The average income of all households in 2000 was $42,700, while the 13,400 households at the very top had an average income of $24 million each or 560 times the average. It was not always this way. In 1970 the very top group had about 100 times the average.

Clearly the only significant income gains over three decades went to a very narrow slice at the top. After adjusting for inflation, for each dollar of income in 1970 the top 13,400 households had four additional dollars plus a dime to spend in 2000, while the average household in the bottom 99 percent had only eight cents more per dollar.

The enormous concentration of income among a very very few becomes even clearer with a simple comparison of income growth between 1970 and 2000. How did the top one hundredth of 1 percent compare to the bottom 99 percent? For each dollar of additional income going to each of those in the bottom 99 percent of Americans the richest each averaged an astonishing $7,500.

Applying the National Bureau of Economic Research report to the incomes reported on tax returns in 2000 produces an astonishing result. The 13,400 top households had slightly more income than the 96 million poorest Americans. That is a chasm vastly greater than the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported when it said that the top 2.7 million had as much as the bottom 100 million.

The data show that slices of the pie have changed, with a few getting a lot bigger share and many getting less. Now let's look at a second way to analyze the data by examining actual incomes, at what Piketty and Saez found about how much money people at each income level made in 2000 compared to 1970.

What Piketty and Saez showed from the official government data was that two decades after the promise that lowering tax rates and reducing regulation would benefit everyone, the income gains were flowing straight up to the top of the income ladder. Even the derisive description by critics captured in the phrase "trickle-down economics" was not proving out. At the bottom there was less money for food, shelter and clothing. Four out of five Americans were making less or were no better off in 2000 than in 1970.

People in the middle class and even those making more than 95 percent of their fellow Americans were working harder than ever and going nowhere fast. For those on the ninetieth rung of the ladder, average income in 2000 was $90,271, which, after adjusting for inflation, was a one-fourth increase from the $72,320 in 1970. In real terms incomes for those on the ninetieth rung rose at less than 1 percent per year, which was far less than the rate of growth in the economy.