Would you be surprised that a lot of new restaurants, theaters, grocery stores and dry cleaners suddenly sprang up in Nebrasks and that an unusually large number of immigrants from all over the world would start to flock to Nebraska rather than the Washington, DC area?

This is like basic logistics in the military. It takes a lot of support personnel to make it possible for those very few who are actually wielding the spears. All of those who will never qualify for AFSCME membership or make $100,000 a year still earn their pay from the government in a "stimulus" or Keynesian "multiplier" manner.

Maybe this is what you said above, I'm not really sure.

Local services are to a large extent dependent upon core industry. If Fort Hood up-and-moved to Colorado, most of the dry cleaners, barbers, taverns in Killeen, TX would either have to follow the soldiers or go out of business. Other towns that have more diversified economies are less vulnerable to cyclical shocks.

Sure. But as dry cleaners in Killeen radically different from those in, say, Arlington, Virginia? Or, for that matter, towns without a large Army base or government employment?

But the government isn't going anywhere. Perhaps if R/n P/ul got elected (along with sympathetic majorities in both houses of Congress), and we started gutting domestic and foreign commitments wholesale, the local Washington economy might contract. That seems unlikely; the party that attracts most of the "less government" vote had control of all three branches of government from the beginning of 2003 through the end of 2006, yet government growth proceeded apace.

I haven't been in a DC cab in a while, but I used to live in them when I worked as a flunky for a DC law firm.

Another beloved but really stupid bit of my past swept away . . .

I was just reading Paul Graham's essay on Cities and Ambition. He discusses that cities that are centers of ambition send a message to their inhabitants. A message that draw those with similar ambitions to those cities. Such as New York's "you should have more money," or Silicon Valley's "you should have more power" (money is power but Silicon Valley is not impressed with inherited money) or LA's "you should be more famous." I've tried to come up with DC's message. It seems to be "you should screw with more people's lives." DC is filled with people who mix and mingle as they try to come up with ways to make people "better." Mostly in ways divorced from the self-determination and reality of those peoples' lives. This is a change from the original intent of government which was to create an arena where people could succeed protected from outside aggression. But who wants to serve the public when you can be its master.

In the end, DC lives or dies not only by one industry but it is a one company town. It's denizens either work for, work to influence that company or work to provide services to those that do. I remember the concerned articles in the WP back in 2000 or so about the unseemly influence of the new IT industries in North Virginia and those people taking up places at the DC events. But that ended quickly with the last recession and the fact that those businesses were more DC like in that they mostly were based on fraud and deception.