In a recent New York Times column, Paul Krugman frets that we are in a "New Gilded Age" because "every available measure of income concentration shows that we've gone back to levels of inequality not seen since the 1920s."

The only estimates that go back to the 1920s are a 1953 study of income tax data by Simon Kuznets and an updated 2001 study along the same lines by Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. The Kuznets estimates can't possibly be compared with recent data ...

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