Our nation's capital is too rich

One thing that drives the capital and its environs is those very large federal paychecks, which now amount to about $90,000 a year in money wages and just under $125,000 a year in total compensation. Washington pay has long been above the national average, but it is pulling away. In 2000, the median compensation for an American worker at large was about 74 percent of the median compensation for a federal employee; today, the average working taxpayer makes only 55 percent of what the average federal tax-eater makes. Our would-be class warriors talk about “transfers of wealth” and “transfers of income” when they mean mere changes in those metrics, but in this case, there is a literal transfer, with the most fearsome agency of the federal government — our corrupt and politicized IRS — raiding our households and businesses to support $1,000-a-night La Tur habits in Washington.

I do not begrudge anybody his enjoyments, and I have a few of my own that no doubt seem overly indulgent to people who do not share my enthusiasms. This is America, and of course we have the best of everything: A gentleman I spoke with at the shooting range last week was firing a $15,000 rifle that cost about six bucks every time he pulled the trigger. I don’t think he was a multimillionaire, but he was driving a Ford F-150, so it could go either way. There are a lot of working guys with $25,000 motorcycles and young women who do not have the sorts of jobs and income that young women have on television shows for young women who are nonetheless wearing Prada boots or carrying Hermès bags. If they can afford them, great. It is not my business what they like, but it is my business to understand and appreciate that someone who is not fabulously wealthy gets to put food on the table and send his children to better schools because of the money he makes selling high-end shoes or motorcycles or .50-caliber rifle ammunition. The sale and service of luxury goods is a big part of how money gets spread around from the wealthy to ordinary workers. That’s what I like about Las Vegas: It is a giant machine for the transferal of money from people who have too many dollars or too little sense to a prospering middle class.

But Washington builds no iPhones. It doesn’t really build much of anything, and it doesn’t create any wealth — it just takes it. Government does useful things and, though the Elizabeth Warrens and “You Didn’t Build That!” gang make rather too much of it, decent, effective, liberal government is part of what makes modern capitalism the engine of prosperity and global cooperation it is, securing the civil peace, protecting property, and enforcing contracts. (Mostly.) It sometimes even does good work in helping to provide an educated work force and a decent transportation system for moving goods and materials around, though it probably isn’t really needed for those jobs, which could be left to free-market providers.