Scale

>>"I'm a fan of a debt-free country, because I think what's good on the small scale is also good on the large scale."

I like that sentence. There aren't many behaviors that flip from bad to good when you increase scale. Here's another example of what you're talking about:

Does the government ever encourage people to think that committing a murder every now and then is okay? No, of course not. But increase the scale, and suddenly, rationalizations for wars with enormous casualty counts appear everywhere.

It's another case of the government telling you to do what they don't want to do themselves. Corporations operate a credit rating system that constantly reminds people of what will befall them if they ruin their credit histories, and governments write bankruptcy laws to mop up what happens when people crash on too much debt, but when it comes to debt, the government sets boundaries for itself vastly different than what they set for you.

Why? Because they're spending your money.