dippin

People die. Governments don't. People experience huge fluctuations in their incomes, governments don't. Finally, and most importantly, the government is big enough to have a huge impact on the economy, people aren't.


Which is to say that:
As long as interest payments don't become too much of a burden, governments can infinitely refinance their debt, while people pay their's down to avoid leaving debt to their kids. Governments, or at least the US government, doesn't have to fear a massive reduction in revenues the same way people, and, to some extent, poorer countries, have to, which leads the latter to defaults. Finally, sudden spending cuts hurt the economy in the short term, in turn affecting the revenues again. People can treat spending and revenue as separate. Whatever the government does with spending affects their revenues.