The March issue of The Atlantic features Don Peck’s long, well-researched, and deeply depressing cover story "How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America." Peck reports:“[Men have] suffered roughly three-quarters of the 8 million job losses since the beginning of 2008 … In November, 19.4 percent of all men in their prime working years, 25 to 54, did not have jobs, the highest figure since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking the statistic in 1948.”
The implications, as Peck documents, are baleful:“… this era of high joblessness is probably just beginning. Before it ends, it will likely … leave an indelible imprint on many blue-collar men. It could cripple marriage as an institution in many communities. It may already be plunging many inner cities into a despair not seen for decades.“
Despite the gravity of the unemployment problem, there has been almost zero discussion in the Main Stream Media of the role of immigration policy in how we got here—and how changes in immigration policy could help get us out of this jam.
After Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) responded to Scott Brown’s election by announcing he was fast-tracking a bipartisan jobs bill, eight Republican Senators released a joint letter to Reid with their suggestions. Sen. Jeff Sessions, who did so much to save America from the Bush-Kennedy-McCain amnesty bills of 2006 and 2007, and his seven colleagues recommended a half-dozen commonsense steps for reducing unemployment among American citizens by more effectively enforcing laws against illegal immigration.
Keep in mind, these Republicans’ letter didn’t even mention anything about legal immigration—such as imposing a temporary moratorium until the employment problem clears up.
Of course, none of the Patriotic Eight’s illegal immigration reforms made Reid’s bill, which turned out to be the usual Official Bipartisan Consensus of spending increases and tax cuts. (As of Sunday morning, that bill’s progress had stalled due to squabbling.)
And almost none of the press coverage about unemployment mentions immigration.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
52 comments:
Steve:
It looks like someone has picked up on your firefighter discrimination as a political platform idea, and it's not the republicans.
http://american3p.org/?p=357
Early on in this crisis - prior to this crisis actually, since I sort of sensed it coming - I believed that a deep recession would cause US politics to veer towards sanity, out of necessity. Troubled times often cause individuals to do so.
But then I guess I forgot about the causes of World War II.
On immigration I have little faith we'll regain sanity anytime soon, if ever at all. 9/11 certainly didn't cause us to. At least, though, it's preventing any discussion of amnesty, and it's deterring some immigration.
The victory of Sen. Brown, the retirement of Sen. Bayh, and the declining support for Sen. Boxer indicate that the GOP could very well regain control of Congress this election. If they do so they would be wise not to return to the tired old well of tax cuts for the rich as their favored policy for economic growth and instead focus on a domestic agenda that would please the oft-snubbed social conservatives and focuses on building human capital, including immigration reduction and enforcement. A chastened Democratic Party, fearful of what may happen when Obama actually will be on the ballot, would be severely pressured to go along.
If the GOP doesn't do that, and instead simply returns to pleasing the rich, I will be done with them for good, as I suspect much of their base will be. It's not just that they will have disappointed us on our issues - it's also that they would be pursuing the same agenda which caused the mess to begin with and which would guarantee continuing misery, and that is one of placating big business while surrendering to the Multicult.
Let's try to put this all together, in an antiseptic liberal thinktank sort of way. Give me some leeway, I'm just trying to tie several observations together.
Here we go!
There is a school of thought we have enough oil to last several centuries, but our extraction rate is severely limited by geology and a supply crunch is imminent. This is the peak oil theory.
A supply crunch would increase the price of oil, reduce our economic output, and reduce our ability to service our debt. Sound familiar? Well, this sounds a lot like the summer of 2008 when the price of oil hit $140 a barrel.
Most of our recent economic shocks involve oil which gives the peak oil argument heft the global warming argument lacks. When people talk about the housing crisis, they can talk about minority lending and the community reinvestment act, but they fail to mention a lot of people were paying their debt just fine until the price of oil soared and consumption dollars were redirected from paying waitress tips to the gas pump.
The most dire peak oil theorists assume the earth can support 1 billion to 2 billion people without oil (the population of the earth before Rockefeller's Standard Oil) which means a lot of people need to die-off to get to that level.
The typical American assumes those 4 to 5 billion net deaths would be third world, and thats generally true since that's where the people are, but a fair number of those deaths are also first world since we (US, Europe, Canada) consume most of the oil.
