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‘Rich Men North of Richmond’: They Just Want Total Control
Thoughts on the words, the songwriter and why the song has struck a nerve.
Oliver Anthony has tapped into the deep reservoir of resentment and bitterness building in this country, and many millions of gigabytes have been written about his song, now #1 on several lists.
What I hope to do here is take a closer look at the words and how each brief stanza relates to the lives of the salt-of-the-earth common man of America he spoke for in these beautiful, powerful words.
A very brief personal note in the interest of making clear the perspective from which I write. I spent most of my life as a trial lawyer — I’m so old I still say that proudly — representing the very people Anthony is singing to and for. Over the years, I came to know these good people and their families, visited them in their homes and heard many stories which could have been the model for the first line of the song, so that would be a good place to start a close look at these words and why they mean so much to so many in our country today.
“I’ve been selling my soul, workin’ all day …”
Oliver Anthony (real name: Christopher Anthony Lunsford) is a son of Appalachia, an area especially hard hit by the Democrats’ programs of shipping jobs overseas and the opioid epidemic, hastened and expanded by the Biden open border policy. So, it is easy to understand the pain in his voice when he sings this “Anthem of the Ignored” as it was termed by an anchor on Newsmax. His life story lends further credence to the pain in his voice and the anguish at the heart of his music:
Lunsford provided more details about who he exactly is…
My legal name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford. My grandfather was Oliver Anthony, and “Oliver Anthony Music” is a dedication not only to him, but 1930’s Appalachia where he was born and raised. Dirt floors, seven kids, hard times. At this point, I’ll gladly go by Oliver because everyone knows me as such. But my friends and family still call me Chris. You can decide for yourself, either is fine.
In 2010, I dropped out of high school at age 17. I have a GED from Spruce Pine, NC. I worked multiple plant jobs in Western NC, my last being at the paper mill in McDowell county. I worked 3rd shift, 6 days a week for $14.50 an hour in a living hell. In 2013, I had a bad fall at work and fractured my skull. It forced me to move back home to Virginia. Due to complications from the injury, it took me 6 months or so before I could work again.
From 2014 until just a few days ago, I’ve worked outside sales in the industrial manufacturing world. My job has taken me all over Virginia and into the Carolinas, getting to know tens of thousands of other blue collar workers on job sites and in factories. Ive spent all day, everyday, for the last 10 years hearing the same story. People are SO damn tired of being neglected, divided and manipulated.
In 2019, I paid $97,500 for the property and still owe about $60,000 on it. I am living in a 27′ camper with a tarp on the roof that I got off of craigslist for $750.
There’s nothing special about me. I’m not a good musician, I’m not a very good person. I’ve spent the last 5 years struggling with mental health and using alcohol to drown it. I am sad to see the world in the state it’s in, with everyone fighting with each other. I have spent many nights feeling hopeless, that the greatest country on Earth is quickly fading away.
He concludes with:
That being said, I HATE the way the Internet has divided all of us. The Internet is a parasite, that infects the minds of humans and has their way with them. Hours wasted, goals forgotten, loved ones sitting in houses with each other distracted all day by technology made by the hands of other poor souls in sweat shops in a foreign land.
When is enough, enough? When are we going to fight for what is right again? MILLIONS have died protecting the liberties we have. Freedom of speech is such a precious gift. Never in world history has the world had the freedom it currently does. Don’t let them take it away from you.
Just like those once wandering in the desert, we have lost our way from God and have let false idols distract us and divide us. It’s a damn shame.
Many of the workers I represented were employed on the offshore rigs off the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas and, until their injury, usually worked shifts of 14 days on and seven days off. They worked grueling hours and, as long as the economy was booming, definitely did not receive [REDACTED] pay. When the economy started faltering, and the rigs started coming ashore, along with all the jobs on them, these workers started taking anything they could find, providing what support they could for their families. The “Rich Men” came in for their share of the blame for the plight of these families as they, justifiably in my view, saw those cretins of the Beltway as a large source of their families’ misery. The devastation may not have been opioid/fentanyl induced, but it was severe nonetheless.
Then the economy started picking up, the jobs started coming back, the pay was good again — and along came the Green Energy “Rich Men” to daily proclaim that fossil fuels were evil incarnate and they did everything they could to shut down the entire industry. The love affair with EVs began and the hatred of fossil fuels was mulitplied by a newfound evil – nuclear energy. To those who cite scurrilous writers like Kevin Williamson and his statement that “these communities need to die,” I would ask: if your family was in pain due to the foolishness of the “Rich Men,” who would you look to as the main source of the pain?
