Just how wealthy
is the Wal-Mart Walton family?
This from Politifact:
On Nov. 27, 2013, a Madison-based liberal advocacy group
used a mass email to promote protests that were planned against Walmart stores
for two days later -- Black Friday. The
demonstrations aimed to "expose Wal-Mart’s shameful labor practices and
support workers," according to One Wisconsin Now, which then made this
claim: "The Walton family, which owns Wal-Mart, controls a
fortune equal to the wealth of the bottom 42 percent of Americans
combined."
That reminded us of a March 2011 claim by filmmaker and
liberal activist Michael Moore. He said
in a Madison speech that 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all
Americans combined, a statement we rated True. Based on online hits, it became one of our
most popular fact-checks ever. So we wondered about the Walmart claim.
In the days before and after Black Friday, leaders no less
prominent than President Barack Obama and Pope Francis decried the extent of
income disparity in the United States and around the world. Obama called the
growing income gap a "defining challenge of our time." The pope said
that while the earnings of a minority "are growing exponentially, so, too,
is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy
few."
Walmart, of course, is a big target.
According to Forbes, as of May 2013 the international
retailer had $469 billion in sales and 2.2 million employees, including 1.3
million in the United States. The corporation has been criticized for low
wages; and in December 2012, PolitiFact National rated as “Mostly
True” a claim that more Walmart
employees are on Medicaid and food stamps than other companies.
Walmart was founded by the late Sam Walton, who opened the
first store in Arkansas in 1962. Walmart incorporated in 1969 and became a
publicly traded company a year later. So, Wal-Mart is not family owned, but
rather owned by its stockholders; on the other hand, according to Bloomberg and
other news reports, the Walton family members still have control of the
company, owning about half of the shares.
Using the Forbes 400 list for 2013, that the wealth of six
of Sam Walton’s descendants has continued to grow. Here are their rankings and
their wealth:
No. 6 Christy Walton (daughter-in-law), $35.4 billion
No. 7: Jim Walton (son), $33.8 billion
No. 8: Alice Walton (daughter), $33.5 billion
No. 9: S. Robson Walton (son), $33.3 billion
No. 95: Ann Walton Kroenke (niece), $4.7 billion
No. 110: Nancy Walton Laurie (niece), $4 billion
Total
Walton family wealth: $144.7 billion.
Our (Politifact’s): rating
One Wisconsin Now wrote: "The Walton family, which owns
Wal-Mart, controls a fortune equal to the wealth of the bottom 42 percent of
Americans combined."
For comparison purposes, the latest data available, for
2010, the figure is 41.5 percent. We rate the statement True
I
post this to say the following with evidentiary backup:
There are wealthier Americans than The Walton heirs.
There are
some of them (rhymes with Koch Brothers) who spend huge
amounts of it
on political campaigns to support political whores
they hope will be
inclined to produce legislation or fight regulation
that might reduce their
(the Koch’s) humongously bloated
personal
balance sheets. Then there are Bill and Melinda Gates, Warren
Buffett and others (like the builder
Arnold Fisher, building
traumatic brain injury centers for vets) , not necessarily “liberal”
but genuinely humane Americans who realize how well off they
are and at the same time how disparate are their lives and those of
the average
citizen. These humanitarians have given away literally
billions of their
personal wealth to help deserving causes, here and
around the globe.
I
defy anyone to show significant charity and/or compassion shown
by the Walton
heirs. Other than large political contributions to far
rightists, they are largely
invisible. What is truly troubling to me is
that Mister Sam Walton was, by all
accounts a sweet, gentle and
compassionate man. The first Walmarts proudly proclaimed
“Made
in America” on large signs over displays of merchandise. Just try
to find one now.
Instead
of supporting American companies, Walmart
has driven
some of them (Rubber Maid is an excellent example) to shift
manufacturing overseas. Shame on them, and shame on Mister
Sam’s greedy, do
nothing heirs.
I’ll
close with part of another article on these spoiled wastrel
children:
“Quite
a few billionaires, including Warren Buffett and Bill Gates,
have pledged to
give away almost all of their fortunes to charity.
The Waltons take a different
approach. They have decided to hoard
as much of their fortunes as possible.
They have decided to use
each and every tax loophole possible in order to keep
their money
in their own family, and not to allow the public to claim a single
dollar more in taxes than they absolutely have to. In Bloomberg
today, Zachary
Mider has an excellent in-depth report today on the
strategies the Walton
family uses to avoid estate and inheritance
taxes on their fortune, which has
been built on the backs of
extremely low-paid workers. One of their favorite
techniques:
establishing a type of charitable trust that can shelter money from
taxes, and later put that money back into the pockets of family
heirs. Sometimes,
with a profit!
If the trust’s investments outperform that
benchmark rate, then the
extra earnings pass to the designated heirs free of
any estate tax.
With a big enough spread between the actual performance and the
IRS rate, this trust can theoretically save so much tax that it leaves
a family
richer than if it hadn’t given a dime to charity...
So
the next time you hear about how fabulous the Walton family's opulent new art
museum is, or how much money the Walton family has given to land conservation,
remember that all of that charity is part and parcel of a structure designed expressly
to hoard billions of dollars within this one single family, and to avoid paying
the normal tax rates that have been levied for the purpose of a tiny step
towards equality. And also remember that all of the millions and millions of
workers who made those billions and billions of dollars possible are trapped in
a world of low wages, and are prevented from unionizing and bettering their own
situation by the zealous efforts of Wal-Mart.
The
Walton family's very existence is an insult to the American dream.
