I live in Pacific Heights, likely one of the top 5 richest neighborhoods in the world. Let me tell you this really directly… inequality is not going down, these people just have no fucking clue how extreme it’s become because they aren’t amoung it and keep comparing terrible datasets that completely lack the outlier data that makes up most of the extreme inequality.
And pacific heights won’t come up at the top 5 richest neighborhoods in the world because the data publicaly available is crap… you need to see know and run in the circles to see how much shadow wealth is going around
Data is always crap, but there are error bars. GDP is pretty well accounted for.
There was shadow wealth at every point of the last decade, so it's already factored in, the numbers (and studies) are already taking that into account, ... unless! Unless folks suddenly started to commit more tax fraud. (Which is hard to do if your money comes from capital.)
Sure it's not money on some C&D account, but it's just as visible (capital is stocks and other forms of equity, land, and other rights, like patents, royalties, options).
The US is still the wild west in many regards (from good old identity fraud to sheriffs/judges/prosecutors with license to bully anyone without the right connections) and of course the basically institutionalized various other scams come to mind (thriving MLMs, tax exempt religious orgs and megachurches, doctors turned sales-reps for opiates, payday loans, untouchable plants and mining operations polluting and leaving deadly open pits, you know ...), but if there's one thing you can't really fault the US for is getting lazy on private property regulations. And neither the IRS nor the CA FTB is known for being completely clueless.
He has some good things to say, but he wrote more than he had to to say them. That book is too big.