Right near the top, the authors briefly mention their critical assumption:<p><i>> As we have discussed elsewhere, government debt reduces economic activity by crowding out private capital formation ...</i><p>I stopped reading at that point, because <i>many economists disagree with that assumption</i>. To understand why, consider:<p>* When the US government borrows to spend on things like, say, battleships, fighter jets, satellites, AI software, etc., every dollar it spends is a dollar of revenues to a <i>private</i> company like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Amazon, Microsoft, Palantir, etc., which invests in its business, <i>inducing</i> private capital formation.<p>* When the US government borrows to spend on healthcare, every dollar it spends is a dollar of revenues to a <i>private</i> hospital, vendor, practice, or doctor, all of whom invest in technology, facilities, training, etc., <i>inducing</i> private capital formation.<p>* When the US government borrows to spend on <i>anything</i>, every dollar it spends is a dollar of revenues to a <i>private entity or citizen</i> -- who else? What matters is whether that entity or citizen invests a portion of those revenues in endeavors that induce private capital formation in the US.<p>Things are not as simple and clear-cut as the authors would like them to be!