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Paradise Lost Essay

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Peter Schrag presents the ills of California?fs current politics in an angry and persuasive tone. He says California used to be ?gboth model and magnet for the nation—in its economic opportunities, its social outlook, and its high-quality public services and institutes?h; however, California started to fade after the passage of Proposition 13, the initiative of tax limits (7). Schrag?fs work clearly shows what is the problem in today?fs California, and it is easy to understand even for those who have little knowledge of politics. By focusing on issues of ?gneopopulism?h which is easy to find in California?fs diversity, he succeeds in giving his readers the sense of crisis not only about California?fs politics, but also the national wide …show more content…

In the second section, ?gGood-bye El Dorado,?h Schrag focuses on the issues of public services which he calls ?gMississippification,?h infrastructure, ?gthe fundamentally changed government structure,?h and ?gsocial relations that California?fs tax revolt and its political progeny have produced,?h especially he pays particularly close attention to ?gMississippification?h of the public school system. The budge for the educational system use to be mostly financed by property taxation; however, the state government stopped to spend enough money to keep the high quality educational system after Proposition 13 passed. He describes today?fs California schools as ?gmigrant camp—row after row of drab wooden boxes of uncertain safety, most of them painted brown?h (83). It helps imagine easily California?fs schools with high densities of children and poor conditions. Older and affluent whites, Schrag tells us, care primarily about tax reduction, and they had disproportionate power because the majority of voters were whites. Many measures which reduced tax from rich people and increased from poor people, ?gwho use public services but vote in much lower numbers,?h passed, with the result that the gap between upper-middle class and low income class extended. Schrag shows important facts related to that class issue and how

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