First, raising taxes does not kill job creation, but it does annoy job creators. At Brown’s urging, voters in 2012 approved, by a healthy margin, a plan to raise taxes on the high end. This new money is the biggest reason why the state went from a $25 billion budget deficit to a projected surplus of almost $5 billion. Instead of building more prisons, California has restored the funding flow to its once-vaunted public university system.

At the same time, job growth has been robust. Trying to poach payrolls in this state, Governor Perry said, “I hear building a business in California is next to impossible.” Maybe a traditional business. But not the new-century kind. California leads the nation in new high-tech, bio-tech and manufacturing jobs, a result in part that Brown attributes to the “yeasty and innovative” nature of the state. Perry can’t duplicate that, no matter how many corporate subsidies he passes around.

More important to the inequality debate, a recent study on upward mobility found that poor children from San Francisco or Los Angeles are far more likely to rise to the upper-income bracket than those in Dallas or San Antonio.

Second, one-party Democratic rule does not have to mean freewheeling spending. Brown is tightfisted; always has been. Democrats own this state. And if, through Brown, they can raise taxes and curb public-employee excess — as Brown is attempting to do — they present a serious rethinking of the D brand.

The spoiler to this narrative could be the proposed $68 billion bullet train from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Costs have ballooned, legal challenges are continuing and the public has soured on it, after having voted for the initial bonds to get the project underway. Brown is sticking with his choo-choo. He cites Abraham Lincoln’s decision to push ahead with the transcontinental railroad despite the Civil War.

“We have to think three or four generations down the road,” he said when asked about the train last month. “In medieval France they could commit to building a cathedral that’d take 200 years.”

Third, the great exodus never happened. Since the dawn of the recession, the state has added about 1.5 million people — almost three Wyomings. And yes, 67,702 people moved from California to Texas in 2012. But 43,005 people moved from Texas to California. (Population growth is not necessarily a good thing, especially in this overstuffed state, but that’s another topic).