Robert Samuelson on the "fateful reckoning…in the unimagined future"

Feeling gloomy about politics and economics? Then don't read this Robert Samuelson op-ed about California's lessons for the rest of us, unless you just want to wallow. His conclusion:

So California is stretched between a precarious economy and a strong popular desire for government. The state's wrenching experience suggests that, as a nation, we should begin to pare back government's future commitments to avoid a similar fate. But California's experience also suggests we'll remain in denial, prisoners of wishful thinking, until the fateful reckoning arrives in the unimagined future.

Being (unlike Samuelson) a native Californian, I stared into the sun and found a happier takeaway in the August/September issue.