The first rule here absent all others is to understand that the national debt does not function like household debt and so you can't draw comparisons directly.

The first rule here absent all others is to understand that the national debt does not function like household debt and so you can't draw comparisons directly. Some of the comparisons are truthy but not necessarily correct. Another rule to use is that not all spending is treated equally. The country going in to debt to fund projects that boost economic activity (typically measured as GDP) is not the same as the country going in to debt for a different class of projects, for example. Often times we look at national debt but we don't have a great mechanism for evaluating return on that debt.