Anyone that has ever run a business understands that financials are a key part of the business. The financials have to make sense to anyone analyzing the financial numbers of the business. As soon as they do not, the whole competency of the business is taken seriously into question by anyone analyzing the business. Even worse, current management of the business may lose faith in your knowledge of the business.
One financial number of prime importance for any business is what is called the break even date. The break even date is the date is the date in which revenues equals costs.
Every business (and governments) have costs and revenues. Ideally, revenues are less than costs. If not, there has to be a plan to address that or else the solvency of the operation will be seriously in jeopardy.
In the case of governments at any level, most of their revenue generally comes from taxes. The costs of running the government and services and entitlements they provide are the costs. When costs are greater than supply, there are a couple of things governments can do. They can lower costs, increase revenues, borrow funds to pay for the costs, print money, steal money, or more. How a business and governments manage that will ultimately determine the solvency and fate of the organization.
If they manage it properly, the organization thrives. If not chaos or even complete breakdown can occur. Right now those running most governments around the world are not managing it properly. They have chosen to borrow more than they can handle, tax more than they can tax, print more than they could print, and steal more than they can steal.
If you do not manage it properly- and many governments are- the laws of nature will take over. Chaos, resistance, breakdown,defaults, wars, protests, and other malignant symptoms will appear. Like a cancer it will not take over the whole world at one time, you will see it surface in one part of the world at first, then if not quickly overcome it will spread to other areas fairly quickly.
But this is not a message of gloom. This is a message of optimisim. Governments neglecting their fiduciary duty is nothing new. Government have been doing this kind of neglect ever since there have been governments. Every time, humans have responded. The government may not have survived in the previous form, but has generally evolved to something stronger. It is a message of hope, because the governments that do not manage it well will eventually collapse or whither away. The ones that do make it, will be hopefully end out learning important lessons and come out stronger than before.
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