We go scooting around history looking at all sorts of empires and the contortions they go through to remain in power. The lesson is: Your primary mission is to stay in power. This will require ever-increasing funding. As you tap each revenue source to its maximum, your long term strategy must be to discover or invent new sources of revenue. When you fail to do this, you will die.

The case is pretty strong. And the outcome (governments never shrink, inexorably consuming more and more until they die) is quite disgusting.