Government debt is never the problem considering government has monopoly to create new money. The problem is private debt. In fact if you look at why private debt increases it's usually correlated to a DECREASE of government debt. For example, the Clinton surplus forced private sector into massive debt. If you haven't noticed, the common wealth countries have been going through a huge austerity program. This austerity is the likely reason private debt increased heavily. Also since corporate tax rates were also lowered, corporations kept more of their profits. They used these to invest in assets like stocks, bonds, and real-estate. In other words, austerity plus lower tax rates equals high private debt.