Sorry about the Recession, America, But Don’t Worry about Washington

The Census Bureau reports, says a Wall Street Journal article, that between 2000 and 2012 “median household incomes for the nation as a whole dropped 6.6% — from $55,030 to $51,371.” There’s reason to doubt that real incomes are actually down over such a long period. But growth is certainly slow.


Except in Washington. The Journal notes:

The income of the typical D.C. household rose 23.3% between 2000 and 2012 to an inflation‐​adjusted $66,583, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, its most comprehensive snapshot of America’s demographic, social and economic trends. …


The Washington, D.C. metro area — which includes the surrounding suburbs in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia — has it even better, with a median household income of $88,233 that ranks highest among the U.S.’s 25 most populous metro areas. Tampa, Florida’s median income, by contrast, is under $45,000.…


[Washington’s] local economy is expanding faster than the broader nation, and its property market is soaring, thanks in part to increased federal‐​government spending and an influx of federal contractors, lawyers and consultants.

As we’ve written here many times, a rising tide of government spending may be bad for the American economy, but it’s great for the Washington area.


Washington is wealthy and getting wealthier, despite history’s slowest recovery in most of the country. As we’ve said here before, this of course reflects partly the high level of federal pay, as Chris Edwards and Tad DeHaven have been detailing. And it also reflects the boom in lobbying as government comes to claim and redistribute more of the wealth produced in all those other metropolitan areas. 


Money spent in Washington is taken from the people who produced it all over America. Washington produces little real value on its own. National defense and courts are essential to our freedom and prosperity, but that’s a small part of what the federal government does these days. Most federal activity involves taking money from some people, giving it to others and keeping a big chunk as a transaction fee.


Every business and interest group in society has an office in Washington devoted to getting some of the $3.6 trillion federal budget for itself: senior citizens, farmers, veterans, teachers, social workers, oil companies, labor unions — you name it. The massive spending increases of the Bush‐​Obama years have created a lot of well‐​off people in Washington. New regulatory burdens, notably from Obamacare, are also generating jobs in the lobbying and regulatory compliance business.


Walk down K Street, the heart of Washington’s lobbying industry, and look at the directory in any office building. They’re full of lobbyists and associations that are in Washington, for one reason: because, as Willie Sutton said about why he robbed banks, “That’s where the money is.”