Modern democracies can treat government borrowing as a de facto form of political bribery: politicians borrow to deliver visible present benefits to voters while deferring the costs to the future and diffuse taxpayers. This creates a durable incentive structure that makes fiscal retrenchment politically costly even when debt service rises sharply.
— Recognizing borrowing as an electoral strategy reframes debates over deficits and austerity from technical accounting to political incentives and institutional reform.
Author's claim that politicians 'bribe' electorates with borrowed money plus the cited UK figure that interest on national debt is roughly $2,000 per person per year (and rising) exemplify the mechanism.