I came to the article below through Andrew Sullivan. Matt Yglesias fumbles through the course of this as well.
If I start linking more often to Sullivan’s blog it’s because I’ve only just now put him on my RSS feed after the hoopla over his new venture. So I’m familiarizing myself with his blog and seeing what all the fuss has been about. In this case, I see that, because he doesn’t like the tone of it, Sullivan has hen-pecked an interesting article about the roots of Washington D.C.’s recent economic success.
Other than that, what Annie Lowrey (wife of D.C. wonk, Ezra Klein) writes about the growth of D.C. being a function of the growth of government doesn’t seem controversial:
The growth has arrived in something like concentric circles. Increased government spending has bumped up the region’s human capital, drawing other businesses, from technology to medicine to hospitality. Restaurants and bars and yoga studios have cropped up to feed and clothe and stretch all those workers, and people like Jim Abdo have been there to provide the population — which grew by 650,000 between 2000 and 2010 — with two-bedrooms with Wolf ranges.
…
How Washington managed this transformation, however, is not a story that the rest of the country might want to hear, because we largely financed it. As the size of the federal budget has ballooned over the past decade, more and more of that money has remained in the District. “We get about 15 cents of every procurement dollar spent by the federal government,” says Stephen Fuller, a professor of public policy at George Mason University and an expert on the region. “There’s great dependence there.” And with dependence comes fragility. About 40 percent of the regional economy, Fuller says, relies on federal spending.
…
There’s something unsavory about having a capital city doing outrageously well while the rest of the country is limping along — especially when its economy is premised in part on capturing wealth rather than creating it.
Insofar as she’s comparing the postwar era, Lowrey pins the region’s growth on Reagan and the massive deregulation that increased lobbying efforts by private companies seeking government contracts. She also points out that Clinton sought to restructure government and succeeded in winnowing the federal payroll even as agencies’ budgets increased. And then September 11 occurred and the Department of Homeland Security was created. Even without looking at statistics, it feels like we’ve begun swinging back towards the central hub. Even the Reagan years were a hub-centered pushback against the very same hub. Hubbiness was solidified. As a side note, I know several libertarian think-tank employees who work/live in the D.C. area. Their anti-government positions are dependent on the government too.
In the piece, Lowrey called D.C. “unstylish” and Sullivan responded:
Seriously, could you get any more contemptuous of the nation’s capital, one of the most pleasant, modern and livable cities in America. Unless you’re such a fucking snob you write paragraphs like that one. Makes me want to go back – just to stick it to Annie Lowrey, and her insufferable condescension.
I’m definitely behind the curve in realizing Sullivan’s lack of reading comprehension and his tendency to miss the bigger picture. I’ve heard that he does this though. Lowrey’s point is that if D.C. is “one of the most pleasant, modern and livable cities in America” it is because the rest of the nation has been paying for it. She quotes Cato’s David Boaz stumbling over words trying to criticize the amenities of the city. Boaz complains that there is too much construction. While he is really unable to complain about his immediate surroundings, he makes the point that it is an illusion. Thus the name of the article “Washington’s Financial Boom Funded by You”. Little of that growth is organic to D.C. Its mere existence – its structure and its very culture – are founded on I.O.U.’s to the American (and many non-American) people.
Then we have Yglesias who pushes back against Lowrey’s argument by citing the D.C.’s population relative to the rest of the country over the course of the past century. What? He has a chart, but that’s a pointless metric. Yglesias focuses entirely on population when what we’re really talking about is the overall rising standards of living in the region.
In terms of per capita income growth between 2000 and 2010, D.C. ranked third among metro areas. First place is Baltimore whose growth, according to New Geography, is due in part to D.C.’s growth. Plenty of D.C. residents are leaving the area because they can’t afford to live there anymore. Except they’re leaving by Greyhound while the new citizens are coming via moving truck.
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D.C. is the most posh U.S. city I’ve been to. Most other cities I’ve seen, seem a little run down and gritty in comparison.
I see a lot of girls in DC with the same online dating profiles: “I just moved to DC recently to work for the government and I love it!” A ton of Master’s degrees and even a lot of PhDs, or in the process of working on their PhDs. One girl I talked to recently recently got her PhD in something like Medical Records and just loves her job! Umm, yeah. I’m sure dinner conversation with her would be about as fascinating as counting sheep. This is why I’ve gotta get the fuck outta here.
