Moreover, while Democrats run the state legislature, there are enough Republicans there to block any meaningful reform.
Peter Schrag wrote a book over ten years ago, Paradise Lost, which foretold the disaster California would find itself in. Proposition 13 was at the core of the state's problems then, and it continues to be a ruinous piece of legislation now.
We can't just shrug California's economic mess off; the state has one of the largest economies in the entire world.
Krugman may be hitting it on the head when he wonders whether California's insanity as reflected by the Republican Party will go national:
But that presumes that we’ll be able, as a political matter, to act responsibly. The example of California shows that this is by no means guaranteed. And the political problems that have plagued California for years are now increasingly apparent at a national level.
To be blunt: recent events suggest that the Republican Party has been driven mad by lack of power. The few remaining moderates have been defeated, have fled, or are being driven out. What’s left is a party whose national committee has just passed a resolution solemnly declaring that Democrats are “dedicated to restructuring American society along socialist ideals,” and released a video comparing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to Pussy Galore.
And that party still has 40 senators.
So will America follow California into ungovernability? Well, California has some special weaknesses that aren’t shared by the federal government. In particular, tax increases at the federal level don’t require a two-thirds majority, and can in some cases bypass the filibuster. So acting responsibly should be easier in Washington than in Sacramento.
But the California precedent still has me rattled. Who would have thought that America’s largest state, a state whose economy is larger than that of all but a few nations, could so easily become a banana republic?
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