Steve Sailer writes: The DC metro area boomed between 1996-2000 and 2011-2012, in large part due to guys in the DC metro area failing to prevent 9/11. Thus, the War on Terror dumped huge amounts of money on the DC metro area.
When you are deciding where to raise your children, always try to anticipate long chains of events in the future like the World Trade Centers being blown up and the taxpayers shoveling hundreds of billions into the DC area in response.
* My guess would be that the long-term trend has been toward bigger cities winning, so Minnesota with one big urban area does better than Iowa with multiple smaller ones. I wouldn’t be surprised if it has to do with airports. Frequent fliers are crucial figures in the economy and their lives are typically easier living near a major airport with direct flights like Minneapolis rather than having to make connections like if they lived in Des Moines.
By the way, has anybody ever studied frequent fliers as a class? What are their demographics, how do they vote, etc? On the rare occasions when I fly anywhere, the passengers who look like they know what they are doing strike me as a fairly distinctive group, but the term “frequent flier” never seems to have caught on as a demographic shorthand the way “soccer mom” has.
Comments:
* Frequent fliers are mostly as you would expect – white, somewhat male, managers, professionals, sales people. Mostly in their 30s and up to retirement age. Well remunerated. Most would vote conservative I expect, to suit their demographics.
* Well, two novelists have taken on the subject, although one someone elliptically.
The Accidental Tourist could be taken as a first stab. Anne Tyler is a fine writer, by the way.
And then there’s Kirn’s Up In The Air. Book was better than the movie. A lot better.