So there is socio-political "benefit" to depopulation, which is rarely discussed in the mainstream media. This supports:
1. Hypergamous women seeking alpha males. If only the most elite men have families the western birth rate falls. Also all of the policies that make this happen (abortion, birth control pills, killing the sanctity of marriage) fit the framework.
2. Chronic joblessness. If you keep a large portion of the US population at subsistence levels of food, the population will reproduce slower than normal.
However, this does not support:
1. Our punishing debt load. At some China will realize the core of our country is rotten, and we are no longer credit worthy. Our debts can only be financed if we have a growing population, more grandkids than grandparents
2. Our genuine push into health care, which would increase birth rates and life spans.
3. It seems the middle class is having very few kids, as this framework would suggest, but underclass is still reproducing, which will place further strain on the welfare state. Of course you can make birth control available, but in this context birth control seems less like choice and more like eugenics, which is morally repugnant.
This seems like the sort of thing the New World Order or Trilateral Commission will discuss when the doors are closed and the cameras go away. Maybe the Council on Foreign Relations gives a confidential briefing to each western head of state, listing timelines and talking points.
To me its sad, but not unexpected our leaders will abdicate their leadership roles when there is a problem with no clear solution. Why talk about it?
There will always be meetings we don't know about, and issues they don't discuss and that is why its important to elect, anoint, and appoint leaders with a strong moral compass.
I'm surely more liberal than most posters here, but I cannot for the life of me figure the legal theory or basis for just forgiving a crime committed by an entire class of people (i.e. illegal immigrants).
I mean they're here illegally, and that's the end of the story. I certainly understand their motivation for coming here, and I have sympathy for their plight in their home countries, but none of that really excuses anything.
Illegal immigration encroaches on the blue-collar sector (as opposed to H1-B's and white-collar work); thus, one has to wonder about the impact of plain-old automation and robotics in decimating labour. From my experience, a line that used to employ six workers now requires only one (plus one floater/supervisor). The kids who used to palletize and wrap product on skids have been replaced by machines. New industries are being created, but how labour-intensive will they be given more efficient methods? Will Jeremy ("The End of Work") Rifkin--who supposed that progressive job loss was the natural outcome of an increasingly technological society--be vindicated someday?
Interesting article Steve.
Indeed it was depressing. The only thing I can say is that at least in this depression people have Wii's and Facebook to keep them occupied. Beats watching dust storms I guess.
The Blackadder Says:
The bad economy is already doing a better job of getting illegal immigrants to return to their home country (or stay there in the first place) than stricter enforcement ever could.
I don't want to sound too much like one of those guys who wears a tinfoil hat but there does seem to be a pattern here. There are real problems facing America and California - immigration, unemployment, rising taxes, lowering opportunities. Yet the public is consumed with fantasy catastrophes. Global warming is main one of course but the Discovery Channel and the Science Channel have endless shows speculating about volcanoes, meteors, or super novas which wipe out mankind.
I've recently read a couple of the best selling accounts of Roosevelt and the Great Depression. I never came across a radio show or a movie like The Day After Tomorrow or Life After Man in the thirties. So I don't think all these morbid fantasy disasters are some spontaneous reaction to economic troubles.
Dare I say it, it smells like a conspiracy.
Every minute at social affair that the people spend discussing some "environmental" problem is a minute that that channel is blocked. The party goers will talk about the current hobgoblins that they only know from the media and thereby ignore real problems that understand from their own experience.
Your job is in jeopardy, you are behind on your mortgage, the IRS is dunning you, the Mexican gangs are starting to show up in your neighborhood, etc... Yet when you go to a dinner party all the talk is about invasive tree species in the parks, the plight of the Polar Bears, and how the Pacific Islands are sinking beneath the waves.
Here is Peck's conclusion to the dilemma, quite different than your twisted interpretation:
We are in a very deep hole, and we’ve been in it for a relatively long time already. Concerns over deficits are understandable, but in these times, our bias should be toward doing too much rather than doing too little. That implies some small risk to the government’s ability to continue borrowing in the future; and it implies somewhat higher taxes in the future too. But that seems a trade worth making. We are living through a slow-motion social catastrophe, one that could stain our culture and weaken our nation for many, many years to come. We have a civic—and indeed a moral—responsibility to do everything in our power to stop it now, before it gets even worse.
