This topic has been analysed many times on this forum. My reading of the situatuon is that the WTS has gone through the same process most large corporates have done over the past 20-30 years as the use of technology has changed the landscape as far as doing business is concerned.
At a corporate level they have downsized. Part of this is because technology allows them to do more with less. Part of it is numbers. There is growth but mainly from poorer parts of the world. There are strong indications that those in richer nations are giving less. It would also can be assumed that those donating as a percentage of the number in a location is reducing. The funds have further to go.
The WTS has been able to realise funds from capital tied up in assets such as property. They are doing this in Brooklyn and around the world. This does give them a big injection of working capital but they can only do this once for a given asset. Of course, further investment is happening (e.g. Warwick) but they have to have operating bases and cannot forever buy, develop and sell on the scale they have at the moment.
However, the change to how halls are funded is interesting as this allows them to once again grow an asset base. In countries like the UK where each congregation is a seperate charity there are some protential issues here. In another thread about a special local needs upcoming in the UK I thought it might signal some begging for the new branch build at Chelmsford however someone made this point about the rules around charities and property ownership. It could be that the WTS will change the structure of congregations in England and Wales to make this property grab more straightforward.
The reductions they are making in literature production are part of the downsizing and cost savings. I am not convinced that all of this is being driven by cash flow projections - it could still be an element of the dog wagging the tail rather than the other way round - however the net result is the same: they need less money to operate and therefore can mitigate the effects of reducing income over a longer time.
The other aspect to consider is the WTS is driven by numbers. They NEVER comment on negative figures, only ever promote positive numbers. They will do everything they can to spin the numbers to present decline as growth. Have you noticed the lack of emphasis on the amount being printed nowadays? All the hype at Twickenham was about the number of languages the web site is in, how many people attended in the UK, how many hours are being done (never contextualised of course) etc. The only mention of printed material was when one of the printing overseers was interviewed and they talked about brochures and that they had printed enough to make a stack X number of times the size of The Shard (the tallest building in Western Europe).
For the moment the proselytising in poorer nations will keep the growth as a net gain for some time, perhaps decades. The publishers figures is fudged in the sense that it always presents a peak, not an average but is not the important one. It is still possible to extrapolate information by comparing figures to historical numbers and by slicing and dicing reports to take into account location for example. There are posters on here who have done sterling work.
It is obvious from their efforts that the WTS is not really growing in a sustainable way. It does not really reflect an organisation being blessed by God. It is not preaching in a meaningful way to the vast majority of the world's population. My personal opinion however is that reports of the death of the WTS have been exagerated. It can go on for years, not just financially but also with the duping of millions of people. It will take something of huge magnitude to hasten any decline. I don't even think that a very public peodophile scandle would do it unless it could be proven there was a GB sanctioned cover up of epic proportions.
1-2% growth in western nations has been the case for years. Even decline would not shake most people just so long as the overall numbers are growing.
The biggest risk to the WTS is education and awareness. The hype of this summer and it's conventions will die down and people will be back to the same old same old. The changes going on do keep people on their toes but you cannot change everything or do things quickly without consquence. I live in hope that more and more people will wake up but the WTS have proved masters of managing congnative dissonance.
