The proposition that income inequality is a problem, and a growing one, has become a staple of the left. Assertions of a "widening income gap between rich and poor Americans" and a "disappearing middle class" appear daily in the nation's newspapers as the refrain of liberal politicians and sympathetic journalists.1 By dint of repetition these assertions have attained the status of conventional wisdom; most commentators no longer consider it necessary to cite evidence to support them. Examples of this phenomenon could be multiplied endlessly, but a typical instance is the claim by Michael Lind, senior editor of the New Republic writing in the New York Times Book Review, that "income inequality in the United States has reached proportions not seen since the Great Depression."2 No authority was deemed necessary to support this rather startling claim -- which, as the data set forth below show, is entirely false