How Do You Troubleshoot the Kubernetes Problem “connection to the server localhost:8080 was refused”?

One of the following applies (with #1 being related to Kubernetes anywhere and #2 only being relevant to running Kubernetes in GCP).

Problem scenario #1 (any Kubernetes)
You run a command like this: kubectl get svc

You get an error like this: The connection to the server localhost:8080 was refused – did you specify the right host or port?

What should you do?