Dan, Thanks. The lesson from all the places doing well is that you need fiscal discipline (which includes taxes and spending restraint), effective government and active government. The first two at best allow you to manage decline, not grow. Who wants that? Its the third, when combined with the first two, that give you the best chance to grow an economy with lots of middle class jobs.

You are dead on with this.

Jennifer (Granholm) and I are now living in a state with 50 million people. They wear t-shirts that say Nor-Cal or So-Cal (or Oaklandish), and there are hundred of micro-climates here – literally but culturally, too. So we have barely tasted the tiniest sampling of what Californians are like. With that caveat (and that we are working in the Ann Arbor of California), I’d have to say that there seems to be more of the consciousness you are talking about – namely that public investment matters.

For instance the swell with pride in the amazing parks and are setting aside land for a trail that will be well over 200 miles long allowing biking/hiking around the entire Bay Area loop; public transportation rocks; and the willingness to invest in infrastructure feels VERY different than Michigan. People seem to see a reason for taxes.

Having said that, they are a long way from the fiscal discipline that Engler-Granholm-Snyder have pounded out. The public retiree benefits for example are utterly unsustainable. California lags.

California voters often share the frequent cognitive dissonance that affect Michigan voters. They wildly support public education and access to higher education. But in polls they somehow believe there is no need for taxes to pay for it. They want to spend more, even though they face a NINE BIllion dollar deficit. Yet they believe no new revenues are necessary. As so often in Michigan (and nationally) people here just don’t want to see the full picture you need cuts, reforms AND taxes. Keep trying to wake ’em up, Lou.