Technical debt is less analogous to financial debt, and more like an anchor. You want to move fast to keep up with the market, but your debt slows you down.
The issue with this oversimplified formula is that you cant accurately determine which debt affects which features. For some features it could be zero, and others it could be 100.
However, I do agree that all teams should be carrying an amount of technical debt to be healthy. It shows a certain quality of decision making to balance it well.
All too often though it becomes an excuse to procrastinate and that might as well be gambling.
The additional complexity and work that comes with tech debt is the interest you pay on it.
We also pivoted other application where only database stayed roughly the same. Loads of legacy stuff was still there but it is going to be phased out soon.
So I have seen situations where tech debt was never paid back. I have also seen one guy that is not paying me back my money, but I still remember he owes me. Some tech debt will go into oblivion in next year or two...