The District of $300/Hour Consulting
I can't get enough of the writing of The Weekly Standard's Andrew Ferguson. I encourage you to read "Bubble on the Potomac," his recent piece for Time magazine, about the sickness that is Washington, D.C.
Every paragraph is terrifying. But here are a couple that give you a taste of the piece:
Peter Corbett isn’t so sure about the wisdom of D.C.’s version of the knowledge economy. Corbett heads a social-media marketing company, with corporate clients that have famous names. Most of his work involves nonprofit foundations that have flocked to Washington to be close to the fount of grants and tax breaks. He did a single project for the federal government and then swore it off for good. He describes his first meeting at the Pentagon. “There are 12 people sitting around the table,” he says. “I didn’t know eight of them. I said, ‘Who are you?’ They say, ‘I’m with Booz Allen.’ ‘I’m with Lockheed.’ ‘I’m with CACI.’ ‘But why are you here?’ ‘We’re consultants on your project.’ I said, ‘You are?’ They were charging the government $300 an hour, and I had no idea what they were doing, and neither did they. They were just there. So I just ignored them and did my project with my own people.”
Aside from its wealth, the single defining feature of über-Washington is its youth. Most of the people who have moved to Washington since 2006 have been under 35; the region has the highest percentage of 25-to-34-year-olds in the U.S. “We’re a mecca for young people,” Fuller says. One recent arrival says word has gotten out to new graduates that Washington is where the work is. “It’s a place where a liberal-arts major can still get a job,” she says, “because you don’t need a particular skill.”
The scariest thing is that it's true.
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Aug '10
Re: The District of $300/Hour Consulting
Mollie Hemingway, Ed.:
“It’s a place where a liberal-arts major can still get a job,” she says, “because you don’t need a particular skill.”
The scariest thing is that it's true.
Doesn't that need to be true of any place a liberal-arts major can get a job?
I kid, I kid. All of us business majors have great respect for liberal-arts graduates and their valuable contributions to our society. Please don't spit on my cheeseburger while you make it.
Jan '11
Re: The District of $300/Hour Consulting
Well, as Mollie says, the liberal arts guys are making $300 an hour. The business majors are dining at McDonald's. ;)
Jul '11
Re: The District of $300/Hour Consulting
I liken DC to the Masque of Red Death. It's all just one big party but sooner or later reality will hit. Is it 4x the stimulus money per capita or only 3x? More than half of the ten wealthiest counties in the country are there and there's no question why.
Dec '11
Re: The District of $300/Hour Consulting
$300/hr doesn't buy what it used to. It gives a whole new meaning to "higher" education. Well, somebody has to pay off their school loans.
Mar '11
Re: The District of $300/Hour Consulting
You should know you've really got a problem when your team of eight consultants is deemed useless by the head of a social-media marketing company.
May '10
Re: The District of $300/Hour Consulting
So as I sit here dreading another exhausting workweek, it's comforting to know my income taxes from Tue, Wed, and Thurs will go to pay some scoundrel 300 bucks for one hour of doing nothing. That's motivation.
Sep '10
Re: The District of $300/Hour Consulting
For motivation, just think of every spade or shovel going into the ground as one more step toward burying Western civilization's undertakers.
Re: The District of $300/Hour Consulting
I'm not a fan of this piece, but I particularly dislike the slam on Uber. The primary reason it became popular was not because of snooty Washingtonians wanting town cars (though of course that exists), but because it's virtually impossible to get a cab in certain parts of the city and the government has made it incredibly expensive to own a car there.
Read Megan McArdle for more.
Edited on May 29, 2012 at 2:51pmFeb '11
Re: The District of $300/Hour Consulting
Benjamin Franklin:
There are two passions which have a powerful influence in the affairs of men. These are ambition and avarice--the love of power and the love of money. Separately, each of these has great force in prompting men to action; but, when united in view of the same object, they have, in many minds, the most violent effects.
Consider also a line inAtlas Shrugged which was spoken by Henry Rearden’s mother:
All business is just dirty politics and all politics is just dirty business.
Mrs Rearden is not drawn as a very attractive character, and the above assertion portrays her cynicism and her disrespect for her son, a very successful industrialist. Under a properly functioning system of democratic capitalism, the statement is certainly not true. But it describes very well what happens when business and government become excessively interwoven.
See my post the accidental eloquence of Mrs Rearden.
May '10
Re: The District of $300/Hour Consulting
Thanks for the love, Blue Ant. All us liberal arts types really appreciate B-School folks, too - especially your wizardry in counting the fortunes we build!
