I don't understand why you don't see the state as a company.
Let's suppose the state were a company. Since when is a company's annual budget limited by its income? If a company has an idea it wants to implement and needs to invest more than its income allows, does it just drop it? No! It gets money, on the stock market, from the savings bank, from the business angel, whatever.
or goes into debt.
Exactly. Or! And a state, as long as it has its own currency, unlike a company, cannot go bankrupt as long as it borrows in its own currency. That's why a state is not a company.
( Japan has, famously, overextended itself with its 250% government debt ratio. Failed state with hyperinflation... what? wait! )
It is not government debt that wrongs the coming generation, but investments not made. I bump over badly patched roads to dilapidated schools while at home my child is being cared for because there was no daycare spot. But I have a paper saying that Germany has little debt. Thanks to the generations before me for this clever plan. Thx a lot.
What is your approach? Just print money?
You mean what the central banks of the first world have been doing for some time? The missing sufficient condition is: To whom do I give this money? If I pump it into those already wealthy, it looks for investments and all assets get more expensive. See land for houses. Not a single school was built there. So just printing money doesn't even achieve that.
If the state can't capture such profits, it has to go into debt itself. Or just do nothing and wonder why people vote for the AfD.