In both Japan and Europe, pro-longed joblessness for young people has resulted in the emergence of a slacker class that lives frugally, parties a lot, and does the lonely-planet travel to S.E. Asia. They also have few or no kids. The birthrate has plummeted in both societies. Think of the Gen-X slacker scene of the early 1990's.
The Atlantic article never suggests this possibility even though it is the most likely one.
Why would this period of joblessness not have the same result on American young people? Why do you think the birthrate would remain high, even though it has declined due to permanent recession for young people in both Japan and Europe?
Cheap energy is the key to economic growth. The U.S. sits atop enormous veins of coal, oil shale and offshore oil. But the beautiful people don't want their beautiful environmental fantasies tampered with. They've got theirs and screw the untermenschen. Until rule by beautiful people is overthrown the average shlub will suffer.
Black gold: the Peck article says that poor folks don't stop having babies, they stop getting married. AKA "what I wanna marry him fo'? He ain't got nuthin'!"
In the last 15-25 years poor white girls --particularly British girls-- have shown no significant reluctance to squirting 'em out like watermelon seeds at a picnic. I expect white women will keep heading in the same direction as the economy collapses.
Of course the white folks' racial betters with start tsk-taking ever more loudly as they compare white degadation with the evident superiority of their own Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, and Jewish cultures and ponder the fatal flaw that brought the arrogant white folks so low. "Racism" they will decide. "That was the cause!"
OT: Idiocracy watch. World record kick to the balls. http://danwin.com/thoughts/fox-takes-us-into-to-the-future-of-idiocracy/
Albertosaurus - lets not overlook War of the Worlds.
The liberal elites would rather increase the NAM population than actually help out current Americans. They feel that everyone has a RIGHT to reap the rewards of American citizenship and will push this agenda even if it cripples the country.
Is the math really that hard!?!?
Bringing in people who take more jobs than they create isn't good for unemployment. Wow, difficult reasoning.
(And with most immigration being low-IQ, a fact that we're not even allowed to think let alone utter in the public sphere, most immigrants are a net negative on unemployment for American citizens, especially blacks. But of course, blacks blame it on white racism, when ironically, anti-Hispanic racism would be most beneficial for their job prospects.)
Steve, while illegal immigration is an important component of unemployment, it is only a marginal solution to the current problem.
Do you honestly suggest that stopping or curbing (probably the only thing politically possible in the US) illegal immigration will create 10 million jobs? At best it will allow marginal growth year-by-year to go to US citizens not foreign nationals here illegally.
As a practical matter, the US will not deport summarily the 15-20 million illegal aliens here no matter how much I might want it. It would take that order of magnitude to open up 10 million jobs.
Even if we stop new people from coming, we retain a large, permanent urban underclass in the Ghetto and Barrio. With large welfare costs, and zero possibility of employment realistically even with job growth.
Job growth in turn depends on the following five factors:
1. Lower taxes.
2. Lower regulation.
3. Cheaper oil, the remarks of the poster Black Gold is spot on.
4. Lower deficts, to stop crowding out of private business investment by government borrowing.
5. Increased military spending, the canceled F-22 Raptor program alone employed 120,000 people. Unlike infrastructure spending, military spending is manpower intensive. Plus it allows a good threatening of nasty states like Iran that threaten US strategic interests in cheap oil.
Stopping Illegal immigration and using mechanisms to cause self-deporting is important, in allowing economic growth to benefit Americans not foreign nationals.
BUT it does not create economic growth.
Albertosaurus said:
There are real problems facing America and California - immigration, unemployment, rising taxes, lowering opportunities. Yet the public is consumed with fantasy catastrophes.
Coincidentally I read your comment while Michael Savage was on the radio telling us about EMP attacks and how we should be worried that Iran might detonate some nuclear device above us in the atmosphere.
I couldn't stop laughing.
I worked as a labor market economist from 1998 to 2007. I still do a lot of workforce analysis.
The decline in employment rate of men has been going on for decades, and is very troubling for all the reasons in Peck's article, and more.
Think about this:
"Good" revolutions (like the American revolution) are rare. In 1776, the actors (males) had something to lose (opportunity, family) but were willing to risk it all to gain a greater good -- freedom.
