Nothing wrong with money as debt. That is called a contract.

The problem is that we are indoctrinated to it being a commodity, to save and store, not a medium of exchange, as public utility.

When we try saving the asset, it requires similar amounts of debt.

Blood is a medium, fat is a store. We shouldn't mix them up.

The functionality of money is its fungibility, so we own it like we own the section of road we are using, or the air and water flowing through our bodies.

As such, it is an effective economic lubricant, not a fuel.

Consider that the Federal debt really started to grow, with the New Deal, so not only was Roosevelt putting unemployed labor back to work, but unemployed labor as well.

Paul Volcker couldn't have cured stagflation with higher interest rates, as that starved funding to those willing to borrow and grow the economy, while rewarding those sitting on surplus investment money.

Reaganomics cured it, by borrowing out the surplus and spending it in ways the private sector never would, like the military, but which gave them work to do.

The elephant in the room is the capital markets couldn't function, without the government borrowing up trillions in surplus investment money. The secret sauce of capitalism is public debt backing private wealth.

Logically, as an economic lubricant, the government could resonably inject it where necessary, if it was also willing to tax out the surpluses, rather than borrow them out. Otherwise we have this financial cancer absorbing the entire economy in some enormous metastatic blob.

As the executive and regulatory function of society, government was private once, but as monarchs lost sight of their larger social functions, they were usurped. As the blood and arteries of society, banking is now having its own, "Let them eat cake" moment.

Yeah public banking.