by SAM PIZZIGATI
All things eventually end, even grand dynastic family fortunes. In the abstract, we all know this to be true. But the facts on the ground can be disconcerting. And those facts have never been clearer, not after this week’s release of stunning new research on America’s enduring family wealth dynasties.
In America, the fabled land of opportunity, our wealthiest families have taken full advantage of the opportunities their grand fortunes create. They’ve deployed the power their riches impart to rig our economic and political systems and manufacture the closest thing to a perpetual-motion machine for ensuring dynastic fortune the world has ever seen.
Over the last four decades, the Institute for Policy Studies details in its new Silver Spoon Oligarchs report, the fortunes of our richest wealth dynasties have multiplied tens of times over. Back in 1983, for instance, Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton and his family had a net worth, in today’s dollars, of $5.6 billion. In 2020, Walton’s progeny were sitting on a stash worth over $247 billion.
And the Waltons have hardly been outliers. Some 27 families that appeared on the 1983 Forbes list of America’s richest families also appeared on the 2020 Forbes “Billion-Dollar Dynasties” list. These 27 families have seen their combined fortunes soar by 1,007 percent.
What does a percentage rate that humungous mean in simpler terms? Since 1983, these 27 family wealth dynasties have seen their fortunes triple and then more than triple again, from $80.2 billion in 1983 inflation-adjusted dollars to $903.2 billion in 2020.
The authors of Silver Spoon Oligarchs, the new Institute for Policy Studies report, haven’t just quantified the extent of dynastic wealth in the United States today. They’ve also laid out over a dozen policy moves we could make to shear our dynastic fortunes down to something approximating democratic size. But these policy fixes won’t be going anywhere until we scale the psychological wall — the aura of invincibility — our wealthiest now have guarding their grand fortunes.
Psychologically, this aura has grand fortunes simply seeming too powerful to significantly dent. Our richest families, after all, have enough billions to buy anything. They have politicians in their pockets. They own much of our major media. They’ve outfitted our academic and think-tank worlds with well-endowed centers dedicated to defending grand concentrations of enormous private wealth.
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