I can’t help but get a little pissed off every time I talk to some girl from Wisconsin who just moved here to leech off the system, because ultimately it’s our tax dollars funding this nonsense. Whether it’s a gov’t job or a non-profit gig, they all think they are changing the world with their self-important bullshit, and after a few years of living here their minds become warped b/c guys who wouldn’t look at them back home will pay attention to them (guys who move here are just as bad, the type who are “passionate about public policy”..which really means they work for a lobbying firm and spend their days pissing on our legal system for profit). This is exactly the stuff that Roosh and others say about DC. It’s true. Even the fat 5-6s have attitudes like their shit don’t stink, and they are convinced their lives are meaningful. Meanwhile in their spare time they work on their food blog, posting their sepia-toned pictures of wine, food, and the fixed-gear bike they just bought, thinking they are unique little snowflakes in a sea of clones. “I love to spend a day walking around the different museums DC has to offer!” Shaddup..
This is Hollywood for average-looking, bookish Midwestern girls with Master’s degrees in non-profit grant writing who dream about opening up their own cupcake shop one day. Can’t wait till the bubble bursts. Boo DC.
Off topic, but Annie lowrey is fuckin hot. Ezra Klein is a lucky dude, even if he’s a limpwristed nerd.
I think Annie Lowrey had a nose job at some point.
I’ve been to D.C. a few times, mainly for the NABJ convention; my limited perspective is that the city is stark in its contrasts; Yuppified districts like Georgetown give way within a block or two to hardcore ghettos; the part of D.C. by the convention center and the White House (unfmailiar with the proper neighborhood names) are within a block of the Chinatown district, then cross the Anacostia river and it’s almost third-world squalor.
Never seen so much wealth so close to so much poverty.
I once read that the capital city was intentionally located in a swamp, to discourage people from wanting to live there and the government from becoming too big.
Andrew seems to have overreacted but that paragraph was pretty flippant. After the post on the moving vans, I wondered if D.C. was on its way to becoming a city with cache (among young liberal college grads) on the level of NYC. Maybe NYC is feeling a bit jealous nowadays, like it’s no longer assuming itself to be the center of everything worthwhile, hmm?
Then I read into the article and found the author lives there, so that kind of ruins this article as a case in point. But still I suspect a note of squabbling for bragging rights. Wonder who will do D.C.’s version of Sex and the City?
To me Boston is the second-most cache city (after NYC) from a young person’s point of view: power, prestige, money, history, architecture, ethnic enclaves, international scene, arts scene, green spaces, cool pubs, variety of seasons — it’s all there.
Boston doesn’t have Sex and the City, but it does have Aly McBeal.
@nikrit, those ghetto blocks are being gentrified street by street. Recently I did some work in an area that I wouldn’t have ventured in 5 years ago (well I wouldn’t have gotten out of my car), and saw yuppie white women in high-end jogging gear pushing strollers around. The moving trucks are pouring in and the ghettos neighborhoods are getting gradually pushed out to Anacostia or PG county.
To me Boston is the second-most cache city (after NYC) from a young person’s point of view:
By my lights, anywhere on the ocean coasts beside New York is out of the question in terms of ever wanting to live there.
East Coast: too crowded; too much traffic; rude people.
West Coast: L.A. is a spiritual hell-hole; and I lived there for a year and spent at leasty six weeks a year there for more than a decade.; Bay area is nice but the expense and politics of the Bay area would great on me within a few months.
Milwaukee! Chicago! Minneapolis! Madison: Third coast living is the best! lol!
Yeah I went to college in Beantown, a lot of my friends stayed afterwards if they could. I might have too but in my field (aerospace STEM guy) you’ve gotta go where the work is.
Another note, the NYTimes are a fine bunch to point and complain about wealth financed by skimming us red state hicks. What’s really paying for Mr. Big’s mistress to be put up in that loft apartment, it’s the fees I’m forced to fork over to get my 401(k) tax deferral. They’re just as driven by OPM (other people’s money). At least the defense companies give us cool products that make Al Qaeda members go boom.
That would seem to also tie in with Radley Balko’s argument today about having too many laws and how that is used to terrorize citizens and empower government (and legal industrial complex.)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/16/the-power-of-the-prosecut_n_2488653.html?1358359916
Back in my neo-con warmongering, red-kool aid, Pachyderm cheerleading days after 9-11, I used to read Sullivan’s blog daily. I quit reading him after he turned on Dubya and went all drama queen the SECOND Dubya didn’t support gay marriage. He turned into a whining bitch and it ruined the entire tone of his blog.
