America reaches a tipping point as Washington becomes its heart and soul

Summary:  All bow down to our Versailles-on-the-Potomac!

I recommend reading in full this powerful and prophetic essay, “Height of Power: As other American fiefdoms fade, Washington looms larger than ever“, Joel Kotkin, Washington Post, 25 January 2009.  It describes a likely result of the current downturn, a climax to trends that date back to WWI.  This article has been reposted around the Internet, for good reason.  (Hat tip to Instapundit)

Kotkin describes the process of centralization, but not the likely results.  Centralization means rigidity, less adaptability, slow growth, concentration of wealth and income, and probably even lower social mobility — as loss of regional autonomy means fewer opportunities outside the capital.  And vs. other developed nations our social mobility is already low and inequality high (see here and here).

About the author

Kotkin is Presidential Fellow and director of the Urban Futures Program at Chapman University. He is author of seven books including the best-selling The City:A Global History (Modern Library:2006). He speaks and consults to business, government and professional groups throughout the world. He is also affiliated with the Praxis Strategy Group, the New America Foundation and the Center for an Urban Future. He is finishing a new book on the American future. (source; it also provides a listing of his other articles)

Excerpt (section headings were added)

Washington’s history one part of the American mosaic

For more than two centuries, it has been a wannabe among the great world capitals. But now, Washington is finally ready for its close-up.

No longer a jumped-up Canberra or, worse, Sacramento, it seems about to emerge as Pyongyang on the Potomac, the undisputed center of national power and influence. As a new president takes over the White House, the United States’ capacity for centralization has arguably never been greater. But it’s neither Barack Obama’s charm nor his intentions that are driving the centrifocal process that’s concentrating authority in the capital city. It’s the unprecedented collapse of rival centers of power.

This is most obvious in economic affairs, an area in which the nation’s great regions have previously enjoyed significant autonomy. But already the dukes of Wall Street and Detroit have submitted their papers to Washington for vassalage. Soon many other industries, from high-tech to agriculture and energy, will become subject to a Kremlin full of special czars. Even the most haughty boyar may have to genuflect to official orthodoxy on everything from social equity to sanctioned science.

At the same time, the notion of decentralized political power – the linchpin of federalism – is unraveling. Today, once proudly independent – even defiant – states, counties and cities sit on the verge of insolvency. New York and California, two megastates, face record deficits. From California to the Carolinas, local potentates with no power to print their own money will be forced to kiss Washington’s ring.

… To foreigners, this concentration of power might seem the quintessence of normalcy. As the sociologist E. Digby Baltzell wrote in 1964, elites have dominated and shaped the world’s great cosmopolitan centers – from Athens to Rome to Baghdad – throughout history. In modern times, capital cities such as London, Paris, Moscow, Berlin and Tokyo have not only ruled their countries but have also largely defined them. In all these countries (with the exception of Germany, which was divided during the Cold War), publishing, media, the arts and corporate and political power are all concentrated in the same place. Paris is the undisputed global face of France just as London is of Great Britain or Tokyo is of Japan.

… {Washington’s} lowly status stemmed, to some extent, from what the historian James Sterling Young has defined as the “anti-power” ethos of early Americans. The revolutionary generation and its successors loathed the confluence of power and wealth that defined 19th-century London or Paris. A muddy outpost in the woods seemed more appropriate to republican ideals.

Even as other American cities, such as New York and Baltimore, expanded rapidly, Washington grew slowly, at a rate well below the national average. Bold predictions that the city would boast a population of 160,000 by the 1830s fell far short. Instead, it had barely reached 45,000 people, including more than 6,000 slaves. It remained eerily bereft of all the things that make cities vital – thriving commerce, a busy port, decent eateries and distinguished shops. Visiting the city in 1842, Charles Dickens marveled at a city of “spacious avenues that begin in nothing and lead nowhere.”

To some observers, such as Alexis de Tocqueville, Washington’s relative decrepitude reflected one of the glories of the young republic. The fact that the country had “no metropolis” that dominated it from the center struck the young noble, on his visit to America in the early 1830s, as “one of the first causes of the maintenance of Republican institutions.”

Born-again as the center of the American tapestry

… It would take enormous misfortune – the Depression – to provide Washington with its first great growth spurt. As the business empires of New York, Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland buckled and the New Deal took control of the economy, power shifted decisively to the capital. This expansion of influence continued with the onset of World War II and then during the Cold War.

