Goodbye California, hello DC!

During the 1930s, Southern California (odd that we should still capitalize it, as if it were a state distinct from the northern half) was filled with aircraft companies. It would be an exaggeration to say that they thrived—nobody thrived during the Great Depression—but they did survive, and they enabled the US to build almost as many warplanes from 1940 to 1945 as the rest of the world combined. Now the last of them has pulled up stake and moved to—Washington DC! Northrop Grumman has announced it will relocate its headquarters to the capital city, the better to hold hands with (and write checks to) the US Congress. I shouldn’t make too much of this, given that only 300 jobs will actually change locations. But it does show how American power has shifted in the past eighty years, from the periphery to that steamy city on the Potomac. Blue skies! – Dan Ford