In most revolutions, however, things go very bad because the actors (males) have nothing left to lose.
"The most dire peak oil theorists assume the earth can support 1 billion to 2 billion people without oil..."
Oh, I don't believe in that at all. Doesn't France get most of its electricity from nuclear power? And doesn't Brazil get a lot of its car fuel from sugar cane ethanol? If oil becomes more scarce, more countries will follow their lead. If you believe in the "dire peak oil" scenario, buy nuclear power stocks.
Whiskey says...
5. Increased military spending, the canceled F-22 Raptor program alone employed 120,000 people. Unlike infrastructure spending, military spending is manpower intensive. Plus it allows a good threatening of nasty states like Iran that threaten US strategic interests in cheap oil.
The "government can create jobs by hiring people" theory is a liberal idea and a naive one. You call for less government everywhere else, so I guess the laws of economics go out the window when the goal is bombing Iran.
Whiskey, is there any subject that does not relate to the need to confront Iran?
Walter Russell Mead has been writing some really good stuff lately on this and related problems. Here is a link:
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/01/28/american-challenges-the-blue-model-breaks-down/
"1. Lower taxes.
2. Lower regulation.
3. Cheaper oil, the remarks of the poster Black Gold is spot on.
4. Lower deficts, to stop crowding out of private business investment by government borrowing.
5. Increased military spending, the canceled F-22 Raptor program alone employed 120,000 people. Unlike infrastructure spending, military spending is manpower intensive. Plus it allows a good threatening of nasty states like Iran that threaten US strategic interests in cheap oil."
This is an example of what is wrong with mainstream conservatism.
You want to cut taxes, reduce the deficit and increase military spending. Can you do basic math?
What happens when you reduce government income and increase military spending? You increase the deficit unless you slash Medicare or Social Security.
You want "threaten" Iran. What happens if they keep ignoring us: We do nothing and look impotent or we get into another stupid war. If you don't want another war don't make threats to countries you are not prepared to invade. If you want war with Iran forget about cheap oil.
hah. that's like solving our FP problems by telling israel to behave decently - not remotely on our elite's radar.
In Atlanta, a few law enforcement agencies have decided to stop looking the other way when they come across illegal immigrants. They are actually turning them over to the Feds. The result? Illegal immigrants have started leaving. Shocking, eh?
Hispanics flee law, job loss
As a Scots-Irish man to my very core, I gotta say that there can be no improvement in the American economy until we address the grave threat to world peace posed by Iran.
Job loss was about 375,000 last month. Legal immigration is about 1.1 million/year. Illegal immigration was about the same, at least until recently. So halting immigration would cut the roles of the newly unemployed by over half.
The trade deficit with China is about $225 billion/year. Assuming $50k/yr per worker, balancing the trade with China is worth 4.5 million jobs. Getting those jobs back would reduce the unemployment rate about 3%.
So there - two straightforward solutions back to full unemployment. Don't hold your breath on seeing them implemented with the current corrupt bunch in charge.
I guess the plan is just to keep smacking us over the head until we respond. If we don't respond, they get to keep smacking us on the head to make money. If we do, well, they'll cross that bridge when they come to it. Makes sense to me, in a creepy nihilistic amoral penny wise pound foolish kind of way.
Am I the only one here that sees some real long term benefits to our nation from the current recession?
Three years ago, it seemed that all the high IQ young people I knew were studying something useless at grad school or otherwise wasting their abilities.
I can't tell you how many otherwise smart young men were chasing their dreams by going to film school, journalism school, or some other foolish thing. Now the smarter young men are training for real jobs, jobs that aren't going to be outsourced, that feed a real need in our society. Stuff like petroleum geology, chemical engineering, and the like.
Similarly, a few years ago smarter young women thought they could do "something they loved" or "something creative" and earn a living. Now that is out the window and they are training to be registered nurses.
I think this recession is focusing the mind of young people on doing things that our society needs.
If this recession means fewer kids going in to debt for stupid useless educations and more kids doing real stuff, then I am all for it.
