Psychic alarms aside, the Obama years were actually a good time for the American affluent. Over President Obama’s eight years in office, the S&P 500 gained 235 percent, more than 16 percent annually—one of the very best returns in US history.19 Yet through those years, one heard the pounding drumbeat of discontent: the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, the Trump campaign. These movements had many points of disagreement with each other, but even more important similarities, including a rising tolerance for violence.