I’ve never gone back, all these years later.
Yglesias reveals his Aspy behavior in interesting ways. Even if DC’s population has been stable (not that it matters), what about the external controls and internal make up of DC? The DC of 1985 is a helluva lot different than the DC of 2013. The crack wars are over, municipal spending is under control now due to ’90s Congressional legislation, and a certain population has been pushed out into the surrounding suburbs.
@Donny: “…dream about opening up their own cupcake shop one day.”
Ha, ha, ha. Just this week a delicate special snowflake coworker of mine confessed to me that, she’s “not using her psychology degree working as a budget clerk” and really wants to “open a cupcake shop downtown!”
I thought it pretty uncouth that NYT writer Annie Lowrey refered to Logan Circle as “…one of the many leafy Washington neighborhoods anchored by a statue of a long-dead guy riding a horse.”
I actually emailed her to advise that Logan Circle is named after John Logan, a former Civil War Commander and IL state senator (you know, like her president, Barack Obama).
@Georgia Boy: Boston can me a lot of fun. I grew up 20 miles outside of Boston and went to undergrad there, but moved away in 1990 not caring to see another New England winter. There have always been plenty of defense contract tech jobs in the Boston area.
Back in 2002, I turned down an $85K per year job w/ DC government. That was a good salary back then. I even went looking at apartments; they started at $1500 for a shoebox and went up from there. I turned down the job after the hiring manager took me around the office; he and I were the only White people in the entire 5-story building. It didn’t seem like a welcoming place for someone like me to work.
I grew up in Boston and it does have many things going for it. I do find the downtown/waterfront area disorienting since the Big Dig. After the variable winters, the spring can be surprisingly chilly due to sea breezes unless you’re far enough inland. Summer has its spells of hot humid weather but not as much as cities to the south. Fall is the most reliable season.
It doesn’t surprise me. Imperial capitols are usually pretty flashy being fed by the resources they drain from the rest of the Empire.
If D.C actually reflected its value added it would be shabby at best.
I live in Northern Virgnia, and haven’t been to the “district” in years (I hate how people who just moved here call it D.C., its like when rubes go to “Vegas” once and act like the rat pack); In fact I first begin reading Roosh after seeing on google if anyone else thought the women in Datelab (Washington Post Magazine dating column) was full of stuck up cunts. I hope to escape this vortex one day, but then again if not for D.C. I would’ve taken the red pill.
Monroe makes me want to move to DC just to go to a speed dating event. After I hear about her Very Important Job and her VIP acquaintances and the blah blah blah, I could confidently look her in the eyes and state: “Well, honey, your main problem with landing a man is that you’re a stuck-up cunt.” Then just stare….
About four years ago I started thinking “Where would be a good place to sell my maple syrup for top dollar?” A little lightbulb went on over my head and after a web search around the D.C. area I found a purveyor of high end, locally procured, organic, blah, blah, blah foodstuffs who wanted to buy my entire annual production (we have over 3,000 taps).
I made the delivery myself and was blown away but what looked like the world’s largest construction project that radiated for forty or fifty miles outside of D.C. It reminded me of the height of Empire. Every square foot that could be built upon was in the process of being staked/graded, improved, paved or erected into a shining new metropolis far larger than the one I was familiar with only 20 years ago.
The guy (who paid me almost twice my local price plus delivery) told me he sold to executive chefs of “congressmen and lobbyists.”
Anecdotal, but illustrative.
As someone who grew up in Houston and now lives in DC, I can point out some similarities in their growth. Both had a bunch of terrible neighborhoods in the 70s and 80s that were gentrified in the 90s and really accelerated in the 2000s. Also, the property values shot up in both places before 2003. Though both have extensive suburbs, DC, unlike Houston, has a real Metro system and that has encouraged density levels way beyond Houston.
The other thing they have in common is that both growth is fueled indirectly by computer technology. More of the oil and gas money is made by trading (e.g. Enron, but also everyone else) and engineering and more of the defense work is done in DC due to the increased use of modeling and cybersecurity. This allows more of the work to be done in urban environments like DC.
If you want to attack DC’s growth, defense and DHS cuts are the way to do it, but the part that is in DC is counter-terrorism and not traditional Great War defense and is the likely to be the least easy to cut.