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Tim Worstall elaborates on my recent post on how Uber and other sharing-economy innovations is helping both to increase the effective size of the capital stock and to make capitalists of people who aren’t traditionally thought of as capitalists.

Also from Tim Worstall is this elegant explanation of one of the many problems with the Card-Krueger study that allegedly showed that minimum-wage hikes do not hurt low-skilled workers.

Martin Feldstein adds his voice again to those who explain that it’s a myth that America’s middle-class has stagnated economically for the past few decades.  A slice:

With the traditional definition of money income, the CBO found that real median household income rose by just 15% from 1980 to 2010, similar to the Census Bureau’s estimate. But when they expanded the definition of income to include benefits and subtracted taxes, they found that the median household’s real income rose by 45%. Adjusting for household size boosted this gain to 53%.

And, again, even this more substantial rise probably represents a substantial underestimate of the increase in the real standard of living. The authorities arrive at their estimates by converting dollar incomes into a measure of real income by using a price index that reflects the changes in the prices of existing goods and services. But that price index does not reflect new products or improvements to existing goods and services.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Geoffrey Norman explains that Bernie Sanders’s “Progressive” policies are failing in Vermont.  (gated)

in the New York Times, Greg Mankiw reviews Arthur Brooks’s new book, The Conservative Heart.

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