Two Mysteries of the 21st Century – Who Are the Kardashians and Why Don’t Rich People Love Mr. Obama

Enigmas That May Never Be Explained

The vitriol that the top 1% or top 5% or top whatever percent have for Mr. Obama just doesn’t make sense.  To listen to them one would think that the first term of Mr. Obama was just devastating.  But as this post from Paul Caron’s excellent Tax Prof Blog shows, they very wealthy have done very well.

NY Times: Incomes Flat in Recovery, but Not for the 1%

New York Times:  Incomes Flat in Recovery, but Not for the 1%:

Incomes rose more than 11% for the top 1% of earners during the economic recovery, but not at all for everybody else, according to new data. The numbers, produced by Emmanuel Saez, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, show overall income growing by just 1.7% over the period. But there was a wide gap between the top 1%, whose earnings rose by 11.2%, and the other 99%, whose earnings declined by 0.4%. [Striking It Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States (Updated with 2011 estimates)]

(Hat Tip: Mike Talbert.)

So one can only conclude that the animosity of the extremely wealthy in this nation is totally unfounded. Which leads to just another mystery.  How can people this stupid, this unaware of their own self interests be this rich?  It can’t be that all of them inherited their money can it?