An investor friend once told me that the US needs to always be in debt because treasuries give investors a risk-free place to park their money between investments. The sense of entitlement was astounding.
That sounds like just describing the way the current global system works, not entitlement.
Transitioning to another system would work (and seems inevitable at some point in the next hundred years??) but oof it would be chaotic.
I don't think this is necessarily entitlement. There are heteredox but popular economic theories (such as MMT) that view public debt issuance at least in part as a method to satisfy the demand for private savings.