With all the money culminating in the Washington area, the city and its surrounding suburbs are indeed a world apart from the rest of the country. While regulatory uncertainty and the threat of increased taxation continue to stifle entrepreneurial capital investment, DC residents often help themselves to $150 meals, a taxpayer-subsidized metro system, and a variety of bars serving overpriced drinks. Armed with "fistfuls of disposable income," they live in paradise compared to recession-wrecked America.
This disconnect in lifestyle is understandable when we consider the anatomy of the state.
Social power is man's power over nature, his cooperative transformation of nature's resources and insight into nature's laws, for the benefit of all participating individuals. Social power is the power over nature, the living standards achieved by men in mutual exchange. State power, as we have seen, is the coercive and parasitic seizure of this production — a draining of the fruits of society for the benefit of nonproductive (actually antiproductive) rulers. While social power is over nature, State power is power over man.
By being infused with the central state, much of Washington, DC, lives parasitically off of the collective labor of the rest of the country. Their standard of living comes at the expense of those whom they lord over. The ruling class establishes the rules of conduct for millions despite being made up of just a very small portion of the population. In return, it demands and receives compensation that is then funneled to the politically connected. This stream of violently confiscated funds is the lifeblood of the city.
In the end, the people of Washington have little desire to have their lavish way of life fall by the wayside. Their goal is to keep the nation's focus on the government's operations. This guarantees more power, prestige, and authority for a city overrun by men and women who take pride in their lawful ability to wage war abroad and at home. As long as the federal government remains an overarching factor in everyday life, it will attract a great deal of wealthy interests looking to the game the system in their favor.
The DC mindset is fixated on the idea that such a state of affairs can last forever. Much of the younger crowd that resides in the nation's capital still doesn't see the writing on the wall. Ferguson ends the article explaining why:
The optimism of über-Washingtonians so far survives the unspoken worry about a coming age of austerity, in which government spending cuts would end the high life that Washingtonians have come to expect. They are right to be optimistic. The two most plausible deficit-reduction proposals — one by President Obama, the other by the Republican-controlled House Budget Committee — each calls for the government in 2021 to spend a trillion dollars more than it spends today.
Those living off the state are convinced the good times won't come to an end.
Trillion-dollar deficits beg to differ however.
The day will come when either investors demand higher interest rates for government bonds or prices pick up exponentially due to the extraordinary amount of inflation engineered by the Fed. Either way, Washington will then have no choice but to cut back or risk the complete destruction of the dollar.
It will be a period of reckoning like no other.
For a country that is forced into subsidizing the profligate living habits of the state and its partners in crime, the only justifiable outcome would be for the latter to suffer.
For every government employee or contractor relieved of service in Washington, DC, and elsewhere, one or more taxpayers will be relieved of the burden of paying their salary. When such an event happens en masse, it will truly be a time of celebration for America as a whole.
A NATION FULL OF SUCKERS...........
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