By definition government debt equals net private savings (+/- exports). This is bogus. Sure it's technically true, but it doesn't actually mean anything. If t

By definition government debt equals net private savings (+/- exports). This is bogus. Sure it's technically true, but it doesn't actually mean anything. If the private sector wants a surplus you have to have a government debt. There is no such thing as what's meant by a "surplus" here. There are two things that can be considered "saving". There is stockpiling useful things for your own later use, and there is collecting rights to other people's future work (which can be approximated by stockpiling your chosen medium of exchange). But when you consider net "savings" of an entire economy, rather than individual "savings" of individual people, there is no "other people" to collect future work from. The government can create more medium-of-exchange for people to stockpile, and it's recorded as a debt of the government, but it's entirely meaningless because there's nothing to exchange it for. The only way to have net savings -- deferring the benefits of current work -- is to stockpile those benefits in a warehouse somewhere for later retrieval.