We are told that in California politics and government, 2012 is shaping up as a very big year. That there will be — says Gov. Jerry Brown as he channels the philosopher Thomas Hobbes — "a war of all against all." That parties and interest groups are headed to the ballot with initiatives to gore one another's oxen. That we are about to decide the big questions of taxes and budgets and schools and maybe pensions.

Nonsense.

California is a very big state with very big issues, but our current political debate has all the scale and grandeur of Rhode Island. And though there may be a political war raging around this November's ballot, its distinguishing characteristic is how small it is.

Just look at the central fight of the coming year, over raising taxes. At the heart of this much-touted story is the governor's ballot initiative, now circulating for signatures in a supermarket parking lot near you.

This initiative would temporarily (for five years) raise taxes 1% on income above $250,000, 1.5% on income above $300,000 and 2% on income above $500,000. (The exact income levels slide upward in future years.) The state sales tax would increase by a half-cent. This would produce, by the most recent independent estimate, $5.5 billion annually, or about 4% of the overall state budget.

If you listen to the Democrats, a tax increase like this would represent a historic triumph for fairness, income equality, fiscal sanity and a progressive future. If you listen to the Republicans, it would be the total triumph of big-spending, socialist public employee unions.

The exclamation mark claims are repeated over and over. But can it really be true that the future of California will be measurably different depending on whether people are paying 9.3% or 11.3% on their income above half a million dollars? Does the fate of the economy rest on whether the state sales tax is 7.25% or 7.75%? Does the survival of the safety net and public education depend on whether the state has 4% more to spend next year?

Some say the voters' verdict on these tax questions may have some big, symbolic significance for the future direction of the budget. But that's a big maybe. And when you look at the real — and very small — numbers involved, could anyone, whatever their politics, honestly say that this is a big deal?

California's small thinking isn't limited to its governor's tax initiative. Other fights that could be headed for the November ballot are similarly small potatoes. Two more tax-hike initiatives are a bit bolder than the governor's, but in the end they too leave the basic tax structure in place and produce a small amount of new funds, according to independent estimates.

Yet another initiative would change the corporate tax formulas in ways that, at best, could produce additional taxes equal to less than 1% of the budget.

The various, controversial pension proposals out there have this in common: They are unlikely to save much money because most of the changes affect only the contributions and benefits of new employees, and cash-strapped governments in California aren't going to be hiring many employees any time soon. Even the budget reform ballot initiative backed by California's "good government" community is full of minor changes to rules that won't alter the complicated formulas and supermajority protections that have made the state's budget a world-class mess.

If California were doing OK, such incremental measures might have merit. But with our outsized problems, the baby steps we're being asked to debate are dangerous distractions.

What should we be addressing? Visit the website of the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan think tank, and you can quickly read reports on dozens of specific issues more significant than anything on the ballot: energy, healthcare costs, declines in the college graduation rate, high dropout rates, dangerously decaying infrastructure, water shortages, poorly managed prisons and economic competitiveness.

To pick one question that's not being addressed in our current debate: Did you know that, in an era when people are desperate for jobs, California isn't producing nearly enough people with the education and skills to meet our existing and near-future jobs needs? And did you know that we don't have any kind of a plan to do anything about it?

The trouble is that California can't properly address such challenges without truly major changes in its Constitution and governing system. And we can't address that kind of major reform while we're consumed with making one or another minor change in tax rates and spending. In the big picture, all sides in the current initiative debates are really on the same side: They're protecting the status quo by taking attention away from the questions and answers that are material to California's future.

Whatever the outcome in November in these initiative battles, it's a safe bet that California will greet 2013 with the same broken budget system, the same outdated tax system and the same risky pension system. If we don't stop the nonsense and think big, 2012 — for all the hoopla — will prove to be the Year About Nothing.