Sure, thank you for the links.
I was hoping for the original poster to respond with what they thought being "hamstrung by unaffordable debt" would look like for the United States.
Do you have a vision of that?
The article on Japan illustrated debt looks different between different countries (although Japan and Argentina are always economic exceptions). It's the same with people, I suppose.
Someone with a $100k annual salary and $100k in debt can be a good thing (a mortgage or a cashflowing business) or a bad thing (credit card debt, high-interest student loans and no degree). Although someone with that same salary and $10MM in debt would be a different story, almost regardless of what they did with the money. So there's definitely an upper limit to debt.