Oh, absolutely. Growth is arbitrarily defined too btw. Once you look into it, a lot of seemingly "objective" economic metrics are adjusted based on somewhat arb

Oh, absolutely. Growth is arbitrarily defined too btw. Once you look into it, a lot of seemingly "objective" economic metrics are adjusted based on somewhat arbitrary factors like seasonal variation. The debt brake isn't based on economic considerations though, it's rather based on ideology, much like austerity (which is known to be counter-productive when used to "save the economy"). The correct solution would be to remove the debt brake and address the problems it is meant to prevent directly, but nobody involved wants that.