15 charts on wealth and income inequality in the U.S.

From Business Insider. To my mind the most important is data on mobility. This graph is suggestive: in any two consecutive years, the probability of moving up from the bottom 40% of the income distribution to the top 40% is small and has drifted downward since the 1970s (I assume the extremely high probabilities during the 1940s were due to unique circumstances that would be impossible to replicate today). Cross-country studies show that the U.S. compares unfavorably in the mobility department to most European countries, despite the "land of opportunity" mythology most Americans believe in.