It is weird how people, especially libertarians and conservatives, argue about the Auten and Splinter paper on income inequality. Even the media talks about it weird. It is like we read different papers.
Auten and Splinter found income inequality is rising! Not to the magnitude of Piketty, Saez, and Zucman's research, but they still found it is rising. Look at their graphs!
Gini coefficients are higher both pre and after tax/transfers here (a higher Gini means greater inequality).
Even just looking at the Top 1% they found higher income shares over time both pre and after tax/transfers.
And it is really weird hearing libertarians of all people on this as they oppose a lot of the tax and transfers that have attenuated the income inequality of recent decades. In the Auten and Splinter paper they specifically note that the tax system has had increasing progressivity and there has been increased redistribution. Without those taxes and transfers, income inequality has risen even more substantially.
I don't know where the truth lies between Auten/Splinter and Piketty/Saez/Zucman- anyone saying they have certainty here is almost certainly ignorant of the assumptions made by both parties- but it is weird people can't even agree on what Auten/Splinter are showing.