Pres. Barack Obama is famous lacking empathy, but also for wanting to appoint judges with empathy, and for blaming 9/11 on an absence of empathy in the terrorists.

I am wondering why everyone assumes that empathy is a good thing. If psychologists can measure whether it is going up or down, then they ought to be able to measure whether it is making us better or worse off. Where's the evidence? If it is good, then why is it that the upper classes don't want it? I suspect that high empathy measurements are correlated with an assortment of psychological problems.