Here is a great quote from Walter Williams on why the governments in Europe and America are in such debt:
"What’s the common thread between Europe’s financial mess, particularly among the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain), and the financial mess in the U.S.? That question could be more easily answered if we asked instead: What’s necessary to cure the financial mess in Europe and the U.S.? If European governments and the U.S. Congress ceased the practice of giving people what they have not earned, budgets would be more than balanced. For government to guarantee a person a right to goods and services he has not earned, it must diminish someone else's right to what he has earned, simply because governments have no resources of their very own." ("The Financial Mess in the US and Europe," 9/28/11)
It's so simple. But politicians don't get votes unless they can promise to get people out of a mess that they (the politicians) created in the first place. And that nearly always involves giving away somebody else's money. And if somebody is incurably lazy, has no conscience about taking what another person has earned, or is too dumb to see through the "entitlement" demagoguery, then their vote can be bought.
And countries end up in insoluable debt.