A super simple thread to help everyone understand the concept of 'Fiscal Deficit' and what happens when government spends more than its receipts. 👇🧵

#fiscaldeficit #economics #financialliteracy

1. Let us understand everything bit by bit.
Say, Raju is a businessman. Now, like every businessman, Raju is ambitious and curious to know his profit. Hence, he keeps his accounts to calculate his profit.
2. Throughout the year, his total revenue was Rs.10 lakh and his total expenditure was Rs.8 lakh. Hence, Raju is having profit or surplus of Rs.2 lakh.
3. The next year, due to lack of demand, his revenue fell to Rs.7 lakh and his expenses increased to Rs.9 lakh. Hence, Raju is now having loss or deficit of Rs.2 lakh.
4. Now, let us replace ‘Raju’ with ‘Government’ and you get the concept of ‘Fiscal surplus/ deficit’.
5. To put in simple words, every year government receives income through sources like Taxes, fines, penalties, license fees, etc. and expends money on various infrastructure projects, salaries to its employees, etc.
6. Now if,
👉The Government Receipt (excluding borrowings) > The Government Expenditure, then the difference is called as ‘Fiscal Surplus’.
👉The Government Receipts (excluding borrowings) < The Government Expenditure, then the difference is called as ‘Fiscal Deficit’.
7. Now, in India’s case we rarely see a situation like ‘Fiscal Surplus’ as Government ‘Expenditure’ almost always exceeds Government ‘Receipts’.
Many people see this in a bad light. But, it is not as bad as it looks. Why so? Lets find out!
8. India is a developing country. And when we say this, it would mean that the government is always trying hard to increase the economic growth rate.
9. Now, one way of doing this is by increasing the government expenditure. Let’s dig deep to understand how increased government expenditure could mean good for economy.
10. One man’s income would mean another man’s expenditure. Hence, with government increasing the expenditure, there will be more government projects like construction of airports, roads, dams, flyovers, etc. This would mean more money in the hands of people.
11. Whenever, there is increase in income of people, there will be increase in demand of goods and services due to increase in the purchasing power. Hence, this will cause the money cycle to move faster.
12. More income would also mean more savings and hence the bank deposits will boost. More bank deposits would also boost the loan and credit flow.
More credit would mean businesses would invest more money and there will be increase in employment, output and income.
13. Thus, the government expending more will have a multiplier like effect. You may read this to get a better picture. https://t.co/HiBrbbgXBW
14. Now, another question that may pop up here is how can government spend more than it is earning. Well, that is where the borrowing part comes.
15. The fact that there is Fiscal Deficit and not Fiscal Surplus would mean that the government needs more money for expending that what it actually has.
16. Hence, the government will have to borrow money to finance the deficit. It may borrow from RBI (Reserve Bank of India) or even from International organizations like IMF (International Monetary Fund) or even the World Bank.
17. Every year the government plans its income and expenditure through what we popularly know as ‘Union Budget’. Fiscal Deficit is always expressed as a percentage of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) which truly represents the value of economy for an year.
18. If you want to understand the concept of GDP, you may refer this thread,
https://t.co/hf9ucOopdY
Tagging @gvkreddi, @Dinesh_Sairam, @MehHarshil, @dmuthuk for better reach.
Let us spread financial literacy!

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The Government is making the same mistakes as it did in the first wave. Except with knowledge.

A thread.


The Government's strategy at the beginning of the pandemic was to 'cocoon' the vulnerable (e.g. those in care homes). This was a 'herd immunity' strategy. This interview is from


This strategy failed. It is impossible to 'cocoon' the vulnerable, as Covid is passed from younger people to older, more vulnerable people.

We can see this playing out through heatmaps. e.g. these heatmaps from the second


The Government then decided to change its strategy to 'preventing a second wave that overwhelms the NHS'. This was announced on 8 June in Parliament.

This is not the same as 'preventing a second wave'.

https://t.co/DPWiJbCKRm


The Academy of Medical Scientists published a report on 14 July 'Preparing for a Challenging Winter' commissioned by the Chief Scientific Adviser that set out what needed to be done in order to prevent a catastrophe over the winter
Which metric is a better predictor of the severity of the fall surge in US states?

1) Margin of Democrat victory in Nov 2020 election
or
2) % infected through Sep 1, 2020

Can you guess which plot is which?


The left plot is based on the % infected through Sep 1, 2020. You can see that there is very little correlation with the % infected since Sep 1.

However, there is a *strong* correlation when using the margin of Biden's victory (right).

Infections % from
https://t.co/WcXlfxv3Ah.


This is the strongest single variable I've seen in being able to explain the severity of this most recent wave in each state.

Not past infections / existing immunity, population density, racial makeup, latitude / weather / humidity, etc.

But political lean.

One can argue that states that lean Democrat are more likely to implement restrictions/mandates.

This is valid, so we test this by using the Government Stringency Index made by @UniofOxford.

We also see a correlation, but it's weaker (R^2=0.36 vs 0.50).

https://t.co/BxBBKwW6ta


To avoid look-ahead bias/confounding variables, here is the same analysis but using 2016 margin of victory as the predictor. Similar results.

This basically says that 2016 election results is a better predictor of the severity of the fall wave than intervention levels in 2020!

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