Of course, unfeeling monsters like the masters of condescension at National Review and the New York Times could never even imagine being in such dire straits and, thanks to the First Amendment, will never have to be there. But, the people of Appalachia and the good people I knew were hard-working, law-abiding, tax-paying Americans who were ready to work and do not deserve to be looked down upon as deplorables or to be told that their communities deserve to die.
But the “Rich Men” do not care what fate befalls these American citizens — they are, to the extent such men even know they exist, just a pestilence to be managed and disposed of as quickly and efficiently as possible.
“It’s a damn shame what the world’s gotten to/ For people like me and people like you …”
Some time ago, when I was thinking the world could not get any crazier, I started a post inspired by the title of Judge Robert Bork’s book A Country I Do Not Recognize. How could I have possibly imagined how wretchedly worse things would get a mere six months later? It is truly, as the songwriter says, a damn shame what our beloved Nation has gotten to since the last two Democrat Presidents — the worst and most corrupt in our history — took office.
We are immersed in documentary evidence — the kind of evidence generally regarded as the most solid of all forms of evidence by practitioners — of the decline of our once proud, respected, revered and, yes, feared Nation in the world. It is now something akin to the “men without chests” C.S. Lewis spoke about with a Chief Executive who appears to be, according to evidence being amassed by Congressional investigations, a criminal who does not know where he is half the time. He’s surrounded by brazenly dishonest Cabinet members (e.g., Garland, Mayorkas) or, perhaps worse, escapees from a clown show (Buttigieg) or downright ignoramuses (AOC, Pelosi, Hirono, the list is endless) who know absolutely nothing about our Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Every time our “President” beclowns himself, as he did in Maui, cracking jokes about almost losing his Corvette and his wife and his entire home in a small kitchen fire which was nothing like his tall tale to a group of people who still have over a thousand of their loved ones — almost certainly children — lost from the fires or Mayorkas testifies, under oath, that the southern border is secure while videos all over the room are showing thousands of illegal aliens — repeat, in case any liberals are reading this — illegal — wading across the Rio Grande, I “just wake up and it not be true.”
“But it is, oh, it is.”
Our mortal enemies in Russia, North Korea, Iran, and, most dangerously, China, have to be licking their chops like the predators they are at the sight of the dementia-ridden old political hack who we hold out to the world as our “President.” Biden may very well not know what the nuclear codes are much less when to activate them. They know — especially China — how this current administration has weakened our military with all its emphasis on DEI and the “woke culture.” They must look at traitors like Gen. Milley, the highest ranking person in the US military, committing a clear act of treason by assuring his Chinese counterpart he would give him a warning if his Commander-in-Chief launched nuclear weapons and wonder how many other general officers they can rely on for “aid and comfort.”
However, they must look at the Biden family with all their reported blackmail material in hand, especially Hunter whose depravity, immorality, and violations of many laws quite literally defy description, and wonder not whether to strike at us but when to do it.
It is, indeed, a damn shame. And a disgrace. And an embarrassment.
“Living in the new world/With an old soul … “
Or, in my case, a very old soul, which is probably the reason this line so resonated with me and, I am sure, many of my generation who can hardly believe what they are witnessing being done to our country. Examples rain down on us every day, but just a few might illustrate the point.
I remember when we had a President who, it was reported, would not enter the Oval Office without having been properly dressed (such a sadly quaint word these days) in a suit, dress shirt, and tie. How sad for us “old souls” to have seen the Presidency devolve from that pinnacle of respect to having a President being “serviced” at the Resolute Desk while speaking on the phone with a member of Congress. I remember when a President and his family would realize, without prompting, that accepting millions of dollars from foreign governments might just possibly be viewed as treason. I can remember, not long ago, when every single member of a mob who dared to threaten sitting Justices of the United States Supreme Court with physical harm would have been ordered arrested by the Attorney General of the United States, an office whose occupant, the despicable Merrick Garland, is the living embodiment of the phrase “Rich Man North of Richmond.” And there was a time in the history of our nation — 247 years, to be exact — when it would have been unthinkable to raid the home of a former President and have FBI thugs rummage through all of the family’s living areas, including the former First Lady’s lingerie storage area. UNTHINKABLE. Until the Biden-Garland-Wray band of “justice” arrived in America.
