Jerry Brown's Political Reboot - James Fallows - The Atlantic:
So, what is strongest about America relative to other societies and economies—its ability to attract and absorb outside talent, its university-based research system, its advantages of scale and natural resources, its acceptance of risk and second-chance-taking, its fecundity in creating new companies, industries, and products—is, across the board, stronger still in California. The state’s brand names and the creativity and wealth they signify—Apple and Intel, Google and Facebook, Disney and Fox, Stanford and Berkeley, Sunkist and Napa/Sonoma, the nuclear technologies of Lawrence Livermore and the biotech centers of San Diego—outshine those of most nations. It is one of the few states whose range of economic strengths, from agriculture to manufacturing to mining to services to education to tourism to medicine and nearly every subsector in between, mirrors that of the country.
But what is weakest about America—the squabbling paralysis of the governing structures, the relentless pressure on the middle class, the steady decline of public schools, roads, parks and the simultaneous rise of the public-security state—is weaker and worse in California. Taxes are high, school performance is low, classrooms—and, most glaringly, prisons—are jammed, and the bridges and freeways that, when brand-new, enabled California’s expansion under Pat Brown in the ’50s and ’60s are now crumbling constraints on its potential.