The math that says governments must pay back their debt might be wrong

A new paper challenges a core economic idea: that a country's total future wealth, when discounted, is a finite number. It turns out this future wealth might be effectively infinite, which changes how economists think about government debt.

Economists have long assumed that governments must eventually pay down their debt, often through higher taxes or spending cuts. This paper suggests the underlying math for that assumption might be incorrect. If a country's future economic output is effectively infinite, then governments might be able to roll over their debt indefinitely without needing to generate budget surpluses.