An old soul in a new world, indeed.
“Lord knows they all just wanna have total control … “
A couple of recent headlines—one from this morning — should suffice to show how that urge for total control by the “Rich Men” never, never, ever changes:
Will Masks Return to Airplanes? Everything You Need to Know
It may be time to break out the masks against Covid, some experts say
Lockdowns 2.0? Masks, social distancing and more are creeping back as election season builds
It was apparently not enough to almost wreck the American economy, deprive millions of children a proper education for two years, increase the suicide and clinical depression rates by many multiples, and shower everyone with money in the form of benefits — a typical way of solving problems for the “Rich Men.”
Now, they are threatening to do it again. Does one have to be a cynic to wonder about the timing, coming as it does at the beginning of the Presidential Campaign and is prompted by a strain of COVID no one had even heard of until five minutes ago? Color me cynical.
“Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do … “
All you need here is to have watched or read about “The Twitter Hearings” or the new Digital Currency coming to America (patterned after the Chinese Communist system — what a coincidence!) or the Brennan-Clapper thugs having their agents spy on President Trump and his associates and the FBI having its agent falsify a record document of a Federal Court.
“Cause your dollar ain’t [REDACTED] and it’s taxed to no end … “
The author of a recent article, Take ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Seriously, raised an interesting analogy I have not seen elsewhere — he said these words about the current economy are “in fact notably Reaganite.” After referring to the song as “the most intelligent political commentary of the year,” he continued:
It would make a great movie, but Anthony’s life shouldn’t be reduced to a caricature, and neither should the message of his song.
Look at the first verse: “Overtime hours for bulls— pay” is the line that catches everyone’s attention.
If low pay is the problem, the obvious solution is more money, so some economic conservatives say Anthony (or the song’s version of him) should just pack up and move wherever jobs pay more, while progressives would simply mandate higher wages or provide generous welfare benefits.
Those answers don’t address what Anthony actually sings about, which isn’t just money but “sellin’ my soul … So I can sit out here and waste my life away/Drag back home and drown my troubles away.”
The song’s economic agenda is in fact notably Reaganite, as Anthony directs his ire at inflation (“dollar ain’t s—”), taxes (“it’s taxed to no end”) and welfare as a substitute for work (“if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds/Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds”).
“I wish politicians would look out for miners/And not just minors on an island somewhere…”
“The Girls Were Just So Young”: The Horrors of Jeffrey Epstein’s Private Island
Locals say Epstein was flying in underage girls long after his conviction for sex crimes—and authorities did nothing to stop him. “It was like he was flaunting it,” says an employee at the airstrip on St. Thomas. “But it was said that he always tipped really well, so everyone overlooked it.”
Res ipsa loquitur.
“ … if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds/Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds … “
Remember “The Welfare Queen” from President Reagan’s 1976 campaign? Perhaps, courtesy of Oliver Anthony, she is making a comeback! Here’s a little background:
It was January 1976. Ronald Reagan was on the campaign trail, hoping to challenge President Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination. The former California governor took the stage in Asheville, N.C., and started his stump speech.
The federal government was full of waste and abuse, he said, particularly in the public assistance realm. In his folksy style, he listed his alleged examples: People were buying T-bone steaks with food stamps; a housing project in New York City had 11-foot ceilings and a swimming pool. The audience chuckled along.
And then the humdinger: “In Chicago, they found a woman who holds the record. She used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare,” he said.
As if on cue, CNN and ABC jumped right in with one of the new “narratives” about this incredible song, which has gone so viral so quickly if figured in the first question of last night’s Republican debate:
“Cause of rich men north of Richmond.”
A few notes in conclusion. I had planned to do a section on all the criticisms of the song which, as one wit noted, are coming largely from the “Rich Men North of Richmond,” such as the “racial dog whistles” inanity quoted above. The more of them I read, such as another which called the song “anti-Semitic,” an astoundingly foolish characterization of this song, I decided I would leave that unrewarding task to others.
