the Paris School of Economics argues that the post-1980 increase in inequality played a role in the 2008 crisis by contributing to the nation's financial instability. In 2016, the economists Peter H. Lindert and Jeffrey G. Williamson claimed that inequality is the highest it has been since the nation's founding. In 2018, income inequality was at the highest level ever recorded by the Census Bureau, with a Gini index of 0.485. Others disagree, saying that the inequality issue is a political distraction from what they consider real problems like chronic unemployment and sluggish growth. George Mason University economics professor Tyler Cowen has called inequality a "red herring", saying that factors driving its increase within a nation can simultaneously be driving its reduction globally, and arguing that redistributive policies intended to reduce inequality can do more harm than good regarding the real problem of stagnant wages. Robert Lucas Jr. has argued that the salient problem American living standards face is a government that has grown too much, and that recent policy shifts in the direction of European-style taxation, welfare spending, and regulation may be indefinitely putting the U.S. on a significantly lower, European level income trajectory. Some researchers have disputed the accuracy of the underlying data regarding claims about inequality trends, and economists Michael Bordo and Christopher M. Meissner have argued that inequality cannot be blamed for the 2008 financial crisis. According to a report by the Congressional Research Service, decreased progressiveness in capital gains taxes was the largest contributor to the increase in overall income inequality in the U.S. from 1996 to 2006. As of 2010 The U.S. had the fourth-widest income distribution among OECD nations, behind Turkey, Mexico, and Chile. The Brookings Institution said in March 2013 that income inequality was increasing and becoming permanent, sharply reducing social mobility in the US. The OECD ranks the U.S. 10th in social mobility, behind the Nordic countries, Australia, Canada, Germany, Spain, and France. Of the major developed nations, only Italy and Great Britain have lower mobility. This has been partly attributed to the depth of American poverty, which leaves poor children economically disadvantaged, though others have observed that a relative rise in the U.S. is mathematically harder due to its higher and more widely distributed income range than in nations with artificial income compression, even if one enjoys more absolute mobility in the U.S., and have questioned how meaningful such international