In 2008, when a great recession began to take part, my travels reported by Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, brought me to one American city after another, which felt from major layoffs. I visited places such as Cocama, Indiana, which lost so many jobs at its Chrysler and Dolphic plants, which by the end of the year was marked by one of the fastest women’s cities in America, and Loren, Ohio, where Obama visited a national plaster plant that closed in four months.
After every trip, I would return to my house in Alexandria, Virginia, in the Washington subway, Colombia district, and was impressed with the deleted country’s capital, it seemed to be felt in such a large part of the country. It was not only isolated from the high -end of public employment, but also as a result of the recession, since such a part of the federal economic stimulus ended stay with Beltway contractors which introduced costs.
When my growing family started looking for a larger house in 2009, we left our Corner of Alexandria. Because prices in each other subway zone in the country have declined, they are still rising in the internal suburbs of North Virginia.
Now the situation is sharply turned. As a result of the tireless cash register Elon Musk, the Ministry of Effectiveness of the Government, the great layoffs are in and around Washington. A week ended on February 22, unemployment requirements in Colombia grew by 25% A week earlier and four times higher than a year earlier – and this is just the beginning. The chief financial director of the district predicted that the city where the federal government is approximately a quarter of all wages, can lose as much as 40,000 jobs over the next few years cost the city more than $ 1 billion In income.
The drop is distributed through DMV – DC, Maryland and Virginia – a region where almost a tenth of all jobs are with a federal government, not to mention tens of thousands of people working for contractors depending on federal costs.
The losses are already manifested outside the numbers: the resume of highly educated Flood LinkedIn specialists, in requests from the dismissal of young people seeking to rent an apartment, muted discussions that the family pulls the tables and leaving the city.
It is also expressed in the city landscape itself. Trump’s administration briefly placed the headquarters of many government agencies on List of “difficult” properties They are planned for unloading because they are vacant or insufficient – among them are departments of justice, work, agriculture, health and human services, energy and housing and urban development. This causes the perspective that those who are based on the brutalist and classic revival buildings, built in the 20th century, can once stand out vacant, as well as abandoned factories of the 19th century, hanging over such many cities in the country.
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All this raises the question, which until recently was incomprehensible: is the country’s capital, so long blessed by the fact that the government’s government is at risk of fate, which is reminiscent of many other cities of the company over the years? And if so, why are people outside the Washington subway more concerned? When Detroit was at eight fall, Obama intervened to help the automotive industry, deciding that a great American city needed help. But now the administration of the authorities by itself is striking a major city.
In this turn, it is difficult not to reveal some resentment by allies and supporters of Trump from the regions that have not been well recently. Until 2012, when the country finally left the recession, Seven of 10 richest counties were in the Washington subway; The Area’s Number of High-Net-Worth Households, with Investable Assets of more than $ 1 Million, Had Risen by 30% SINCE 2008. While Midwestern Communities Such as Vice President Jd Vances Hometown, Middletown, Middletown, Ohio Were Being Crushed by The Opioid Epidemic, The Aston Martin Dealrship in Tysons Corner, Virginia, Was Selling Hundreds of the Bespoke James Bond Car for About $ 280,000, Home Prices 1990s.
There is also later fuel for Schadenfreude over pain in Washington: Federal Workers were much slower than in other areas Return to the office after the pandemic, facilitating Trump administration to reject the whole party as a casserole and unproductive. The resilience of remote work in the federal government in recent years Given to the center of Washington’s devastated feelingAs it contributed to the closure of countless places for lunch, retail stores and a major cinema. The fact that there is no irony at the very moment that at the very moment when the city was so broken.
Doge cuts will not cause all the damage to the true economic elite of the region. There will still be lobbyists who rake six-digit contracts. Trump made little valuable to threaten this aspect of the so -called swamp; If anything – For example, higher educationto spend more on lobbyists. The consulting consulting firms of Beltway-Bandit will continue to use some works that have previously been done by government workers and national security contractors lining the soulless highway approach to Dallez Airport.
The actual purpose of the reduction will be a more modest peculiarity: the career of the civil servants, who in many cases could earn more money in the private sector, or guards and office cleaners who return every night to the working class in the anacoustia or the district of Prince George. It is these people who are housing analysts at food security researchers and administrative assistants-which are now frantically looking for another job or consider the opportunity to leave the region.
The cuts will particularly fall on the black residents of the region who have long been hoping for federal employment as staircase to middle class. (Black people make up a disproportionately large share of the national federal labor force.)
Watching all this unfolds, I can’t help but keep in mind another city of the company: my own hometown, Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He once conducted three main divisions of General Electric, which at the peak of the mid-20th century worked more than 13,000 people in the county about 130,000, who supported widely common prosperity in the city with the city Star State Schools And the noisy main street.
But as long as I reached the high school in the late 1980s, the company scale operations in the fast video led by Jack Welch, who came through the ranks in Pittsfield. Classmates looked as one by one, families of engineers and executives departed and blank showcases grew downtown. Ultimately, many of us decided to build our careers elsewhere. The Pittsfield population has decreased in a quarter since 1970, and only 1000 people remain employed in a company that has taken over one of the Rump Ge, General Dynamics units.
Washington is unlikely to suffer such a great destiny, given the numerous barns that have attached to their economy outside the bureaucracy. Tourists will still come thousands to admire the monuments, even if some of the large stone buildings become vacant as the ruins of the Roman Forum. But the experience of Pittsfield and so many major cities in the company is reminiscent of how much a breakdowns when the largest employer in the city takes a big blow, and the ladder goes to increased mobility, starting to crumble. The echo of all these other cities is a reason to offer some sympathy or at least recognition, as Beltwe is now absorbed by blows.