However, the very best description of the actual “Rich Men” comes from an article titled Let Me Help You Understand ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ and the passage below names the names that very likely come to millions of Americans’ minds when they listen to this song. While I am constrained by legal restrictions to only quote portions of this article, I cannot recommend too highly a full reading as it is the best I have seen after reading a number of others. Here is the author’s take on the real “Rich Men”– it is spot on:
Washington is full of sniveling little crooked [REDACTED], who make a living by fu#king up honest people’s lives; telling people who don’t lie what to do and how to live. I think the reason the song is so wildly popular as some sort or political or social anthem is it speaks to the frustrations of old souls who still live by the old rules of honesty, hard work and helping others. It is a song for those that are self-sustaining who merely want the sniveling little [REDACTED] class off of their back. To me, I think of those guys who did their duty with valor and didn’t ask anything in return. They recovered from the hardships of war, went back to Farmville and lived a hardworking and noble life without any bitterness. To think that “rich men north of Richmond” think they are better and more enlightened than these people gets my dander up!
And who are these rich men north of Richmond? One started a worldwide virus. For the love of money, he prevented people from Farmville (and everywhere else) from taking prophylactics that would have saved their lives. In violation of the Nuremberg Code, he forced millions to take an experimental drug that has permanently damaged and killed huge numbers of people. Not only is this man not in jail, but he and dozens of others are getting rich via pharmaceutical royalty checks. There is another guy who has sold his country out for money. He’s a traitor. He’s also a pervert. His family members are despicable. Not all are men, Victoria Nuland and her neo-con cronies in the State Department have caused the deaths of approximately 400,000 young men in Ukraine and Russia, yet defense contractors are getting rich, and big investment funds have huge equity positions in these defense firms. There’s an FBI director who weaponized the FBI, turning it into a Gestapo organization which terrorizes its political enemies. He’s retired now, but despite lying to Congress and leaking documents to the New York Times, he’s on tour getting rich. Cars and trucks and gas cost more because of dimwitted fat [REDACTED] like Al Gore. He has made over $1 billion spreading fear and hurting people. There’s an army of lying sleaze bags north of Richmond, all protecting one another, passing oppressive laws and regulations that help themselves but punish the hard working, the honest and the enterprising. They are slimy and smug. “They don’t think you know, but I know that you do.”
The Oliver Anthonys are smarter than the Victoria Nulands. They don’t take showers with their daughters, and they don’t lie. “It’s a damn shame what the world’s gotten to.” The wokeness, the crime, the abdication of responsibility and the lack of common sense. That’s what the song is about. Malevolent psychopaths are ruining our country and our culture, instead of the “old souls” that could make everything better.
The “Rich Men” can insult Oliver Anthony and his song until, as I can well imagine the songwriter himself would put it, the cows come home, but in so doing, they just show the world how terrified they are of the truth, the quality of this song which is the very essence of the reason “old souls” like me, and millions of younger souls as well, love it.
God Bless America!
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All well put.
And remember, National Review hold the position that this is a bad song and people should stop whining.
They let that be posted and doubled down on, so the editors support it being on their site.
I was pleasantly surprised when they led off last night’s debate with the question about Oliver Anthony’s song and why it resonated to the degree it had.
The answers were horrible/really frustrating! Should have been a lay-up for all of them.
Thank you.
Kevin Williamson’s piece comparing the Trump sons to the Saddam Hussein’s sons was the reason I left NR and I simply could not believe my eyes when he said that some towns in Appalachia should just be left to die. Giving the word condescension a whole new meaning!
I admire your grit in watching the Vice Presidential debate; we could not bring ourselves to do it but will definitely watch Tucker’s interview of the President.
I hope I can squeeze the time to write about the lyrics as well. I think the lyrics are far more politically sophisticated than are generally recognized.
I see that British lefty Billy Bragg has released a version of the song titled Rich Men Earning North of a Million, with lyrics calling for unionization and denouncing climate change.
Article
Lyrics
Doesn’t that speak to the power of the Oliver Anthony lyrics?
What a great piece you have written here. I’m not sure I have the staying power to complete such. I love your writeup just as I love the song.
I’m also a son of Appalachia and, being of Scots-Irish descendency , I can relate. Scots-Irish ethnicity is not one that the Scots-Irish themselves spend a lot of time focused on like we see with many other groups. Maybe that is because they rarely are mingling with the elites who are more inclined. But where America is now may change things.
Thanks for writing this.
I wonder why the focus is on the “rich”-ness of the men north of Richmond. Are all or even most bureaucratic elites rich? Even if they are, is their wealth really the issue? I’m sure there are plenty of rich men north of Richmond who agree with the viewpoint of these lyrics. Or did he just need something that rhymes with Richmond?
