Do As I Say, Not As I Do

President Obama, perhaps the biggest lamenter of income inequality ever to reside in the White House, is set to move into new digs when he leaves office next year that will put him squarely within the top 1 percent.

The asking rent for the Kalorama home reportedly is $22,000 a month.

The Obamas will spend at least the next year and a half living in a $6 million, 8,200-square-foot home in Washington’s tony Kalorama neighborhood, The New York Times and other outlets reported. When they’re not trying to decide which of the house’s nine bedrooms to use, the couple can enjoy amenities that include beautiful hardwood floors, white marble countertops, his-and-her master bathrooms, and a terrace with formal gardens. It also has an “au pair suite.”

Even by the standards of Washington’s obscenely wealthy elite, the Obama’s soon-to-be home sweet home is situated in an enviable location. The neighborhood backs into Rock Creek Park, and the new neighbors will include diplomats and former government officials. The Times reported that Tony Podesta, the brother of Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta, often throws parties around his backyard pizza oven.

The house is more than 3.5 times the median-sized American house, which was 2,169 square feet in 2010, according to the Census Bureau. The Obamas will be renting the property, but they will have little in common with most other American renters. While the midpoint rent in 2014 was $920 a month, according to the Census Bureau, the asking rent for the Kalorama home is reportedly $22,000 a month.

If the Obamas attend those Podesta parties, it will be interesting to see how much they complain about income inequality with their new neighbors. Obama has spent plenty of time griping about the issue during his presidency. In December 2003, he called it the “defining challenge of our time” and said average Americans feel like the deck is stacked against them.

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“And that is a dangerous and growing inequality and lack of upward mobility that has jeopardized middle-class America’s basic bargain — that if you work hard, you have a chance to get ahead,” he said.

During his 2015 State of the Union address, Obama attacked tax loopholes that he said cause inequality.

“Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well?” he asked. “Or will we commit ourselves to an economy that generates rising incomes and chances for everyone who makes the effort?”

Obama returned to the theme in this year’s address to Congress, telling lawmakers that they can either “broaden opportunity or widen inequality.”

[lz_table title=”Obama vs. Average” source=”New York Times/Census Bureau”]House Size
|Obamas’ House,Median
8200 square feet,2169 square feet
|Monthly Rent
|Obamas’ House,Median
$22000,$920
[/lz_table]

The irony is that inequality has grown worse during Obama’s presidency by a number of measures. The Census Bureau uses a measure called the Gini coefficient, which shows the gap in incomes rose sharply between 2009 and 2013, and remains above where it was in 2008. According to the World Wealth and Income Database, the top 10 percent in the United States in 2014 earned 47.19 percent of all income, up from 45.47 percent when Obama took office.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director who now runs the American Action Forum, wrote on his website last July that inequality grew more during the presidencies of Obama and Bill Clinton than under the two Bush presidencies.

“The facts belie the rhetoric. Inequality rose most under the more progressive presidents and least under the conservative ones,” he wrote. “This straight reading of the record raises the fundamental question: If the core of progressive policies did not succeed in raising wages and lowering inequality for the past six years, why should the voters have any interest in suffering for another four to eight?”

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Research by the the Brookings Institution shows that inequality is also worst in America’s biggest cities. For instance, Washington, D.C. ranked as the fifth most unequal of the country’s 50 largest cities in 2013, with people in the top 5 percent earning 14.4 times more than those in the bottom 20 percent. As Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) noted during the presidential campaign, the cities with the biggest inequality tend to have Democratic mayors and city councils, while those those with less inequality are more Republican.

But Obama does not need statistics to know about inequality. He lives it. The very reason he is staying in Washington is so his daughter can graduate from Sidwell Friends School, where tuition checks in at $37,750 a year. This summer, the Obamas will spend their seventh vacation — possibly for three weeks — in upscale Martha’s Vineyard. The family also regularly vacations in Hawaii.

And by the way, the owner of the home the Obamas will rent? Former Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart.