Now Is the Time for California to Think Big, Again
Will the State Use This Moment to Be Ambitious—Or Shrink Back Into Its Old Habit of Budget Cuts?
Coronavirus is forcing Californians to isolate themselves. But it has brought us together in one big way: by fusing all of our biggest problems into one colossal crisis.
That crisis could be our once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform the state—if we can ignore the conventional wisdom that this is a time to shelter our ambitions in place.
For Californians, COVID-19 is a crisis of crises. It merges together a collection of failures that most of us consider separately—housing, energy, poverty, prisons, courts, schools, climate, health care, immigration, pensions, taxes and budgets, and …