I don’t think it applies to all but for most of those to whom it does apply the riches are not deserved for their work and they are, in fact, causing most of what is related in the song by their actions ‘north of Richmond’. That’s Washington. DC BTW.
Just to stay on the pertinent track I started reading ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ by J.D. Vance today. It connects in many ways to me and current events.
EDIT: I just have to get this in. There are so many laudatory comments about Vance’s book printed in the opening pages of the book. Examples include NPR, David Brooks, Bill Gates, and Rolling Stone. The book was published in 2016. I’m just not sure the comments will stand the test of time, not as they relate to Vance but to the commenters.
Yes, in songwriting there are conventions whereby we kinda ‘know’ what he means without it being too literally interpreted.
So, I’ve no doubt he’s not talking about each and every rich man north of Richmond like some retired Kodak executive in Rochester…
It’s a local reference, that is – north of Richmond here means the Washington DC area to include suburbs in Maryland and Virginia.
And they are making money – and not from inventing things, making things or providing services people want. They are lobbyists, parasites, skimmers and scammers.
Take away what resonates in a song.
I could explain I Am the Walrus too, somewhat more challenging, but I won’t.
The difference between Oliver Anthony’s original lyrics and Billy Bragg’s revised version is that Anthony appears to understand that political power is a form of wealth, whereas Bragg thinks of ‘rich’ strictly in terms of capitalists wearing top hats or some such.
For a pure example example of Bragg’s work, here’s a rousing rendition of Worker’s Song by the Dropkick Murphys.
Great point and one which is discussed most accurately in the article I linked Take ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Seriously in which he makes this point:
That’s the genius of this song- no wage will be high enough if the men who earn it aren’t free!
Thanks for the spot on comment.
Recently I’ve read that bills are no longer written by congress but by DC lawyers writing on behalf of lobbyists and corporations. I’m sure the lawyers are very rich men.
Billy Bragg’s net worth is over five million dollars. But I’m sure he exempts himself.
Likewise, the problem with ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ is there isn’t a single politician in DC who thinks the song is about him. They all think of themselves as one of the good guys.
The whole “pull themselves up by their bootstrap” thing from NR is ironic. They are professional beggars. NR does not make a profit, they are reliant on donations. (Same with the “Libertarians” at reason). You seen what happened to “Weekly Standard” writers became when they lost their sugar daddies. I like these writers but sometimes I believe they do not live in the real world.
Also, because NRO are “free trade” fanatics and border security softies, so the boot factory was moved to China under Bush 43 and the unemployed are taking fentanyl brought across the border; an “act of love” as Jeb called it.
And if you have the temerity to actually notice what they are doing they will accuse you of “whining”, especially if you write a song about it which becomes an overnight viral phenomenon, striking a chord with millions of people who are wise to the favorite gambits of “The Rich Men.”
The Yankees have retaken all of Northern Virginia. In combination with kneejerk Democrat votes in Norfolk/Newport News and Richmond, they not only make the Old Dominion into more of a blue state but increasingly defer to suburban arrogance and dismissal of the values and existence of small, rural organic communities.
It is a bizarre outcome when people who make stuff and provide tangible services have low-paying b#llsh#t jobs whereas many in the DC suburban hordes draw hefty salaries for jobs that allow them to “work from home” (ha!) and seem to largely consist of reading each other’s memos and attending meetings. [In a comment the other day I cited a Lewis Carroll offhand reference to a mysterious island where the natives earned a precarious living taking in each others’s wash (laundry). If they just read each other’s memos for a living would it be any different?]
Years ago, Alexandria removed the Confederate statue on North Henry Street a few blocks above King St. which had the the distinction of being the only Confederate memorial statue facing south (the norm for Civil War memorials is that the figure faces the enemy. In DC Farragut, McPherson, Thomas, Sheridan, Logan, Scott, Hancock, Sherman, Meade all face south). It is not that the area is no longer culturally southern but that there is a breezy dismissal of history, a rude amnesia. The South was racist and bad so further thought is not required. I was pointing out to a young woman of my acquaintance at McPherson Square that Gen. McPherson was the second-highest ranking officer killed in the war and that his statue is facing southwest. He was an effective commander killed at the key battle for Atlanta. Her barely concealed takeaway was that it was weird that anyone would know much less care about such things.
