⁦ @StevenHailAus⁩ already discussed this.

*Most* of the article is lightweight “debt is bad, boo” that falls under the Fiscal Folk Theorem. As such, added value is nil.

However, there was one bit that allegedly adds information... https://theconversation.com/yes-government-debt-is-cheap-but-that-doesnt-mean-it-comes-risk-free-145848

There was an assertion that raising debt/GDP by 10% lowers GDP growth by some amount. There was a link to another page that is presumably a research paper demonstrating that claim.

That’s something quantifiable.

Obvious problem: is the claim correct? R&R made a very similar claim, and got shot down in a hail of Excel fire. This claim faces exactly the same empirical issues with regards to the direction of causality.

There is an extremely strong correlation between the debt/GDP ratio and nominal growth, for the obvious reason that GDP is in the denominator. Very few government just issue 3-month T-bills; duration is long. So the ratio predictably follows growth trends.

Meanwhile, the data is almost undoubtedly post-WWII, and countries followed very similar trajectories (economic policy followed fashions). There’s almost no independent trials, and everybody knows the big secular trends after WWII.

However, one may note that this was a giant wall of blather that just reduces to the Fiscal Folk Theorem, and one interesting empirical claim (that I could look at if I want a laugh).

With the FFT in mind, it’s very easy to blast through economists’ fiscal editorial pieces.

(If you read this thread and have the misfortune of having to write pieces about fiscal policy, I have one bit of advice. Don’t write the article that 100,000 people before you have already written, find a quantifiable, forward-looking angle.)