The ensuing rise of the military and domestic bureaucracies transformed Washington from a small provincial city into a major metropolitan area. The greater economic shift from a predominantly manufacturing to a high-tech, information-centered economy also played to Washington’s strengths. In his groundbreaking 1973 book The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, the sociologist Daniel Bell predicted that the country’s prevailing “business civilization” would inevitably become dominated by the government bureaucracy. Corporations would eventually look to Washington’s lead for regulatory standards, to sponsor research and make critical science-related decisions.

In the past half-century, this confluence of technology and bureaucracy has transformed Washington and its surrounding suburbs into the most dynamic large metropolitan economy in the Northeast. Between 1950 and 1996, the region’s population expanded by roughly 150 percent, three or more times faster than other cities along the Boston-Washington corridor.

By the mid-1970s, Washington and its environs had also emerged as the richest region in the country. Since then, it has remained at or near the top of metropolitan areas in terms of both per capita income and level of education. Despite deplorable concentrations of poverty, particularly in the city proper, the region’s average household incomes remain the highest in the country – nearly 50% above the national average. The percentage of adults with a bachelor’s degree or higher, nearly 42%, surpasses even such brainy-seeming places as greater Boston, Seattle and Minneapolis.

The contrast between Washington and most of the United States has gradually become more pronounced. In good times and in bad, lawyers, lobbyists and other government retainers have continued to enrich themselves even as the Midwest industrial-belt cities have cratered and most others struggled to survive. “The vision of generations of liberals,” admitted the New Republic in the mid-1970s, “has created a prosperous and preposterous city whose population is completely isolated from the people they represent and immune from the problems they are supposed to solve.”

In today’s crisis, the Washington area remains somewhat aloof, with the second-lowest unemployment rate among major metropolitan areas of more than 1 million. (Only Oklahoma City, largely insulated from both the financial and housing bubbles, is doing better, although collapsing energy prices could threaten its prosperity.) The rate of job growth, although slower, is still among the highest in the country, and unemployment is below the national average.

Newly crowned as the heart and soul of America

This disparity will grow in the coming years, as rival regions reel from the recession. Many once-powerful places are already losing their independence and allure. Wall Street, formerly the seat of privatized power, has been reduced to supplicant status. The fate of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “luxury city” will be determined not in deals with London, Dubai or Shanghai but by the U.S. Treasury. Similarly, the vast auto economy of the upper Midwest will take direction from congressional appropriations and whoever is named the new “car czar.”

This loss of power in the provinces will broaden in scope during the coming months. Even proud Texas has lost its unique political influence. Its energy barons will now be forced to do the bidding of the lawmakers and regulators, instead of carrying them in their hip pockets.

… All this is bad news for much of America, but it should mean great business for many residents of greater Washington. Sudden interest in District pied-a-terres among investment bankers, venture capitalists, energy potentates and their hired help could do a lot to restore the battered condominium market. Office buildings in the District and surrounding environs can now expect a new rush of tenants, both from the private sector and the soon-to-be expanding federal bureaucracies.

The transfer of cultural power to Washington will also accelerate. After all, Washington is more than ever where the action is.

… Over time, those of us in the provinces may grow to resent all this, seeing in Washington’s ascendancy something obtrusive, oppressive and contrary to the national ethos. But don’t expect Washingtonians to care much. They’ll be too busy running the country, when not chortling all the way to the bank.

Afterword

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To read other articles about these things, see the FM reference page on the right side menu bar.  Of esp interest these days:

• About America – how can we reform it?
• About the Financial crisis – what’s happening? how will this end?.
• About The End of the Post-WWII Geopolitical Regime.
• Good news about America, a collection of articles!

Previous situation reports about the economy:

1. Forecasts – Why wait? Read tomorrow’s news … today! (part I), 11 July 2006
2. The Future of America – Why wait? Read tomorrow’s news … today! (part 2), 17 July 2008
3. Forecasts – Why wait? Read tomorrow’s news … today! (part 3), 17 July 2006
4. Forecasts – Why wait? Read tomorrow’s news … today! (part 4), 17 July 2006
5. A soft despotism for America?, 22 July 2008
6. Can Americans pull together? If not, why not?, 29 July 2008
7. The World’s biggest mess, 22 August 2008
8. Dr. Gulliver explains why America has become so fearful of the future, 23 October 2008
9. A sad picture of America, but important for us to understand, 3 November 2008
10. Quote of the day, by P. J. O’Rouke, 19 December 2008
11. Does this economic crisis make the State stronger – or is it another step in the decline of the state?, 16 January 2009