You make it sound like its a black and white thing. I disagree. If you can get your costs under control, that debt accrued now becomes an investment that should

You make it sound like its a black and white thing. I disagree. If you can get your costs under control, that debt accrued now becomes an investment that should pay off the debt in the aggregate long run. After all this is not just money spent on a consumable. This is money spent on a resource(education) that generates more money(in the aggregate) in the form of productivity. The problem is that this is an extremely difficult problem given a large population. Because when you have a large population there ends up being graft that pulls value away and in the worst case scenario(the situation in Communist Russia) the majority of the value is stripped away leaving nothing but the debt. However, that does not mean it can't be made to work well. It seems like many European nations can somewhat get more value than investment (so far).