Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Steve Hayes.

On this week's roundtable, we'll discuss the state of the U.S. economy, Donald Trump's

just completed trip to Asia, and finally, and not worth your time, grade inflation and undeserved

marks that we got, both high and low, over the years. I'm joined today by my dispatch colleagues

Jonah Goldberg and Kevin Williamson, as well as dispatch contributor

Megan McArdle of the Washington Post. Let's dive right in. Welcome, everyone. I want to start

big picture today. If you are sort of the average news consumer living your life, doing things

that average news consumers do, going to jobs, dealing with kids or grandkids.

And you don't have time to read the transcripts from the Fed meetings or otherwise study deeply

in the reporting on the U.S. economy.

There's so much conflicting news out there these days.

There are certain indications that the economy is doing well, if you look at the stock market,

etc. But inflation is up, unemployment is up.

So I want to just take a big picture look at the U.S. economy and

try to help people understand kind of where we are, where things are going, short-term, long-term.

And I'll start with you, Megan. What's your sense? If I were to ask you the simplest question

possible, is the U.S. economy doing well? How would you answer that question?

It is fragile. That, look, stock market's doing well, but if you actually look at the stock market,

there was a great report out from Apollo management a while back showing that it's functionally all,

not all, but it is largely driven by a handful of tech firms and kind of tech-adjacent firms.

And similarly, the job market, you know, unemployment's 4.2%.

That's not bad.

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