The world’s wealthiest family are the third-generation heirs of Sam Walton. Collectively, they own a 50% stake in Walmart. More mind-boggling are these numbers from this recent Bloomberg report: the members of the Walton clan are so wealthy they amass $100 million per day or $4 million per hour or $70,000 per minute! At this astronomical rate, their family fortune will have grown over $20,000 since you began reading this blog post. (A new Walmart employee in the U.S., by contrast, will have made about 6 cents in that time, based on an $11 per hour wage.) We blogged about the significant social benefits of Walmart a week ago, and we also noted that Walmart is the largest US company by revenue and by number of employees, so the great wealth of the “House of Walton” should not be surprising to us. Our only question is: who owns the other 50% of Walmart? Update (8/23): here are some of the projects that some of the third-generation Waltons are investing in.

Image credit: Bloomberg