Obama Family Wealth

A friend of mine told me that he suspected that the Obama family became multimillionaires through unsavory methods.  In reviewing the information on Barack Obama I find no reason to suspect that this is so.  They could easily have obtained there wealth through honest methods.

First we need to look at how wealthy the family was.  This Wikipedia article indicates that according to Money magazine the family wealth was 1.3 million as of December 2007.  Since then, no doubt the family's fortune has increased, due in large part to the sales of his books.  It seems plausible that they would sell millions of copies, thus making him a multimillionaire.

Now we need to examine whether the family could have accumulated 1.3 million through honest methods.  He served as a U.S. Senator starting in 2005.  U.S. Senators earn $174,000.  Before that he worked as an Illinois state senator.  They currently earn $57,619 per year according to this website.  In addition to this, we need to consider Michelle Obama's earnings.  Here career is described here.  Her pay exceeded those of most attorneys according to figures quoted here.

It seems that the way that the family obtained their money is through the sales of his books.  It seems plausible that he sold enough books to accumulate that amount of money.