I think there's been a long-standing debate between the political people and not just

around Biden but in the Democratic Party generally and the economic policy staffs.

Economic policy staffs have basically been saying for years, look, Mr President, we've got a good story to tell here on jobs, on inequality, rising wages for poor people.

But the political people, I think, they just look at the polls and they say look Biden's approval

Reagan on the economy as you say is 40 percent so their advice has been I think to

steer away from that if you can I think that sort of argument seemed to win out

earlier in the year and

Biden was very much emphasizing the sort of non-economic arguments but he seems to

have flipped a bit in the last few weeks. That's my colleague John Cassidy.

John has been tracking the Biden administration's economic strategy since the beginning.

Now our economy is literally the envy of the world.

And to hear President Biden talk about it, you'd think that Americans would be

celebrating in the streets. 15 million new jobs in just three years. A record. A record.

But if you look at the polls, while Americans might be feeling slightly better about the economy,

they aren't actually giving Biden that much credit. Should they be? And what exactly is

Biden's plan? You're listening to the political scene. I'm Tyler Foggett and I'm a

senior editor at the New Yorker. So John, I wanted to start with a really basic question, which is basically how we measure whether the economy is doing

well or doing poorly.

What are the main measures that economists use and then what are the measures that

voters use and are they different?

Yeah I mean that's a very good question.

There's a whole variety of economic statistics which economists and policymakers look at.

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