in line or get strip-searched at airports or (fill in the blank — them, the rich).

    That’s fundamentally destructive to democracy because it creates a whole different society for the rich. Sounds like a good point to me.

    The other commenters hit it when they point out that McArdle is wealthy compared to the Great Unwashed like us, but because the distribution of wealth follows an exponential power curve, the people above her are so vastly more wealthy than she is that she feels oppressed and poor. “Boo-hoo, I can’t afford a private jet to the Caymans, I have to fly coach, it’s so unfair!” and so on.

    She’s still an entitled clueless asshole, but in this particular case she has a point.

  58. 58.

    mclaren

    July 19, 2013 at 7:35 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    …there’s a thriving black market of people who will stand in line for your FastPass for the super-popular rides (right now, that’s the Radiator Springs Racers at Disney California Adventure, where the FastPasses are generally gone by 9:00 am).

    Ugh. Reminiscent of the lobbyists in D.C. who hire homeless people to stand in line in the queue to get into packed congressional hearing (no, I am not kidding about that one).

  59. 59.

    Chris

    July 19, 2013 at 7:41 pm

    @Herbal Infusion Bagger:

    Pretty much. It’s just funny to watch when it’s lying in the middle of her and her party’s many, many, many lectures on how much it sucks to be envious and jealous of our Job Creating betters.

  60. 60.

    Mnemosyne

    July 19, 2013 at 8:00 pm

    @mclaren:

    Yes, but at least it’s people who are playing the system and not the company itself letting people buy their way to the front of the line. The Disney FastPasses are set up to be pretty democratic — you can’t pay extra at the gate for an “upgrade.” Which is why people do creepy things like hire disabled people to pretend to be their friends for the day. (And I can’t entirely blame the disabled people who hire themselves out for that — free day at Disney World just for pretending to know some impatient a-holes with too much money? Why not?)

  61. 61.

    Kay

    July 19, 2013 at 8:06 pm

    I went to Cedar Point in June with 4 10 yr old boys and I had this same reaction to the fast track.
    She was probaly there. Tall and haughty, right? I saw her.
    I went to whrre the ride lets out for each ride to wait for the boys. That’s where the fast track ENTRANCE is. So there’s this steady feed of people going in front of the masses snaking below, but it’s not overt “cutting” because it’s designed so they just sort of merge at the front of the line.
    The boys were in the slow track and they were obliviious to this because they can’t see it’s happening. They are waiting so.long because there’s this whole other thing going on!
    I thought it was horrible, although they never noticed and I didn’t say anything.

  62. 62.

    Kyle

    July 19, 2013 at 9:14 pm

    Shorter McMegan:
    My privilege over you is well-deserved, when other people are privileged over me it’s heresy.

    The terrible travails of being rich in a world of super-rich.

  63. 63.

    Kropadope

    July 19, 2013 at 9:51 pm

    Megan sounds like she’s about to go full metal socialist. But not like a real socialist, who while I may disagree with them on some things, has an agenda to help solve real world problems. No, she sounds like a Fox News socialist, an avaricious “taker”. Maybe she’s just pretending so they can point and say “See, they ARE real, so Obama must be one too”.

  64. 64.

    Tehanu

    July 19, 2013 at 10:58 pm

    @Walker:

    Yes, FastPass at Disneyland is free; all you have to do is get it early for later on. McMegan’s problem with it isn’t that the rich are taking advantage over the poor; it’s that the poor who are willing to postpone gratification for a few hours get to have something she thinks only the rich should be allowed to have.

  65. 65.

    Lurking Canadian

    July 20, 2013 at 8:28 am

    You know what her real problem is, right? The Hertz thing is the tell.

    Her objection is not that special privileges exist. Her objection is that they’re not expensive *enough* to genuinely be limited to the Right People.

    If fast pass cost $10000 at the gate, she’ have no objection.

  66. 66.

    Julia Grey

    July 20, 2013 at 12:33 pm

    Just because you despise the woman, you automatically have to disagree, and mock her even when she has a valid point. It’s really pathetic, because it just gives credibility to the both sides do it mantra.

    I’m not disagreeing with her, I’m laughing about the fact that a person who brags to the world about her $1500 blender suddenly understands that flaunting one’s “fast passes” is maybe not the best idea in the world, that it could JUST POSSIBLY breed a dangerous resentment among the Slows.

    And omigaud, that resentment could lead to all kinds of…of….stuff that she is not going to mention to the Bloomies. Never mind. Forget she said anything.

  67. 67.

    boatboy_srq

    July 20, 2013 at 4:12 pm

    Rereading this, it dawned on me that there’s very little here that’s new. 1%er privilege has existed for a very long time; it’s just rarely as visible as now.

    First Class on Cunard is an experience – but an experience that has existed since the 1850s, and the East India Company was doing that long before. First Class on PanAm was an equivalent experience (bottomless champagne and food and service rivaling the best hotels) – and they ran from the 1920s until Lockerbie. And from 1972 to 2005 there was the Concorde if seven hours was too much time to spend in an airplane alongside the unwashed masses. Shorter queues at check-in have been available for generations: shorter queues at security checkpoints are an artifact of heightened security overall and no more. The biggest change here is that more of us are traveling, so more of us see how the 1% travel.

    Nordstrom’s retail experience is phenomenal, but it’s merely an echo of R.H. Stearn’s, and they folded in the 1960s: Harrod’s is still in business and has been for over a century, and Fornum and Mason for over two. Time was that the 1% went to London, Paris and Milan for their shopping, rather than find local equivalents to practice their retail excesses.

    The Waldorf hotels were first opened mid-19th century: Trump and Hilton have a long way to go to equal their glamour. The higher visibility of the hotel experience, though, goes hand in hand with the higher visibility of the travel experience: with more people seeing “hotel” more, they are seeing who’s getting the Presidential Suite and three bellboys to help with the bags.

    American Express has offered credit to the most-creditworthy; the Black Card is only the most recent expression of that, and it’s been in existence for 14 years (prior to that any AmEx signified that you’d “made it” in the personal credit world). Credit itself though, especially in the form of an unsecured credit card, is relatively new: “charge and send”, however, has existed for over two centuries (didn’t anyone think to ask why debtor’s prison has such an old and storied history? Because the upper classes of the 17th century were no better at handling their money than the modern ones).

    For holidays, the Fast Lane at the amusement park rides pales in comparison with the private resort – or better yet, the private island – and those have existed for aeons.

    With each new major industrial/economic boom, a new group rises to take advantage of the benefits. And with each pass, the grumbling changes. Lipton, for example, was roundly trashed at the America’s Cup events – not because his boats were fast, but because he was an upstart Yank who thought he could buy his way into the club. The Gilded Age of the 19th Century was populated by first-and-second-generation wealthy, who took the same advantage of the benefits of the day as the modern generation does of the current offerings. The only things that have changed this time around are the players (dot-com millionaires are mingling with their industrial/financial forebears), the types of amenities being offered, and the marketing (which is all over the place, advertising stuff most people didn’t even know was on offer).

    McMegan’s observations are nothing more than the whine of the Great Left Out, observing how other folks have bought into the hype of the lifestyle. Life in the Fast Pass Lane may be more in-your-face overt, but it’s hardly the new thing she clams. It says a lot more about her that she’s actually noticing the New Privilege, than that the New Privilege actually exists.

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