Gov. Jerry Brown is willing to remake California in his own austere image, but he doesn't think the 37 million people living in the Golden State will like it.

Californians face a "day of reckoning" this November, when they will have to make the hard choice about how much government they are willing to pay for, the governor said Saturday in an interview with The Chronicle.

"There is a lot of magical thinking in Washington and in Sacramento and, maybe, I might even say, Western civilization," he said. "We had it easy and now the moment of truth is upon us. ... We've got to pay for what we want.

"And if we don't want to pay, then we have to deprive ourselves of that which we would like, and it's very hard to get people to make that choice."

Read more at the San Francisco Chronicle