This reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of finance and capital structure.
Anyone operating a business has to have assets. In order to fund those assets, you issue a claim to either equity holders (your "owners" in the traditional sense) or your lenders.
There's nothing stopping a business from simply using debt, rather than owned money (equity capital) to fund a business long-term. You just treat the interest as an ongoing cost of doing business and never really "pay back" the debt. The New York subway (MTA), for instance, is entirely financed through a huge amount of debt historically used to pay for cars, railways, signaling systems, and everything else used to make the system go. The taxpayers just pay the interest on an ongoing basis and don't really "own" anything.
It's a nice system because the government doesn't have to make giant speculative purchases of land, buildings, and other long-term assets -- they can just lease them -- and usually they can borrow quite cheaply, so it works out for everyone. Bottom line, there is no "paying off the debt" -- governments and corporations operate much differently than how households think about debt.
Anyone operating a business has to have assets. In order to fund those assets, you issue a claim to either equity holders (your "owners" in the traditional sense) or your lenders.
There's nothing stopping a business from simply using debt, rather than owned money (equity capital) to fund a business long-term. You just treat the interest as an ongoing cost of doing business and never really "pay back" the debt. The New York subway (MTA), for instance, is entirely financed through a huge amount of debt historically used to pay for cars, railways, signaling systems, and everything else used to make the system go. The taxpayers just pay the interest on an ongoing basis and don't really "own" anything.
It's a nice system because the government doesn't have to make giant speculative purchases of land, buildings, and other long-term assets -- they can just lease them -- and usually they can borrow quite cheaply, so it works out for everyone. Bottom line, there is no "paying off the debt" -- governments and corporations operate much differently than how households think about debt.