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Doesn’t like 25% of the DC workforce work for the Feds, and another huge fraction work for direct contractors?
Not to mention every news agency from BBC to NBC to Al Jazzera would immediately relocate all their operations to New York.
All the Embassies would move, the hotel business in DC would crash.
The US government isn’t 547 people, Congress, the VP and President. Each congressperson has dozens of staff, and the President has 100s (politically, administratively many many many more)?
The EU actually does move operations every summer to Strasbourg and it’s an actual **** show and that’s not the whole administrative state just the legislature.
Yeah the economy of DC would collapse with the federal government + companies that contract with the federal government.
Tourism in DC is also directly linked to its capitol status.
the biggest industries outside of the fed/contracting/tourism are military/defense, tech/biotech, consulting, and media.
Definitely DC, which I consider to be the southern terminus of the Northeast. It’s a pretty heavy hitter and one of the few places on the east coast I genuinely enjoy.
Doesn’t like 25% of the DC workforce work for the Feds, and another huge fraction work for direct contractors?
Not to mention every news agency from BBC to NBC to Al Jazzera would immediately relocate all their operations to New York.
All the Embassies would move, the hotel business in DC would crash.
The US government isn’t 547 people, Congress, the VP and President. Each congressperson has dozens of staff, and the President has 100s (politically, administratively many many many more)?
The EU actually does move operations every summer to Strasbourg and it’s an actual **** show and that’s not the whole administrative state just the legislature.
I think that's a very dated and inaccurate number. More like 7.5% of DC and 15% of the area . You absolutely do not have t get rid of all those jobs. Theyre a ton of those folks all around Baltimore too. Direct contractors and ex military consultants are abundant in the DMV though.
There are 10,000 staffers in congress. 1/8 are interns/not paid a living wage.
You definitely could move the capitol with very little issue. NYC already has 150 foreign consulates... tourism would not crash. Many of these people are there like 1/3rd of the year Leave the building for tourism.
BBC NBC and Al Jazeera definitely don't have to move lol. They can operate just the same as CNN or MSNBC
Surplus hotels could readily be converted to housing a la the Woodner.
I think that's a very dated and inaccurate number. More like 7.5% of DC and 15% of the area . You absolutely do not have t get rid of all those jobs. Theyre a ton of those folks all around Baltimore too. Direct contractors and ex military consultants are abundant in the DMV though.
There are 10,000 staffers in congress. 1/8 are interns/not paid a living wage.
You definitely could move the capitol with very little issue. NYC already has 150 foreign consulates... tourism would not crash. Many of these people are there like 1/3rd of the year Leave the building for tourism.
BBC NBC and Al Jazeera definitely don't have to move lol. They can operate just the same as CNN or MSNBC
Surplus hotels could readily be converted to housing a la the Woodner.
CNN, Abd MSNBX and Fox all have DC offices because they want access to the people who matter. If they’re not in Washington they wouldn’t be either.
I think you got those numbers wrong 7.5% of all Federal workers work in DC not 7.5% of DC workers are federal workers. Also yeah all those jobs would move for the same reason. There is a reason the Social Security Administration isn’t based in Louisville or something.
There are 368,000 federal workers (which doesn’t include political workers, NGO’s, foreign embassy staff, contractors) that would follow the government wherever it goes. New York has a bunch of consulates cayse it’s important, DC has embassies cause it’s the capital. Without it it would have the number of consulates Houston or whatever has. Not 185 embassies or whatever
DC would be smushed to nothing without the Government.
I'm not sure why this is even a debate to be had. What's the significance?
Similarly, NYC would be decimated without Wall Street, and Boston would be pretty darn handicapped without Harvard and MIT.
Signature and highly critical institutions exist everywhere.
I think somewhere someone was saying being the Capital really isn’t critically important to Dc when it really really is.
But also running the most important country in the world is very important so I don’t know why you wouldn’t get credit for it.
