That is a truly bizarre question to ask of a sector of the economy. In fact, it's so bizarre as to be a category error. You might as well ask, when will househ

That is a truly bizarre question to ask of a sector of the economy. In fact, it's so bizarre as to be a category error. You might as well ask, when will household debt be zero? Well, household debt refers to debt owed by a sector of the economy; it is not, you know, an actual person that will retire and move to Florida. Neither will our government retire and move to Florida. Our government is not saving up for the days when it collects no taxes. There is no clicking tock that says it's time for government liabilities to shrink to nothing. Similarly the corporate sector is never going to "repay" all corporate debt. Corporates are not planning on retiring and earning no more revenue. Like all other sectors, debt is rolled over and grows with the overall growth of the sector, generally in line with the growth of revenue. For the government, that means tax receipts. The government is a sector of the economy that will maintain a positive debt level just as households and corporates. That does not mean that things like interest rate burdens and debt ratios can be ignored. When looking at the health of the corporate sector or the household sector or the foreign sector, we do look at various ratios, and the government sector is no different. But all of these ratios like debt to income for non-financial business assumes that the debt level owed by non-financial business will never be zero. So asking when government will "pay back" debt is silly. The government will pay back debt when the household, financial, and foreign sector no longer wish to hold liquid risk-free assets and decide to own gold, seashells, and bitcoin instead. That would be never.