The given intent for any individual, company, or government, when they borrow money in the present, is through their future earnings to pay that borrowed money back. While there are myriad reasons why any entity borrows money, the most proximate cause is that they believe that the importance of getting the money now and thereby having the ability to use such in a way that makes sense to them, is going to exceed the pain, if any, of paying it back with appropriate interest and/or penalties when due. So, in short, those that borrow money are leveraging their future for the present, because if they are unable to pay back those funds so borrowed, they will individually suffer for that, or as in the case of present day governments, there is a very good chance it will be those of a future generation that will be stuck with the paying of the bill.
In other words, while it can be said that individuals that borrow money and fail to timely pay such back will have to individually deal with the consequences of this, the nuances of what happens to a particular company or government is typically different when they so default on their debts. For instance, many a publically owned company has borrowed boatloads of money, only to become at some point, insolvent; in which the upshot of this is that the assets of that company do not match up with the debts so produced, signifying that the money so borrowed has already been spent or utilized, and thereby cannot be successfully recovered except at a discounted rate to the debt so created. This can mean that certain company individuals, in particular, senior executives, may easily have been the beneficiaries of very lucrative compensation packages, and will not have to pay a dime of it back to those creditors, making those that are creditors to that corporation, and the investors of that debt, the biggest losers. So too, governments can borrow billions upon billions of dollars, and do such for an exceedingly long time, as long as those that are issuing the credit, believe that government is ultimately good for paying back that debt; but thereupon there comes a time, when those issuing such credit, either lose their faith in such or demand more stringent terms for the risk involved, in which, if that government, subsequently fails to uphold their part of the bargain, the edifice collapses, hurting most everyone of that nation, and in particular, hurting those that are just commencing their lives and livelihood, for they are the ones that will suffer most dearly from the reparations and credit restrictions for the failure of their government to be solvent as well as to be prudent.
Those that do the borrowing are in effect, taking or utilizing what they have not fairly earned, yet; as if they have already earned it, though they have not, but instead have merely made a promise or a commitment to make good on such. In life, not every good intention comes to fruition, and for a certainty, those with a devious intention often fare far worse; but good or bad, there always is an eventual reckoning, and for those governments that have been fiscally irresponsible, as well as those representatives of the people that have been using their power to buy prosperity for the present generation, by charging that bill to the future generation, leaves those of that future generation stuck with that bill, and thereby being unfairly burdened with a debt that they did not so create.