Re: The District of $300/Hour Consulting
Ben Domenech: I'm not a fan of this piece, but I particularly dislike the slam on Uber. The primary reason it became popular was not because of snooty Washingtonians wanting town cars (though of course that exists), but because it's virtually impossible to get a cab in certain parts of the city and the government has made it incredibly expensive to own a car there.
Read Megan McArdle for more.
And learning about what Uber has had to fight to offer its services is enough to make anyone a small government advocate. But still, it's a luxury service for a particular subset of people who live and work in a luxury town.
(I also thought about responding to your comment, Ben, by having everyone gather around and point at you while shouting, "Witch! Witch! Witch!")
Aug '11
Re: The District of $300/Hour Consulting
That article was both frightening and depressing. A city full of Marie Antoinettes, telling the rest of us to eat cake. It's hard not to wish they all meet the same gruesome, well-deserved end.
So anyway, I think I know what vulture capitalism really looks like. And here they are, circling the corpus of DC, grossly overfed and dying of gluttony, picking away at all the loose change they can find -- and there's a lot of it!
Edited on May 29, 2012 at 3:36pmFeb '11
Re: The District of $300/Hour Consulting
Before anyone starts serving greusome, well-deserved ends to DC residents, I'd like to make an exception for the Congressional staffers, among other groups. There are still plenty of young people out here who barely make enough to survive. If you're paying much less than $1,000 a month in rent, you're lucky.
Aug '11
Re: The District of $300/Hour Consulting
You know, if you read this article, and follow it up with the piece about the Sacketts by C.J. Box, you get quite a picture of our ruling class, eh?
Nov '11
Re: The District of $300/Hour Consulting
Ben Domenech: I'm not a fan of this piece, but I particularly dislike the slam on Uber. The primary reason it became popular was not because of snooty Washingtonians wanting town cars (though of course that exists), but because it's virtually impossible to get a cab in certain parts of the city and the government has made it incredibly expensive to own a car there.
Read Megan McArdle for more. · 1 hour ago
Edited 1 hour ago
I didn't see any slams on Uber, unless you consider the word "exploits" to have a negative connotation. The article does give the impression that Uber's clientele contains a large percentage of hipsters who get paid large sums of money to watch each other's Powerpoint presentations, an impression perhaps confirmed by things like this.
Sep '10
Re: The District of $300/Hour Consulting
Every use of the word "eh?" requires you to pay Canadian G.S.T and Excise duties.
Sep '11
Re: The District of $300/Hour Consulting
I spent the fall of my junior year in high school as a Page in the House. Many of my classmates ended up back in DC as legislative aids, climbing the ladder pretty quickly to positions like chief of staff. I thought I wanted to go back there while I was in undergrad, but I alway assumed you had to be really smart to be able to write legislation, advise Congressmen, run committee staff. I though, "How can I know any of that stuff as a 19/20/21 year-old?"
What I realize now is that I couldn't, and they didn't. They faked it better or had an overinflated view of themselves that was fed by this atmosphere.
Edited on May 29, 2012 at 4:39pmAug '10
Re: The District of $300/Hour Consulting
You're quite welcome; we know you didn't have time for accounting classes in between basket-weaving and art history.
Someone has to set up the mutual funds to skim commissions off the guys who moped through Comparative Literature. We're happy to help!
Nov '11
Re: The District of $300/Hour Consulting
BlueAnt
Mollie Hemingway, Ed.:
“It’s a place where a liberal-arts major can still get a job . . . because you don’t need a particular skill.” . . . .
Doesn't that need to be true ofanyplace a liberal-arts major can get a job?
I kid, I kid. All of us business majors have great respect for liberal-arts graduates and their valuable contributions to our society. Please don't spit on my cheeseburger while you make it.
Business school? What an oxymoron!
Going to school to study business is like going to a nunnery to study prostitution: Every once in a while you might actually learn something about your subject, but they won't like it if you start getting into the habit.
May '11
Re: The District of $300/Hour Consulting
Two unrelated points. My neighbor is a Washington lobbiest who commutes weekly. He is in his early thirties, has a wife who stays at home with three young kids. They paid $1.2 million for their house, well after the housing bubble collapsed. Certainly he could have wealthy parents who paid for his house through a trust but it sounds like he created his apparent wealth the old fashioned way. He lobbbied the federal government.
My son, Scott, was a paid aide to Lindsay Graham many years ago and mostly wrote letters of reply to constituents that Graham would usually read before signing. He complained to me one night that he had to write a letter concerning a telecommunication bill that was being considered. He complained that it took him twenty minutes to even figure out what the bill did. I said, 'Really, twenty whole minutes. That's amazing." He is used to my sarcasm.