Governments should not be allowed to borrow money

1.Government borrowing distorts political deliberation: With deficit spending, politicians can promise both increased government services and reduced taxation at the same time! Of course this is impossible in the grand scheme of things, but with government borrowing, the current generation of political beneficiaries can enjoy increased government services and reduced taxes, while future generations must pay the cost by having to put up with reduced government services and increased taxes (or increased inflation, itself a kind of tax). The link between benefit and cost is severed in the minds of voters, enthralled by the promise of deficit spending, and what was left of rational political deliberation goes right out the window. 2.Government borrowing wastes investment funds. When the government borrows the saved up investment funds of people, those funds are no longer available to be invested in private businesses. This is unfortunate, because private investment and government "investment" are very different things. Private investment for purely monetary considerations involves attempting to seek out and employ resources to advance the production processes that are anticipated to be the ones that will produce the most value for the consumers, because doing so will result in the highest monetary returns on the investment. The more resources that are saved and invested privately, the more time-consuming/complicated, but also the more value-productive, production processes can be employed, and with them, the more consumer goods can eventually be produced. Thus, more private investment, guided in its application by the profit motive, is generally a boon to the economy. When a bondholder "invests" in the government, on the other hand, the government does not seek to make the highest monetary return on this "investment" as the private businessman does. Often, the government will just use the money lent to it for present consumption purposes. If it does make what could be considered a longer-term investment, such as building a road or a power plant, it has no way of knowing whether these investments are sound or not, as it does not try to make the highest monetary return on its investments as private businesses do. As such, costs are denominated in money, while "proceeds" are not, and there is consequently no rational way of determining whether the investment was worth the cost or not. Thus, government borrowing transforms fruitful private investment funds into bizarro government "investment" funds, which might just be consumed, or if invested, will be done semi-blindly, without the help of the private businessman"s handy profit/loss test. 3.Government borrowing is undemocratic. If one at all believes in democracy, government borrowing and deficit spending is not it. Allowing this practice enables previous generations of voters to impose financial obligations, via the government, on future generations of voters. According to democratic theory, the current generation of voters are supposed to be sovereign, not the dead hand of the profligate past generation of voters. 4.Interest payments are a big waste If the government takes on debt, it must constantly pay interest on that debt. For many of the debt-ridden governments of the modern world, interest payments are increasingly becoming some of the largest items in their annual budgets. Paying vast sums of money for the dubious privilege of allowing the government to waste investment funds and impose unwanted financial obligations on hapless future generations of voters seems incredibly silly and wasteful. For all these reasons, I think that governments should be prohibited, by their respective constitutions, from borrowing any money.