Every Hour, World’s Wealthiest Family gets Richer by $4 mn

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The 25 wealthiest dynasties on the planet control $1.4 trillion. And  $70,000 per minute, $4 million per hour, $100 million per day that’s how quickly the fortune of the Waltons, has been growing.

At that rate, their wealth would’ve expanded about $23,000 since you began reading this. A new Walmart associate in the US would’ve made about 6 cents in that time, on the way to an $11 hourly minimum.

The Walton fortune has swelled by $39 billion, to $191 billion, since topping the June 2018 ranking of the world’s richest families.

Other American dynasties are close behind in terms of the assets they’ve accrued. The Mars family, of candy fame, added $37 billion, bringing its fortune to $127 billion. The Kochs, the industrialists-cum-political-power-players, tacked on $26 billion, to $125 billion.

So it goes around the globe. America’s richest 0.1 per cent today control more wealth than at any time since 1929, but their counterparts in Asia and Europe are gaining too.

Worldwide, the 25 richest families now control almost $1.4 trillion in wealth, up 24 per cent from last year.

To some critics, such figures are evidence that capitalism needs fixing. Inequality has become an explosive political issue, from Paris to Seattle to Hong Kong. But how to shrink the growing gap between the rich and the poor?

Tallying dynastic dollars isn’t an exact science. Fortunes backed by decades and sometimes centuries of assets and dividends can obfuscate the true extent of a family’s holdings. The net worth of the Rothschilds or Rockefellers, for instance, is too diffuse to value. Clans whose wealth is currently unverifiable are also absent.

But of those we can track, most are reaping the rewards of ultra-low interest rates, tax cuts, deregulation and innovation. Koch Industries, for instance, has a venture-capital arm. The latest generation of Waltons is establishing its own enterprises.

Other big gainers include the owners of fashion house Chanel and Italy’s Ferrero family, whose brands include Nutella spread and Tic Tac mints. In India, the fortune of the Ambani family swelled $7 billion, to $50 billion.