The way you say it, I feel like it's right but I can't wrap my head around it. Maybe the closest I can get is that if the government were to pay off all of its debts we'd have no leverage. But what leverage do we have over the government now when retards keep voting in representatives that'll push the debt wall back a few more trillion every time we close to hitting it? The hole only ever gets bigger - I don't understand how it's sustainable.
There's nothing simple about the topic, it has been studied for thousands of years and it has that problem of "when people figure it out it fundamentally changes"
But the most important thing to remember is that while people use money as a resource,
civilizations use it as a logistics tool. What things are worth what to who and how much labor of certain types would be used in this area and what effeciency would result from it and how many people would need that effeciency etc. Whether a nation has debt or a surplus doesn't really change this dynamic
because the amount of actual stuff and people in the country is still the same regardless of the financial side. That's the difference between
financial economy which is basically malleable (to an extent) and the
real economy which is the actual stuff, and cannot be wished away with numbers magic.
Honestly a perfect thought experiment from it was the south park episode where the different countries spend the "space money"
https://youtu.be/g9wS0jYio_4?t=22
If anybody hasn't seen it or doesn't remember, basically an alien tests earth by leaving "space money" on earth and telling them not to spend it. All the different countries spend it on hospitals and all sorts of shit as if its actually money but they're only spending it on their own laborers to make those hospitals with resources they already have.
They had the physical means to make them the entire time, nothing actually changed just because the financial side had this huge number added to it.
Likewise, if all of the citizens and companies of the US "forgave" the national debt it wouldn't change shit. We would have the same amount of workers and same amount of stuff. Money is just used as a way to keep track of what's going on.
In some ways a federal debt is the same thing.
People often associate it with a nation is living beyond its means when that really isn't the case because again,
if taking a loan from your citizens for the purpose of paying your citizens is living beyond your means then who is funding this unsustainable lifestyle? You are with your own money. In reality running a national debt just means a different method is being used to "pull" productivity in a certain direction. That can cause problems in and of itself, but it's not the same as being "in the hole" like it is with personal finances.
You might say the idea of an economy is fake and gay, but it's a necessary fake and gay.
