Canada

it worked for President Zelenskyy - although I think he just stopped dressing up for work and now hangs out in his at-home crummies - and if we ignore the stark differences in character and humanity one could assume it'd work for him too.

Basic macroeconomics: The budget of a sovereign government with control over monetary policy is fundamentally not like a family budget.

it's a noble "father knows best" bit of wisdom, but you'll find ANY person, organization or even government unable to save during 'up' years - in this case because it's criticized for not dumping spare money at some cause - needs to borrow money or run a deficit in the 'down' years or when investing in something with delayed benefits.

This is actually how banks make money, but it's also a neat-o vehicle for investment. Go read about it!

This bit of falsely sage advice is a neat-o diversion from the fact that money has been used either to prevent economic collapse during a 100-year pandemic - I know: Milhouse is an expert in managing a country during a global lethal pandemic - or to restart programmes to allow people to work more and generate more tax revenue that were ditched by 'small government / fuck the plebes' administration before, and/or resume maintenance work skipped or killed by those same "looks good this year, fuck the next guy's budget" administrators.

Technical debt also accrues; and any wealthy barber will tell you to shift expensive debts to cheaper debts; and so we repair bridges with loans because we value the things we'd lose more if we didn't.

Stop with the "neither a borrower nor a lender be" bullshit that started as an adage to sloppy aristocrats. It's not even a smart rule for a single normal person, let alone a family or a government. It's short-sighted and shallow.