Washington, D.C. versus Boston

I spent a recent Sunday in Washington, D.C. visiting art museums, my favorite white bitch, and family. The big show in town is everything Spanish that could be stuffed into the National Gallery. More in tune with the times, however, are the oil paintings commissioned by the Federal Government during the Depression exhibited at the National Museum of American Art (link). There is some truly great stuff on the walls there (example), a subset of the more than 7,000 paintings, 750 sculptures, and 700 murals created by 3,700 artists at a total cost to the taxpayer of $1.3 million (about $21 million in 2009 dollars). Let’s hope that comparable work will come out of the Collapse of 2008 and subsequent bailouts (are there interesting art projects buried amidst the trillions of dollars being spent on bailouts and stimulus?).

Walking around Northwest D.C. you wouldn’t know that anyone anywhere in the U.S. was hurting economically. The parks are groomed, the monuments and museums are polished and fully staffed, there are very few retail spaces vacant, and everyone looks optimistic (walking) or frustrated (stuck in the heavy traffic that attends growth in a city incapable of implementing congestion pricing). Stopping to pick up some fruit at a Giant supermarket in Bethesda, I parked next to a brand new Bentley convertible. Stepping onto the metro at Friendship Heights, I walked passed a soon-to-be-completed gleaming new luxury shopping mall, complete with $100 per person chain steakhouse. The retailers’ confidence in opening was consistent with a July 2009 report that “Washington D.C.’s most expensive retail submarkets seem to be among the few in the nation that have seen rent growth over the last year” (source). Government workers are more numerous and better paid than prior to the Collapse, but probably the Bentley belongs to a lobbyist (see this article for how returns on an investment in lobbying can exceed 22,000 percent). As the government embarks on its largest expansion since World War II and grows beyond 28 percent of the GDP, lobbyists have become second only to politicians in their influence on our nation’s economy.

I expected long lines and full flights around a 9 a.m. Monday morning departure from DCA, but the TSA staff outnumbered passengers in the security area and there were only 19 passengers on our 76-seat regional jet. One possible explanation is that the federal government has now become so powerful that there is no need for anyone in Washington to leave the city on business. The government regulator who used to go to Indiana to check out a factory can now sit at his desk because the factory has shut down.

After the cabin door was closed, the captain warned passengers not to get up and use the restroom prior to reaching our cruising altitude of 31,000′ , by which time we’d be in Delaware or New Jersey and freed from the special security regulations that govern flights in and out of National Airport. If someone had gotten food poisoning from the bagel shop in the terminal and ran to the bathroom, the airplane would have to be diverted from landing in Boston. We’d be landing at some other airport for a security check and would then proceed to Boston. Note that this would cost the airline approximately $10,000 in fuel, engine reserves, and disrupted schedule.

Once home in Boston I was able to renew my struggle with the exciting challenges of suburban living. The Waltham Home Depot was virtually empty at 6 pm. Helpful employees converged to assist in my quest for appropriate technology to water grass that is hundreds of feet from the nearest tap. I asked one of the workers, a fully licensed but young plumber, how the store was doing since the Collapse of 2008. He said “I can’t compare to what it was like before the downturn because the crash is one of the reasons that I am here. I work three jobs now and earn less than I did at just one job.”