After decades of decline, the nation’s capital today is wealthy and growing. Metro Washington now has six of the nation’s ten wealthiest counties. In 2012, Falls Church became the nation’s richest city, a far cry from when it was a 1970s refuge for Vietnamese immigrants fleeing Saigon. The region’s median household income is $88,233, second in the nation behind California’s San Jose–Sunnyvale–Santa Clara metro area, which is part of Silicon Valley and has a median household income of $90,737.
But while in other cities this might be a success story, in Washington it comes with a catch. Rather than resulting from private industry, it merely underlies the growth of the city’s leading employer, the federal government. The city’s flourishing has seemed especially perverse in recent years, as the rest of America has lagged economically.
Read Full Article »