[abugheratwork]

> The ideology to have little or no state debt is hurting the economy and will do so in the future.

Ideology can be pretty dangerous. This seems like your main point. Back up, though:

> [...] state debt is not like personal or corparate debt. If you cut your spending to pay of a loan, it is usually not a problem.

How is it less of a problem for a person, or for a corporation, than for a government, to have to reduce spending?

[tehabe]

Ideologies are not dangerous, they are just the eyes through which we see things. Sometimes you have to be able to see more because your ideology doesn't help you. But you will never really escape that bias.

The difference is actually very simple. Persons and corporations are not closed systems. If you safe money, the impact is very small. Even when a big corporation safes money it doesn't really matter. But the state is huge and spends a lot of money. And many companies depend on state contracts.

I give you a simple example. The German state is subsidising public transport, if the state cuts theses costs, the company providing this service has only a few choices, such as cutting service or increasing prices. These will leads the consumer to have higher costs. If the company cuts lay off people to compensate, those will lose their income and the state must even pay them unemployment benefits.

So the state budget is not really a question if something is be paid but rather by whom and at what point. It is essentially a closed system.

P.S. Very export depended countries can essentially export this partially to other countries. There is this argument that Germany did that with Greece. While Germany consolidated its budget, the debt of Greece increased.

[ethbro]

The counterargument to the point you're making would be that taxes are essentially "closing the loop" between private and public services.

Either the state taxes and provides public services, or the state taxes less and private services are provided.

I think the bigger point is about the state's role as a consumer- and lender- of last resort.

Through its ability to deficit spend (enabled by its supposed future ability to tax) or its ability to print currency (through its central bank), there are functions the only states have access to. Which become incredibly valuable when everyone else is economically terrified.