Abstract
In the Zeitgespräch of the November 2025 issue of Wirtschaftsdienst, Adalbert Winkler expressed the view: “Die große Verwirrung: Schulden, Vermögen und Generationengerechtigkeit” that government debt does not burden the younger generation with net debt, but rather with a distributional conflict. Government debt therefore does not represent an intergenerational distribution problem, but rather an intragenerational distribution problem. Bernd Lucke and Dirk Meyer take a different view in their response. This is followed by a reply from Adalbert.