I can see how Washington DC sucks in a lot of money.
I can’t see what they do in Washington DC that actually generates that money.
They’re just leeching money off of the rest of the country, not actually generating wealth. The same could be said about NYC and Wall Street. Citibank for example doesn’t actually generate its annual revenues mostly in NYC. Those revenues just get reported there because that’s where its HQ is.
Some of these cities are just recipients of huge government largesse as government contractors and government itself.