Sunday, February 10, 2019

Walton money

There are about 3 billion outstanding shares of Walmart stock and the Walmart family owns 1.6 billion shares or a little over half. Walmart stock price is $95 per share so the families is worth $150 billion. Like most wealthy people they do not have a lot of their money in cash so if the government decides to take their wealth they will have to divest in what ever they are currently invested. If any company suddenly lost one half of their working capital it would cause severe problems so the government would be wise to take peoples wealth slowly over time to allow businesses to adjust. The Walton family like 43% of billionaires inherited their wealth but 57% of billionaires earned their own money. Should these two groups be taxed differently?When ole Sam Walton died 30 years ago he left $100 billion and the company has grown by 50% since then. Another concern about the Walton money is that they live on dividends. Walmart stock pays an annual dividend of $2 and the Walton family earns $3.2 billion per year and this money is taxed at the capital gain rate of 20%.

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