I first heard the “we owe it to ourselves” rationalization for runaway government borrowing more than 30 years ago in college from a professor of Soviet history, a gentle man who hoped for a gentle communism. Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently echoed that sentiment in a column titled “Nobody Understands Debt,” in which he, too, says not to worry about government debt because “we owe it to ourselves.”

According to a recent Obama administration announcement, we owe “ourselves” nearly $15.194 trillion and soon will be required to raise the national debt ceiling once again to keep paying for all the things government gives us, which apparently consists mainly of ever-increasing debt. The national debt, after all, already exceeds the nation’s entire annual economic output.