this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2024
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I had a high school civics teacher tell the class that the the 2nd to 10th richest people in the world were the Walton Family heirs(Walmart). I knew at the time that Steve Ballmer was like the 5th or something. I brought in a printout of the Forbes Top 50 Richest people and he coped by saying that if you combine the wealth of the Walton family, they'd be in the top 5.
That was probably one of the more benign falsehoods that teacher taught.
Sounds like a teacher that hadn't yet learned that you never stop learning. Was probably going off an outdated list and didn't realize his fun fact had an expiry date on it.
This person had a very static view of the world, but I'm not sure the Waltons were ever that rich. Sure, Walmart is a huge chain, but there are bigger industries then retail.
You're right, a number of them have individually risen decently high on the list, even at the same time, but the family has never dominated it like the original statement said.
This is actually news to me, too, because I was under the impression that there had been a time period where the Waltons' wealth dominated most others, either before Gates rose to the top, or maybe with him in the top spot but then cleaning up most of the rest of the top 10 list.