My great-uncle, a Georgia gentleman like all the Southern gentlemen of his generation regarded himself to be a constitutional scholar and a Civil War expert. Only the latter was true and was it ever. He came north to visit sometime in the 1960s and asked to visit Manassas to see the battlefield. A park ranger was giving our group a description of events of First Manassas pointing out various spots. Uncle Ebbie politely demurred, thanked the speaker, and offered some corrections. Tall, lanky with a small gray beard and wearing a grey-tan broad-brimmed hat he took a step forward and said that ‘… his brigade did not take up position on the spot until mid-afternoon and –those trees of course would not have been there and there was a fence over there and Jackson was actually rather late in supporting Bee and Bartow….’ I grinned and watched the faces of the group doing mental calculations. The old fellow looks and sounds like he had been there but that would make him over 120 years old, couldn’t be but then again…
It is noteworthy that our white-collar class prefers to attend college out of state and then move to a metro area for a career as the normal course of events. This fosters a presumption that people with roots in one place who don’t leave must be doing something wrong. Often as a matter of economic reality, that is true but it can’t be healthy for America if every generation of Americans cuts all historical or cultural umbilicals and develops contempt for anyone who does not. This is a form of divisive class arrogance that makes everything worse.
And when does reality catch up with the absurdity of large salaries for people whose skill set consists of woke verbiage and ignorance of history, science, and the humanities?
Jim, I like a lot in this post. Well done.
You and I do see things differently in foreign policy. My views on this have changed significantly over the past 2-3 years. I no longer see China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea as significant threats, but rather think that we’ve been causing trouble by provoking them unnecessarily. This is inconsistent with part of your post early on, but consistent with the last quote that you cited approvingly.
I don’t much like the title, though, nor the idea that political opponents just want power. In the title of this post, you claim that “they just want total control.” I think that this is creating a strawman out of the opposition, which is both a bad idea and inaccurate.
I don’t perceive many people who want power purely for the sake of having power, like some cartoonish villain who just likes pushing other people around. Rather, I see people with ideological agendas, and with practical agendas based on their interests. I think that it may be more useful to try to understand the opposition, rather than dismissing them as power-hungry monsters with no particular goals.
I think that they have goals, though not just one, and different people in the political opposition have different goals. It’s complicated.
As a single example of many, consider the Neocons.
There are many other examples, from the perversion agenda to climate change, with people having a variety of ideological and practical reasons to take a certain position. Not just “power.”
Don’t forget the DC area consultants and think tanks.
it used to be (in my lifetime of 39 years) that the wealthiest zip codes in the country were in NYC and Orange County, CA with maybe a couple other hot spots in favored retirement areas. That has changed to being almost exclusively the suburbs of DC.
It is well known that this is where politicians, lobbyists, federal employees, and think tanks reside. The concentration of wealth into these suburbs has called attention to how politicians are enriching themselves through government service.
It isn’t that hard.
True. It would take too many words for a complete description but even the bureaucracy down to the lowest level makes a mockery of free enterprise, You left contractors out of your list and that has been a big growth area the last few decades.
I recall Charles Murray reporting in Coming Apart that the DC suburbs contained a number of “superzips.” I’m not sure that they are now the wealthiest.
I found this report from an outlet called Moneywise, listing the 20 ZIP codes with the highest income in 2018, citing an analysis by Bloomberg. None of them were in the DC area. They were in:
I found another list based on median income for the 5 years ending 2017 (here). By this measure, 3 of the top 20 were in the DC area. They were in:
This data doesn’t support the hypothesis that the DC area has been vastly enriched compared to the rest of the country.
So I’m basing it on old data?
This was from 2013 data:
https://www.chesapeakeliving.com/chesapeake-bay-community-has-richest-zip-code-in-u-s/
After Obama’s first term.
Richest counties per US News:
1. Loudon VA
2. Falls Church VA
5. Fairfax VA
7. Howard MD (overlap DC & Baltimore metro)
8. Arlington VA
Oliver Anthony on the use of his song at the Republican debate:
“It’s aggravating seeing people on conservative news trying to identify with me like I’m one of them…
“I wrote that song about those people. So for them to sit there and have to listen to that, that cracks me up.”
“That song has nothing to do with Joe Biden. It’s a lot bigger than Joe Biden. That song is written about the people on that stage. And a lot more, too—not just them, but definitely them.”
Something about blue collar types bitching about rich people gets my hackles up. Maybe I’m stuck in the eighties. But maybe Oliver Anthony is too.
https://ca.style.yahoo.com/rich-men-north-richmond-singer-200410024.html