from WNYC studios. I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Thursday, January 4th.

Happy 2024 and happy year of the $34 trillion United States government debt.

That figure has been in the news since New Year's,

but with very little context about how to process such a mind-numbingly big number.

Is $34 trillion a red-flag data point?

A normal acceptable figure considering the size of our overall economy?

Does it portend trouble ahead for Medicare and Social Security and inflation and devaluation of the dollar?

Or just a big round but not that bad number for Republican politicians to take AMAT in an election year as a scare tactic.

We will get a take on this now from none other than New York

Times columnist and CUNY Graduate Center professor, Paul Krugman. He's known as an economic

progressive who takes no prisoners when it comes to a Republican truth twisting. But he also did

write a column in October called Why We Should, but Won't, Reduce the Budget Deficit.

So let's see what he thinks.

Dr. Krugman, always good to have you on the show.

Welcome back to WNYC.

Hi, good to be back on.

So first, let me ask you to put that $34 trillion figure in perspective, open-ended question.

How do we begin to process what that kind of number with so many zeros

means in human terms?

Okay, first thing to say is, you know, this is America.

Everything about America is gigantic.

And so, you know, anything you name, even how obscure it is, it's going to be a gigantic number.

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