The question at the core of most of today’s debates in American politics is whether all people have an unalienable right to keep the fruits of their own labor—as the Founders believed and the Declaration of Independence (properly understood) asserts—or whether the government should funnel vast sums of money to the nation’s capital and then magnanimously redistribute it back to the tributaries. Well, the stats are in, and it seems that neither of these two notions is really being fulfilled. To be sure, Americans’ money is flowing to the nation’s capital. But it’s not flowing back.

Indeed, the metropolitan area of Washington, D.C., a city with little identifiable industrial output, dominates the Census Bureau’s newly updated list of America’s wealthiest counties.  Here are some highlights from that list: