Wish I had written this when I thought about it the other day but Professor Reynolds beat me to it:
You know the story: While the provinces starve, the Capital City lives it up, its wheeler-dealer bigshots growing fat on the tribute extracted from the rest of the country.
We don’t live in The Hunger Games yet, but I’m not the first to notice that Washington, D.C., is doing a lot better than the rest of the country. Even in upscale parts of L.A. or New York, you see boarded up storefronts and other signs that the economy isn’t what it used to be. But not so much in the Washington area, where housing prices are going up, fancy restaurants advertise $92 Wagyu steaks, and the Tyson’s Corner mall outshines — as I can attest from firsthand experience — even Beverly Hills’ famed Rodeo Drive.
Meanwhile, elsewhere, the contrast is even starker. As Adam Davidson recently wrote in The New York Times, riding the Amtrak between New York and D.C. exposes stark contrasts between the “haves” of the capital and the have-nots outside the Beltway. And he correctly assigns this to the importance of power.
The Rio Norte Line 
Reminds me of my friend, Mr. Nice Guy. A broker who now resides in the beltway. He calls himself a conservative, but he doesn’t seem to be bothered by Quantitative Easing or Stimulus Bills. Hm. What’s up with that?
I’m not going to watch that because I ordered the books. I’ve finally given in to this. From the synopsis that I have read, it sounds like a good hobo hunt……or a Tea Party hunt.
Unfortunately, THE HUNGER GAMES is the design our government has for us. Just look at the efforts to ban arms, in order to prevent self-protection and thwart uprisings under Socialist/Communist control. The over-powering need for bureaucratic control as a result of corporate Globalist ambitions to have wealth re-distributed, the leveling of the world-wide playing field makes for a hungry America. Does everyone understand the goal is to level world wages? How would Americans ever be able to compete with those whose cost of living is so minimal in Tropical and Sub-Tropical environments? I can remember our party being greeted on a remote beach in the late 1960s by an expatriate American (criminal type) who emerged from a group of grass huts. These people could fish and live off the land. It was one of those wonderful places where if you threw some seeds out on the ground, vegetables could be harvested a few months later and undoubtedly year round.. There was no need to even have window screens on our hotel rooms: Louvers were all that was necessary because there were no flies or unpleasant insects.
By contrast, I grew up in the Texas Panhandle. The inhabitants of that area face raging winds in Spring most days for months. Plagues of insects strike from spring through summer: First there are hordes of miller bugs, next, in some years plagues of flying ants, and always multitudes of flies and gnats, then on other years are added plagues of grasshoppers in summer. Summers range upwards of 110 degrees, and winters can go below 0 degrees. During droughts there are not even any wild plants or grass for livestock, much less any water. Of course, the Corporatists will tell you they will make cost of living adjustments for those areas. Is that the way we want to live, or do we want to declare our independence from the New World Order Globalists and regain our freedom and dignity?
High 5 Kingsley….excellent Post !!
Hmm- tysons corner mall eh? You mean the one where they taxed themselves in order to get the metro extended there? And sorry- but I can say from personal experience as well- it doesn’t come close to Rodeo Drive.
And how ironc- you quoting a reporter who works for the bastions of the evil left- the NYT and NPR. (though of course- a journalist who has come under intense fire for both lack of fairness and integrity in reporting, and for making huge sums from Ally Bank, Wells Fargo, Chase, BOA, and Goldman Sachs- the very corporations he covers…
Housing prices going up in DC? surprise surprise. As Mark Twain said “Buy land son- God’s not making anymore”. And actually- housing prices are rising again across much of america.
And by all means- explain your analogy. Anyone who has spent time in DC as I have will tell you the wealth ain’t coming from the government. It’s coming from two places- the wealth those that serve tend to have already accumulated, and maybe more relevant- from the lobbyists. The hidden tax every american pays, every day, on the goods and services they purchase that goes to washington to ensure the corporate parent- and more tothe point- their executives and shareholders, continue to get richer…
And please- don’t even try and say it is only the capital city that is doing well. As has been going on for decades- the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer. But whether we are talking Boston, NY, charlotte, charleston, seattle….the rich increasingly take their tributes- in the forms of tax breaks. In the form of offshoring. Lower wages, etc, etc…
I’ve seldom read a comment so steeped in ignorance and flat out dumbass – at least not since your last one. First, the Washington Post reported:
These counties are not bastions of manufacturing, what they do have is government jobs.
And now for our daily example of clueless asshattery – your own idiocy writ large:
“the wealth those that serve tend to have already accumulated, and maybe more relevant- from the lobbyists”…both of which came from taxpayer money. Lobbyists are paid based on their success in securing government funds, the point of the article was not that all the money was coming directly from government but that government access and government power was the both the cause and result of the wealth in these counties, just like when Moscow was the “richest” city in the old Soviet union – where the glorious dictatorship of the proletariat existed.
Keep up the asshattery, it apparently is the only thing you are good at.