Imagine if you set aside a retirement fund.<p>One day, you get a pay cut of 20%, and you choose to stay in your job.<p>You don&#x27;t have enough income to cover your expenses. So you make a deal with yourself to borrow from your retirement fund, at 5% interest. You tell yourself you will pay it back eventually.<p>Month after month, you borrow from your retirement fund, which dwindles slowly.<p>Your retirement fund&#x27;s balance sheet looks fine, because you&#x27;re still accumulating assets, like the loan it made to you, which is growing in value by 5% per year.<p>You are also accruing a lot of debt to yourself, in the meantime.<p>One day, you find yourself having so much debt to yourself, you can&#x27;t service the 5% interest rate.<p>That&#x27;s when you face the music and realise you&#x27;ve spent all your capital away.<p>That&#x27;s what &quot;Taking money from the future&quot; means.<p>That&#x27;s what&#x27;s happening when a country lends lots of money to itself, and eventually has a debt problem.<p>It&#x27;s also what&#x27;s happening when Social Security is &quot;investing&quot; in government bonds, investing in a government that&#x27;s never repaying it&#x27;s loans.<p>Where did that spent capital go in China? Concrete buildings.