When common people talk about the economy doing well, they mean that it's easy to make a good living. You can get a job, a house, a car and food. Maybe you can

When common people talk about the economy doing well, they mean that it's easy to make a good living. You can get a job, a house, a car and food. Maybe you can even have leisure and a bit of luxury. When economists refer to the economy doing well, they talk about a bunch of indices being in a range they consider good. These indices are constructed in a way that is supposed to make them correlated with desirable outcomes on a large scale, but what's considered desirable is ideological and the indices themselves are often useless. When capitalists talk about the economy doing well, they mean that they're getting richer at a satisfactory rate. People are buying their products, and can afford to pay a lot for them. Their assets are appreciating. You probably guessed that these aren't the same things, but they're being conflated.