Don't forget that the depression of the 1930's molded the character of a whole generation that went on to do great things for our nation. Perhaps hard times are good for the next generation
Respectfully to poster Glossy, we need petroleum to mine, refine, transport, store, and dispose uranium, plutonium, and fuel rods. We need petroleum to build power plants, and the components within. We need petroleum to keep the architect and engineer comfortable on the hot 95 degree day in Houston as they design the power plants.
As opposed to global warming, the time to prepare for post petroleum is now. That said most alternatives aren't as good as oil. If we found an oil alternative, Saudi Arabia sees it's future revenue decrease and they are not happy.
Either way we are screwed and our American existence is imperiled. The only reason our leaders tolerate this state of affairs is they are okay with American population decline.
I am Lugash.
On a similar note, watch what happens when Greece collapses. England is going to get flooded with Greeks in addition to the Poles already there.
I am Lugash.
The Bush Depression was caused by inflating the dollar (gold went from $255 an ounce to $1,100) at the same time interest rates were cut to record lows. This caused the boom/bust in housing and other parts of the economy -- a systemic whiplash far worse than what was caused by the problems Steve identifies.
And behind that, the easy money policy existed to get quick cash for the immense costs of Bush's wars -- $3 to $5 trillion for the Iraq War alone, according to Stiglitz -- and his wild domestic spending. And just wait until next year when Bush's tax cuts, which he stupidly didn't make permanent, expire and suck more investment money from the economy.
The bad polices Steve cites would have caused a medium recession that lasted a year or so, like the dot-com bust. The monetary errors were much more serious and are not being ended -- meaning more inflation and economic ruin lie ahead.
I think this will end when China gets sick of paying off Uncle Stupid's debts with depreciated dollars, adopts the gold standard, and insists that its loans be paid back in real money. Then the rest of the world, including America, will have to adopt the gold standard as well (even if they don't admit it) to avoid a fast run on their currencies.
Confucius say: "He who will not economize will have to agonize."
Think the mass immigration of the past twenty years has put a net cost the citizens? Just wait for the oncoming mestizo anchor baby boom to emerge.
The net financial costs of the new brown baby boom on our society will permanently lock our treasury bond rating far below AAA.
Demography is destiny.
For twenty years Big Brother has been pounding into our heads the following ridiculous lies:
#1) Illegals do the jobs Americans won't do.
Yeah, they told us this while huge swaths of America still had no illegals present to do any work at all. As if the dishes didn't get cleaned and the ditches didn't get dug in Vermont because there were no Mexicans available.
#2) America is "a nation of immmigrants": We Are All Immigrants.
Actually 95% of the population who has ever lived in the United States of America since the founding was born here, and did not emigrate here from a foreign country. That is the mathematical reality. To persist in calling all of us "immigrants" is to reject the concept of the nation state itself, because then everybody around the world residing in the modern nation states is actually an immigrant (from somewhere back in time) and therefore there are no natives anywhere (declaring that no one is a "native" is probably their ultimate agenda).
These two planks of New World Order doctrine are transparently stupid. But control of the mass media outlets allows them to keep pounding the message, no matter the facts.
The solution is to stop watching and/or reading their media outlets: Boycott the Machine.
An HBD-denialist case against mass immigration:
http://leejohnbarnes.blogspot.com/2010/02/israel-shamir-article-on-race-and.html
"Whiskey said...
As a practical matter, the US will not deport summarily the 15-20 million illegal aliens here no matter how much I might want it. It would take that order of magnitude to open up 10 million jobs."
That means you don't really want it. When it comes to deporting 20 million illegal aliens, just say "Si, se puede" (BTW, how many people are aware that Barack Obama's ubiquitous 2008 campaign slogan was lifted from the United Farm Workers).
"Unlike infrastructure spending, military spending is manpower intensive. Plus it allows a good threatening of nasty states like Iran that threaten US strategic interests in cheap oil."
I don't give a s**t if Iran has a nuclear bomb. They undoubtedly want one as a deterrent, just as we already have. How will Iran having a few nuclear weapon change one thing for this country, really?
You want to cut taxes, reduce the deficit and increase military spending. Can you do basic math?
Can you? The deficit is not caused by military spending. Not even close.
The author of the Atlantic article does mention immigration. Towards the end, he says that economic stagnation is going to make us more mean-spirited, anti-immigrant, and racist. Dear God, anything but that!
