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b'The pandemic shook things up, a lot. It exposed the country\\u2019s deepest inequalities, and arguably, made them worse. Now, all eyes are on President Biden to see how he\\u2019ll fix it, and Republicans are responding exactly as expected: by crying about the debt. Here\\u2019s the thing, though, says Paul Krugman, an American economist and op-ed columnist at The New York Times, there\\u2019s really no reason to. It\\u2019s a tale as old as time. Both parties spend, but when it\\u2019s time for Dems to make the economic plans, and Biden took office, Republicans \\u201csuddenly rediscovered that they were worried about debt\\u201d he tells co-host Molly Jong-Fast on this bonus episode of The New Abnormal. But it actually doesn\\u2019t matter, he claims. \\u201cThe important thing to realize is that governments are not like you and me, governments don\'t have to pay back their debt,\\u201d he explains. \\u201cAll they have to do is make sure that their obligations don\'t grow beyond any reasonable estimate of what they can us over time. That means they never actually have to pay off debt. It\'s a threat that exists only in the imagination of people who want to have some reason to squeeze government spending.\\u201d Instead, says Krugman, lawmakers should prioritize giving money to poor families with children, which is cheap and will get them out of poverty. \\u201cYou can do an enormous amount for children, fairly affordably,\\u201d he says, but for the love of Pete, stop calling it tax breaks. \\u201cIt\'s actually just giving people money,\\u201d he says, which isn\\u2019t a bad thing at all. Will the Trump voters go for this? It\\u2019s unclear, but Krugman says Biden\\u2019s policies actually help them the most. (\\u201cThere\'s basically no place in America that is more dependent upon federal aid. That is more lifted out of absolute misery by massive support from the taxpayers than Eastern Kentucky. And it\'s very, very hard to find someone who didn\'t vote for Trump and those in those counties.\\u201d) Plus! The past alignments of the Democratic and Republican parties are completely changed, he says. (\\u201cPeople used to describe [the GOP] as being a center, right party, but it\'s not, it\'s now an extreme authoritarian, anti-liberal, anti-science, anti-almost-everything party that more or less [resembles] fascist parties of Europe.\\u201d) And! A prediction of what economic recovery look like post-pandemic. It\\u2019s good news for the working class. 

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