(Wikimedia CC; click to enlarge.)
Driving south from Reagan National Airport, it’s impossible to miss the number of large, new corporate buildings that line the way. For a list of some of them, see here.
By at least one measure, most of the ten richest counties in the United States are now in the greater Washington D.C. area:
This wasn’t always so, and, for somebody who’s been visiting the area over a period of many years — I myself have been coming here since the administration of James K. Polk — the change is palpable.
Moving to the Washington DC area was, for a long time, considered one of the unavoidable costs of political success, rather like moving to Albany from New York City, to Carson City from Las Vegas, or to Springfield from Chicago. Washington was a sleepy and rather dull little southern town, almost unbearably hot and humid during the summer.
It’s finally taking on the trappings of a great world capital.
As a Republican, but also as an economic libertarian and an ardent federalist, I have profoundly conflicted feelings about this. The concentration of wealth in the greater -DC area has followed the assumption of greater and greater economic and regulatory power by the federal government and its bureaucracies. That isn’t a good thing.
Posted from Richmond, Virginia
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