Also, worth noting that all succesfully countries spend more than they take in. US, Canada, UK, France, especially Japan. They just structure it differently.

Put another way, in Japan, they don't print money to debauch the currency, they just borrow from retirees under weird terms that don't make sense.

Ultimately, the net quality of life will wash out the accounting, but the difference is if investments are made rationally be actors - and - the system 'believes' that it works and upholds it. Especially outside parties who continue to value the currency on some level.

Simply by 'losing the faith' of outside parties, everything can go downhill and break in ways that even our own economies would break if that happened - so sometimes it's hard to tell what's really happening.

For this reason, countries like Russia have to hoard gold, run surpluses, keep a fat current account, so that when the 'system loses trust' in a huge way aka 'sanctions' - they can stay alive without the need for international credit.

So this simplistic 'balance the books' approach isn't really it.

It's more like: 'everyone has to act responsibly and rationally and especially not be corrupt' - in the state, private sector, everywhere - including voters. This is a nuanced argument though. Not very populist.