Public debt is at or near record highs across the OECD, increasing the pressure on governments to restore fiscal sustainability over time. This column draws on new cross-country evidence showing that the output costs of fiscal consolidation are modest and short-lived on average, and that lasting scars are hard to detect. But averages conceal a critical asymmetry: consolidations launched in high-debt environments are markedly more contractionary, and in more than half of the episodes in the sample the debt ratio was still higher three years after consolidation. Initial fiscal conditions matter more for outcomes than the choice between spending cuts and tax increases. […]