yeah but that's why empires collapse.

In order for excessive growth, you need to issue the debt to facilitate that growth because the reserves cannot. Unless you go an horde someone else's economy - but that only works for a short time.

Hence why the US leaps and bounds in growth, it has high debt issuance that facilitates everything.

And they can't default because they can just print their way out of the default, no other country can do this.