Our pre-election BS-filters are up as politicians wield stats that seem to come from left field. But sometimes their numbers are just so crazy they’re true.
In a speech Tuesday calling for carried interest to be taxed more, President Obama alleged that the top 25 hedge fund managers made more money than all the kindergarten teachers in the U.S. combined. Sound like political exaggeration? Turns out he’s right, the Washington Post reports.
The Education Department’s most recent teacher employment data from 2011-2012 reports 158,000 kindergarten teachers in the U.S. making an average salary of $53,480. In total, that’s about $8.5 billion. The top 25 hedge fund managers of 2014 brought in $11.62 billion, and that’s one of the industry’s bad years. Some quick math shows that those 25 men made about $464 million each.
Even a kindergartner could tell you which one of those numbers is bigger.
Photo: Andrew Storms via Flickr.