>If the private sector wants a surplus you have to have a government debt. This seems to ignore the ability to add value. The sum of material possessions is de

>If the private sector wants a surplus you have to have a government debt. This seems to ignore the ability to add value. The sum of material possessions is determined by the amount the market would be willing to pay, but the market doesn't have to actually enact every transaction for that value to hold. So if I build a house, I still have the surplus value of a new house, even though the exchange of goods was only for raw materials. I get that technically money is either in the hands of the government or the people (or foreign entities) and so debt and surplus must match between these two (three) groups, but that does seem overly simplistic given that the worth of our material possessions increases as we had value to raw materials.