Paul Krugman: The original Piketty and Saez paper is at http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/pikettyqje.pdf (warning: PDF). The updated data are at http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/TabFig2004prel.xls (Excel file).
Look first at Figure 1, for a quick snapshot of the rise and fall of middle-class society in America. Then check out Figure A2 for the experience of the top one percent versus the rest. Table A4 shows that even at the 90th or 95th percentile, things haven't been all that great, that the big gains were only at the very top.
Median family income is at http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/f06ar.html. Income by education is at http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/p24.html. I've been kind of surprised at the lack of media attention to the decline in incomes for the highly educated over the last few years.
Edward Lazear's remarkably misleading take on inequality is at http://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/lazear20060502.html.
Also, last month the Congressional Budget Office suggested that increasing inequality may be helping push up tax receipts, declaring that "growth in incomes in 2005 may have been concentrated more than expected among higher-income taxpayers, who face the highest tax rates. Additional data from tax returns for 2005, which will start to become available later this year, will help CBO identify more clearly the sources of growth in taxable income." See the whole report at http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=7184&sequence=0.
