Capital Gains Are Causing Income to Exceed Output and Economists Are Surprised

Ok folks, this one is a little nerdy, but there are some important issues here. In the last year or so the Bureau of Economic Analysis' measure of national income growth has exceeded its measure of GDP growth. This has led some analysts to jump on the income numbers and say that the economy is actually growing somewhat more rapidly than the GDP measures that were routinely follow, which are measured on the output side.

Just to backtrack for a moment, in principle we should be able to measure...