> a few law enforcement agencies have decided to stop looking the other way when they come across illegal immigrants. They are actually turning them over to the Feds. The result? Illegal immigrants have started leaving. <
Impossible! Undocumented immigrants are here to stay! Get used to it! Sending them back is impossible, I said impossible! Impossible!
Signed,
Friends of Amnesty
Republican Business Owners Association
$outhern Poverty Law Center
And almost none of the press coverage about unemployment mentions immigration.
Why would they? It's the 400 pound gorilla nobody dares to mention.
Immigration is pure unadulterated aggression against the native population.
The soft genocide elites have in mind for the middle-classes: loss of vital space, taxation to death, ever increasing cost of living, competition for jobs and outright discrimination not only in jobs but also in education, rising criminality, etc., is bloody obvious.
Under the Liberal Regime called Democracy, Democrats and Republicans agree on almost everything, except on the most effective way to get rid of the middle-class. The middle-class stands in they way to absolute power. And so it must be destroyed by all means necessary, including the importation of tens of millions of hostile and parasitic aliens.
Oh, I don't believe in that at all. Doesn't France get most of its electricity from nuclear power? And doesn't Brazil get a lot of its car fuel from sugar cane ethanol? If oil becomes more scarce, more countries will follow their lead. If you believe in the "dire peak oil" scenario, buy nuclear power stocks.
Most of the oil coming to the US gets used as fuel, not for power generation. On the other hand, you can make fuel from air if you have power, so maybe it doesn't matter that much. Not sure how the cost works out on all that.
IMO the most legitimate concern peak-oilers have is energy-intensive agriculture. We use a lot of diesel fuel in farming, and more importantly we make fertilizer out of natural gas. Without that natural gas yields go down. How much? Beats me.
Can you? The deficit is not caused by military spending. Not even close.
A quarter of the federal budget goes to the military.
A quarter of the federal budget goes to the military.
19% - but even at 25% it is NOT causing the deficit.
Increased diversity is rated as making things better by an overwhelming majority of Americans.
http://people-press.org/report/573/
Idiots.
Huh?
What was wrong with my post about repealing Wong Kim Ark and returning to Elk?
Was it the 75-foot-tall "Great Wall of the Rio Grande" that got me in trouble?
BUT it does not create economic growth.
If I ran the US, I'd pay Americans $1,000 for each illegal they grab and turn in to be kicked out. Government money well spent.
A quarter of the federal budget goes to the military.
At least we get material goods. Welfare and WIC gets us more NAMs who get welfare and WIC...
The author of the Atlantic article does mention immigration. Towards the end, he says that economic stagnation is going to make us more mean-spirited, anti-immigrant, and racist. Dear God, anything but that!
So, you're saying there's an upside to economic stagnation? Sweet!
Anything to get Americans to take off the rose tinted glasses is OK with me.
declaring that no one is a "native" is probably their ultimate agenda.
Nock Griffin, head of the BNP, faced this one head-on during his recent turn on the British show Question Time (the episode is on YouTube) when he referred to white native Brits as - are you holding tight to your seat? - 'the indigenous people of Great Britain.'
Wait! You mean white people are actually indigenous to somewhere on this planet, and should have their indigenous rights protected and be treated as superior to the invaders in their homelands? Heaven forfend!
On a similar note, watch what happens when Greece collapses. England is going to get flooded with Greeks in addition to the Poles already there.
So long as it happens before May we shouldn't mind a bit. Any person desiring a sane immigration policy anywhere in the West has to be chering for the BNP in this one.
" (with military spending) At least we get material goods. Welfare and WIC gets us more NAMs who get welfare and WIC..."
Um, material goods that get blown up or sit in warehouses.
It's a national scandal that we don't deport every single illegal alien asap.
15-20 million possibly still here either employed or sucking the welfare system dry???
While massive numbers of citizens cannot find work? (real unemployment is not 10% but closer to 20%)
DEPORT THE ILLEGALS NOW
CHINESE OVERLORD UPDATE
The language "came from the client."
"The bad economy is already doing a better job of getting illegal immigrants to return to their home country (or stay there in the first place) than stricter enforcement ever could."
How will we ever know, if we never actually try "stricter enforcement"?
BTW we've kicked them out before, you know:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Repatriation
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