Why D.C. Is the Richest Region in the Country
...When the housing bubble burst, home prices dropped in most of America, but not in Washington. Our capital feeds off federal spending, and politicians won't allow that bubble to burst.

One result is that, today, for the first time, most of America's richest counties are in the Washington area. Of the richest 1 percent of counties in the U.S., 43 percent surround the nation’s capital city.

Nick Sorrentino, creator of AgainstCronyCapitalism.org, notes that average total compensation for a federal employee is now about $120,000, and the gap between government pay and private pay has been growing....

...Unions claim workers are "under"-paid. But today's union headquarters resemble palaces. The biggest teachers union, the National Education Association, built a $100 million Washington headquarters that it calls "an environmental oasis." The AFL-CIO's beautiful lobby features a giant mosaic made of marble, glass and gold. When I tried to take pictures, so TV viewers could see the elegance, I was told to leave.

Government buildings are grand, too, even new ones like the Reagan office building. "It's very much like Versailles before the French Revolution," says historian John Steele Gordon. Washingtonians have become like the French nobility, who spent their lives in the palace at Versailles "and didn't know much about what went on outside that world."...