The Waltons are the perfect case study in dynastic wealth. The heirs of one retail fortune collectively hold hundreds of billions, NONE of it earned by them, while the company built its empire on wages so low that workers needed food stamps. The Institute for Policy Studies tracks this in its Billionaire Bonanza reports: IPS Billionaire Bonanza. Taxpayers subsidized the labor costs, the family kept the compounding returns, and now the grandchildren are billionaires by birth. This is aristocracy with a smiley face logo. If fortunes can't be passed down intact, the incentive to hoard them collapses.
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