I used the same analogy to one of my grandson’s friends yesterday. He wanted to know exactly what the debt ceiling was and what raising it meant and I said exactly what you did here. He was able to grasp that.
You used it because it is common sense. Zero is so arrogant. Just curious, how old is the young one in question?
It’s a good to know that at 80+ years I can still think like your grandsons friend. I do know from experience that if I were in debt and decided I needed more debt to pay somebody or the previous debt off I would like to know who was holding my debt. As I hear it the USA government now takes/squeezes from it’s citizens 20x the amount of money needed for running the Nation. It makes me wonder if raising the debt limit isn’t just to be able to send more money to help out the debt predicaments of banks in Europe. We did this a few years back and there is probably still unpaid bills generated by the Fed Reserve and Euro banks.
Did you mention that his generation are going to end up being responsible for the debts that we are running up? That's why I don't believe in government debt -- it's not the same people borrowing that have to repay.