As goes California, so goes the rest of the nation?

Victor Davis Hanson writes about how California has led the nation in a downhill spiral:

California taught the nation that taxes can skyrocket – the state has the highest basket of income, sales, and gasoline taxes in the nation – even as infrastructure, government services, and schools erode. It established the national precedent of opposing new infrastructure projects and then enjoying them once the planners and builders who were criticized finished them. California equated a Silicon Valley smartphone in the hand with knowledge in the head – and the nation at large soon produced the most electronically wired and least knowledgeable generation in memory.

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