My plan is to leave DC for Virginia before the next mayor is sworn in, or shortly after at the very least.
DC is incredibly vulnerable. It has the following major defects:
1. An incompetent and corrupt government that does not provide basic services effectively
2. A government whose cost structure depends on taxing the wealthy at levels that approach NYC, but very very little of the charm, charisma, or pull of a place like NYC; indeed, unlike NYC, the surrounding suburbs of Virginia and Maryland are better in essentially every way, including quality-of-life amenities typically associated with living in a big city. To put it simply, DC doesn’t have the kind of moat that allows a place like NYC to shake its residents down so aggressively. For many, it’s worth being robbed by the government of NYC in exchange for living in NYC because NYC is an amazing city; DC is a deeply mediocre place at its best, so the robbery is more apparent and feels less worthwhile.
3. A metropolitan economy that is probably in recession due to the Trump Admin’s cuts to federal government staffing. This means the fiscal margin for error is shrinking.
4. An upcoming mayoral election that will almost surely see a Mamdani-esque candidate win, but because of DC’s fundamental mediocrity, she will have none of the charm or wit of Mamdani. She will just be a radically progressive moron who makes lots of mistakes, further upsets the polluted business environment, doesn’t do any good things like build housing (one metric along which DC has performed well under the current Mayor), and does nothing to fix corruption or incompetence. This new mayor will do things like build bike lanes, except that they’ll take 3 years, cost vastly more per mile than they do in Northern Europe, etc etc. The progressives will continue their post-Bernie shtick of “a very small and superficial fraction of Northern European governance, but way more expensive and worse.”
So basically we are about to elect a Mayor who will performatively annihilate any chance this town had of improving itself, all in service of (1) Orange Man Bad, MSNBC politics and (2) maintaining the illusion that progressives have anything resembling a vision for how to govern that goes beyond “plow even more of the rich people’s money into the Corruption Machine.”
The diagnosis below of DC politics is way more charitable to DC than I have been but it is fundamentally accurate. This place is cooked. If you are young and want to move to this area, go for the suburbs. If you currently live here, get the hell out. No renaissance awaits this place; a decade or more of decay looms.
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