$80 trillion in wealth has been redistributed from the bottom 90 percent of Americans to the richest 1 percent over the past 50 years

Chettyet al. (2014) estimate intergenerational mobility for the US down to highly disaggregated geographic areas (commuting zones) and find that it varies considerably. In some parts of the country, mobility (or equality of opportunity) is on a par with some of the most mobile countries in Europe, while in other parts, children struggle to escape poverty when born into it. They also find that areas with relatively high rates of mobility tend to be ones that are less residentially segregated (i.e. households from different socioeconomic backgrounds and different races reside in the same neighbourhoods) and have lower inequality, higher quality public school systems, stronger social networks, and stronger family structures. The empirical observation that more equal societies tend to be more mobile is also known as the Great Gatsby curve (Corak 2013).

In January 2018, Deutsche Bank produced an 81-page report, “US Income and Wealth Inequality”,

So which seems likelier: that we're no better off than we were a quarter century ago, or that Shadow Stats is total bunk?