I also think there is a feeling Boston built Harvard. The reason Harvard isn’t in Charleston, SC is because of something inherent in the culture of the city. New York built Wall Street its industry came out of local vision and drive. New York bear out Boston, Philly and Baltimore fair and square. Chicagos ascent over St Louis had to do with forward looking industrialists who believed in Railroads over riverboats. SF built its tech from unique labor laws and culture, DC was gifted the Government. There was no fair and square competition. They didn’t rise to the top on any merit of the city itself.
That said DC is number a very clear #2 if you consider it Northeast (I don’t)
Last edited by btownboss4; 10-02-2023 at 04:14 PM..
I agree that DCs influence is basically almost entirely wrapped up in the fact that it's the capital. Take away the government and you basically have either a midsized Mid-Atlantic city like Richmond or a Frederick style satellite city of Baltimore. It has had only the most marginal success in diversifying it's economy. That basically all flows from a political compromise struck over 200 years ago.
But, NYCs success is due in part to lucky geography relative to Boston or Philly. A natural harbor with the only river valley that cuts through the mountains to the Great Lakes region. That's basically irrelevant today, but it allowed the city to build any early lead over rivals. Harvard and MITs status as elite universities were established long before anyone alive today. Boston being at the extreme north Eastern end of the country didn't get the same great migration/white flight dynamic as other northern industrial cities. At this point, Boston or NYCs relative success has as much or more to do with being born on 3rd base rather than winning any great meritocratic urban competition.
I think somewhere someone was saying being the Capital really isn’t critically important to Dc when it really really is.
But also running the most important country in the world is very important so I don’t know why you wouldn’t get credit for it.
I also think there is a feeling Boston built Harvard. The reason Harvard isn’t in Charleston, SC is because of something inherent in the culture of the city. New York built Wall Street its industry came out of local vision and drive. New York bear out Boston, Philly and Baltimore fair and square. Chicagos ascent over St Louis had to do with forward looking industrialists who believed in Railroads over riverboats. SF built its tech from unique labor laws and culture, DC was gifted the Government. There was no fair and square competition. They didn’t rise to the top on any merit of the city itself.
That said DC is number a very clear #2 if you consider it Northeast (I don’t)
I agree that DCs influence is basically almost entirely wrapped up in the fact that it's the capital. Take away the government and you basically have either a midsized Mid-Atlantic city like Richmond or a Frederick style satellite city of Baltimore. It has had only the most marginal success in diversifying it's economy. That basically all flows from a political compromise struck over 200 years ago.
But, NYCs success is due in part to lucky geography relative to Boston or Philly. A natural harbor with the only river valley that cuts through the mountains to the Great Lakes region. That's basically irrelevant today, but it allowed the city to build any early lead over rivals. Harvard and MITs status as elite universities were established long before anyone alive today. Boston being at the extreme north Eastern end of the country didn't get the same great migration/white flight dynamic as other northern industrial cities. At this point, Boston or NYCs relative success has as much or more to do with being born on 3rd base rather than winning any great meritocratic urban competition.
True *I* didn’t make Harvard great personally but Harvard exists purely due to the Puritans seeing the value in education like two centuries before the South. It’s not a coincidence the place in the world that pioneered universal public education has the largest concentration of elite Universities on the planet. The current city is a reflection of its culture.
SF happened in San Francisco because California had banned non-competes and its cooperate culture was much more agile than its eastern competitors like IBM so it capitalized on a rapidly changing industry. That was a very much a east vs west cultural difference that lead to Silicon valley not ending up around Philly and UPenn, IBM and the Hudson Valley or Rochester NY and Xerox/Kodak.
You can open a biotech startup in OKC if you so desire. It may struggle more than in the Boston ecosystem though. If you were to try to set up a competitor to the US Federal Government talent recruitment wouldn’t be your biggest issue..
Cities try to pretty explicitly copy Boston/SF/Seattle with varying levels of success. Austin and Raleigh havr done pretty well for themselves but most do not make much headway.
DC rose to prominence entirely on external factors as a planned capital. Most European capitals are such because they United their country and are the force behind unification (Rome is actually the outlier here) so since it worked backwards (powerful city becomes capital not capital becomes powerful city) they get viewed differently. Those are fundamentally different paths to prominence.
I think the US government is where it is no matter how it got there I just don’t see DC as Northern this disqualified all together
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