We have a number of Midwestern cities

that are smaller than they used to be.

"The city of Detroit has lost nearly

two thirds of its population since its post-war peak."

"Cincinnati has lost 40 percent of its population

since 1950."

"In 1950, nearly a million people lived

in the city of Cleveland.

Now, under 400,000."

A lot of the industries that have been based there

have gone away.

"The plant where they once pumped out 12 million

four-speed transmissions is shutting down."

"A southern Indiana pillow factory prepares to close."

"Hostess Brands says it will shut down its Akron plant."

"Heads of American Axle Manufacturing in Hamtramck

say the plant is closing its doors."

So those are cities that are overbuilt.

They have airports and housing stock

and cultural amenities for bigger cities

than they are today.

And then we have coastal cities that have not enough

infrastructure to support their current populations.

A lot of that, there isn't that much we can do about.

Google, Apple, JP Morgan,

these are private companies that have chosen to cluster

in expensive coastal cities.

But the government is something

that's under our control.

"The Washington area now commands the highest

housing prices compared to income in the country.

If a certain amount of well-paid government jobs

left the Washington area, we would not

have a crippling hole.

This is a very expensive office space market.

Companies would lease that space.

It's an expensive housing market.

If it was a little bit less demand to live here,

people who live here would see rents

see rents fall down, and it could give places like

Cleveland, Detroit, that have a lot to offer, they have

art museums, they have professional sports teams,

they have theaters, but have a lack of jobs engines,

some more opportunities there.

There's a lot of government agencies

that don't have a great deal to do with politics, per se.

The Centers for Disease Control,

which is headquartered in Atlanta,

is a really good model for that.

It's a government agency, it's very important,

but it's not really part of national politics.

The sort of technical and scientific agencies,

you often find, have already decided to sort of move out

to the suburbs in search of cheaper and more plentiful

office space, and those are the kind of agencies where

we should think about... if we could get an even

higher standard of living by moving to lower cost cities,

but also to places that, frankly,

just have more need of the jobs.

There's no need for everything to be so incredibly

centralized.

It makes people feel like politics and government

is happening in a far-off, very distant kind of place.

The average income in the DC metro area is

the highest in the nation, and people rightly find that

to be a little bit troubling to the American spirit.

And so trying to spread some of that opportunity

around, after all, the tax dollars that support these jobs

come from everywhere, and it makes sense to,

make sure that the benefits also flow everywhere.