速读测试：加州：黄粱一梦？From the California Dream to a cautionary tale

本文作者为英国《金融时报》专栏作家 爱德华·卢斯（Edward Luce） 测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：
prolong持续
levee大坝
cumulative累计
cohabit共存
tyranny暴政
handicap困难
From the California Dream to a cautionary tale

There is a saying that you go to Europe to observe the past and to California to witness the future. Washingtonians hope the second is no longer true. Jerry Brown, California’s three-time governor – its youngest when first elected in the mid-1970s and now its oldest at 74 – is doing what he thinks necessary to stop the Golden State from heading in a southern European direction.

But pitching solutions in Californian politics is no guarantee of success. Mr Brown follows in the footsteps of a string of failed governorships and the first prolonged decline in California’s economic prospects. Playing host to Apple, Facebook and the best innovation zone on the planet is no levee against the cumulative effects of misgovernance.

Now ranked bottom by the credit rating agencies among all of America’s states, California is being outgrown both in income and population by America’s other big states. Between 2000 and 2010 its economy grew by 17 per cent compared with 26 per cent in Texas, the next largest state, which has lured many companies from California. It was even outgrown by rust-belt New York. At 11 per cent, California’s current unemployment is a third higher than America’s (and bang in line with the eurozone).

California still takes first prize in attracting US venture capital. But it also wins the gold medal for dysfunctional democracy. It is an open question how long the two can cohabit. Like many successful Californians, Mr Brown is an Ivy League dropout, although in his case the curriculum was Jesuit. Exchanging priesthood for politics was the natural thing to do: his father Pat Brown was California’s governor until 1967. Only Ronald Reagan separated their terms.

Today, Mr Brown is reluctantly presiding over the sharp contraction of much of what his father set up, including California’s justly celebrated public university system. Last year, Mr Brown imposed a 23 per cent cut in the budget for higher education. He may have to do the same again next year if Californians do not approve his proposed tax increases in a ballot initiative (referendum) this November.

Californians have agreed to only three of the past 20 tax proposals. In spite of being a very health-conscious state, last week it rejected a $1 tax on a pack of cigarettes. In contrast, Californians often wave through new spending measures. To judge by polls, this is what America would do if there were a national ballot initiative. Most of what Mr Brown wants to achieve hinges on beating the odds with his initiative in November. “We need to generate the moral equivalent of war,” he says, quoting the psychologist and philosopher William James. “People must understand that we have to make sacrifices if we want to have a future.”

Anyone hoping to restore California’s prospects must overcome two handicaps. The first is too much democracy. The ballot initiative has redressed some errors. Voters approved stem cell research in 2004 at a time when it was frozen at the federal level. But the measure has also tied the system up in knots. In the mid-1990s Californians approved the “three strikes and you’re out” reform, which then spread like a rash across America, including to Bill Clinton’s Washington. It explains why Mr Brown is forced to spend twice as much on prisons as on universities.

In the famous Proposition 13, Californians banned any increase in annual property taxes above 2.5 per cent. To make up for the fact that some Californian mansions now pay less in property tax than the average picket fence home elsewhere, California thus targets its highest earners. The state’s wealthy pay more in income tax than anywhere else (in Texas it is zero). Mr Brown proposes to add a 3 per cent surcharge on those earning more than $250,000. He also proposes a 0.25 per cent increase in the sales tax. California’s byzantine fiscal rules may give him little choice. But overtaxing the mobile and undertaxing the immobile is not a good way to retain businesses.

Mr Brown’s second hurdle is too little democracy. In 1978 voters passed another rule that required a two-thirds majority in Sacramento for any new revenues. That handed a permanent anti-tax veto to the minority party, which is almost always Republican nowadays. In practice, only the people can pass taxes: with the possible exception of hitting the highest earners (and often the most talented), Californians cannot abide them. Thus the state assembly is paralysed by the “tyranny of the minority” while the electorate is living in a “Diet Coke democracy”. The more voters tie the hands of their representatives, the more they despise them for failing to tackle California’s problems.

It is not a productive dialectic. It is also a familiar one in Washington. Once known as “moonbeam” for his dreamy 1970s ways, Mr Brown is a flintier character in the autumn of his career. In the next few days he will push through roughly $2bn in cuts to childcare, the elderly and other welfare programmes. If his initiative fails in November, there will be worse to come, including cuts to education at all levels. Farmers liken this to eating your seed corn.

Mr Brown quotes Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist, who advised “pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will”. It is a good line nowadays for politicians on both sides of the Atlantic. In the face of today’s global economic maelstrom effective leadership is worryingly absent. California offers a cautionary tale of what happens when a democracy ties its leaders up in knots.