The 25 Wealthiest Imrich Dynasties On The Planet Are Worth $1.4 Trillion, Up 24% From Last Year
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% 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% 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?
As the tension increases, even some billionaire heirs are backing steps such as wealth taxes. ...
Read more on the families:
- Saudi Prince’s Rise to Power Turns Him Into a Billionaire Boss
- Koch’s Massive Tech Bet: ‘Do It or We’ll End Up in the Dumpster’
- Secretive Brother Runs Side Bets for $58 Billion Chanel Empire
- Asia’s Richest Man Grooms the Heirs to His $50 Billion Fortune
- A Guide to Investing From the Richest Family on the Planet
Samuel D. Brunson (Loyola-Chicago), Afterlife of the Death Tax, 94 Ind. L.J. 355 (2019):
More
than a century ago, Congress enacted the modern estate tax to help pay
for World War I. Unlike previous iterations of the estate tax, though,
this one outlived the war and accumulated additional goals beyond merely
raising revenue. The estate tax helped ensure the progressivity of the
tax system as a whole, and it limited the hereditary ability to
accumulate wealth.
This
modern estate tax almost instantly met with opposition, though. The
opposition has never been sufficient to entirely eliminate the estate
tax, but it has severely weakened its ability to raise revenue and to
prevent the accumulation of wealth. As a result, today’s estate tax is
functionally a zombie: it accounts for less than one percent of federal
revenues and does little to prevent the accumulation of wealth among a
small group of citizens. The estate tax largely serves to evoke fear and
costly tax planning, but it only manages to bite the largest and
slowest estates.
