Yeah, I see too often devs shrug off their "technical debt" when what they're really describing is simply sloppy work. These economic metaphors always break down when you challenge the idea that devs/dev managers are always acting in the best interest of the product. I've seen teams cheer their "velocity" because they're closing lots of issues, when most of the things they're focused on shouldn't have even been an issue in the first place.

For the cases like legacy code and turnover, perhaps "tech depreciation" is the more appropriate economic term. You didn't really borrow against the future to have more today, rather something naturally decreases in value over time.