Gene Healy on Why Washington, D.C. Is So Wealthy
Have you seen the latest jobs report? Major buzzkill: creeping unemployment, anemic growth, and the recovery's totally stalled.
But not in Washington: The District is booming! Construction cranes dominate the downtown skyline, and your average homeless guy can barely grab a stretch of sidewalk before yet another boutique store pops up to bounce his bedroll. If you venture outside the Death Star's orbit to visit the colonies for Thanksgiving or Christmas, you'll see a lot of boarded-up storefronts. You might even feel a twinge of shame when Matt Drudge feeds you headlines like "D.C. Leads List of Most Shopaholic Cities in America."
Whatever: Guilt is for losers! The main lesson the rest of the country should take from the capital's prosperity is, per The New York Times' David Leonhardt, that "education matters."
D.C.'s "high-skill" economy boasts more college degrees than any other major metropolitan area in America. "If you wanted to imagine what the economy might look like if the country were much better educated," Leonhardt writes, "you can look at Washington."
Gene Healy translates that message for people out in flyover country: We're eating your lunch because we're "smarter" than you! Hit the books, rubes: We built this!