Just a reminder that the State of Victoria, Australia, is not only technically broke, but is really now trading while insolvent. The deficit (ie the budget shortfall) looks like topping 10 billion dollars, and its only getting worse. The virus is not the main cause of this. It is the collapse of the population ponzi, (where the govt took 50k upfront in stamp duty but took on a long term liability of much more than that in required infrastructure), which was making us far poorer in the long term anyway.
Things are hopelessly unsustainable, with an army of useless, grossly overpaid public servants (particularly those at the top), while Dan Andrews has privatized pretty much everything that’s left (the port privatization, the titles office), and we’re still broke. So at the same time we’re going down the tubes financially, we’re also getting gouged by private monopolies. Quite an achievement. There’s not much left to sell, except for the water companies and VicRoads (and they’ve started getting ready to sell that).
A few press gallery members have (predictably) gone on about how we’re all poorer now there’s no immigrants, but of course haven’t factored in that the immigration was making us poorer anyway (just more slowly and not on the surface).
The situation is far far worse than Kirner/Cain in the early 1990s, but oddly, nobody seems to want to write about it. Its coming, ready or not.