As the United States approaches $40 trillion in federal debt, a familiar human temptation reasserts itself: the belief that a coming technological revolution will spare society from the discipline of reckoning with its obligations. Artificial intelligence may indeed reshape productivity and prosperity, but history suggests that windfalls are more easily spent than saved, and that structural forces — rising interest rates, aging populations, and political inertia — rarely yield to optimism alone. The question is not whether AI will create wealth, but whether the institutions entrusted to stewar