New Forbes list: richest families

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Forbes has for the first time published a list of the American families who are collectively worth $1 billion or more. There’s 185 of them.

  1. Waltons–$152 billion
  2. Koch brothers–$89 billion
  3. Mars family–$60 billion

Some interesting tidbits–
the Hearsts (of William Randolph fame) have $35 billion. The Hunts have $15 billion (I guess they’ve recovered from the silver debacle). The Du Ponts–probably the oldest fortune in the nation–rank #13 with $15 billion. The Rockefellers come in at #24 with a relatively paltry $10 billion. The Mellons are at #19 with $12 billion.

2

Even the 0.01% has their own 0.01%. The 185 families are worth 1.2 trillion. Of them, the 3 richest (Walton, Koch, Mars) are worth 1/4 of that figure at about $300 billion which I assume is more than the bottom 60-80% of combined families on that list.

I’m surprised only about 20 families are worth more than $10 billion.

3

I don’t really understand their criterion for including some self-made billionaires but not others.

The separate article about the Stroh family blowing $9 billion is fascinating.

The Mellons named their son “Force”? Poor little rich kid.

4

I once asked my boss how he, his dad, and grandad stayed off the List, though they qualified. “When Forbes calls you don’t answer the phone.”

5

Seriously, that article was fascinating. Thanks for mentioning it. Everyone should read it.

Here is a direct link.

6

Try telling that to his sister, Casaba.

7

I suspect this article was inspired to some extent by the Piketty book, which has tried to argue that lists like the Forbes 400 tend to overstate the amount of wealth controlled by current entrepreneurs (Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos) and understates the wealth controlled by “old money” families (the duPonts, the Rockefellers, et al).