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First, elections: the pictures of long lines of Floridians waiting to vote in the rain moved most Americans to patriotic admiration. It shouldn’t have. The lines were visible evidence of

voter suppression. Meanwhile our state, California, and many others, was mailing ballots to all voters. For those who want to vote in person, our county, Los Angeles, has converted polling

places into voting centers where anyone registered in the country can vote, and the centers will open for days before Election Day. To be sure, California is hardly perfect. Like all

America, it has been hammered by Covid-19, though densely populated San Francisco has managed better than any other US metropolitan centre; if the entire country had done as well, only

50,000 Americans would have died. For all California’s riches — if it were a country, it would be the fifth largest economy in the world, ahead of India and just behind Germany — poverty

remains a plague, and so does homelessness. Second, immigrants: Unlike Trump-land, California understands that immigrants are good for America, not bad. In 2015, nearly 200,000 Indians lived

in the Bay Area, and Indians led 12 per cent of all Silicon Valley start-ups. Indeed, immigrants from India are the single best-educated group in our state, and Asian immigrants are, on the

whole, better educated than US-born Americans, according to a 2017 study. As ageing causes record numbers of college graduates to leave the labour force, highly-educated workers arriving

from foreign countries are filling the void. A nation-wide study several years ago found that the economic impact of immigrants was bigger in California than any state. In 2017, the economic

contribution of _undocumented _immigrants to California’s economy was estimated at more than $180bn — or more than the entire economy of Oklahoma. And money alone can’t measure the impact

of immigrants’ diversity in enhancing not just the richness of our food and music but also of our culture. Third, climate: California has become “America” in dealing with the climate crisis,

all the more so now that the federal government has gone AWOL — or worse. California has taken the lead in assembling coalitions of private industry, cities and regions. Indeed, our city,

Los Angeles, has a deputy mayor for international affairs. This past August, major car makers — BMW, Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and Volvo — agreed to meet California emissions requirements 

nationwide for cars and pickup trucks rather than fall in line with new, looser Trump federal standards. Fourth, finance: California also clings to the notion — quaint now that Trump’s

Republican Party, once obsessed about fiscal deficits, now eagerly embraces them — that citizens ought to pay for the public services they receive. A bill proposed last summer would raise

the state tax rate on incomes over one million dollars to 14.3 per cent, and to 16.8 per cent for incomes over five million. Fifth, innovation: Might higher taxes that push people,

especially wealthy whites, to move out of California? Probably, for in total almost 700,000 people left last year, mostly for other southwestern states. But California understands what

perhaps Trump, the real estate brander, cannot: innovation is hardly affected by marginal tax rates. It is not something that start-ups obsess over. After all, what we now remember as the

golden age of American manufacturing was also a period when the highest marginal bracket for federal income tax was 90 per cent! Sixth, fairness: California pays more in federal taxes than

any other state, by a long shot. Whether, and how much, “foreign” aid it provides to America by receiving less in federal subventions than it pays in taxes is probably not a very interesting

question, though it became politically hot when President Trump threatened to retaliate against “sanctuary states” by cutting off some federal payments. The statistic is slippery, but

California probably gets close to a federal dollar back for each one it pays. New Jersey is the most generous donor, getting only three quarters back for each dollar it pays. And perhaps

there is a seventh reason to be proud: Mr. Biden is on track to win California by the largest margin of any candidate in a century! A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication

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