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Stock prices plummet as more consumers associate Walmart with greed and exploitation.

If your last name is Walton and you own one of the largest corporations in the world, chances are you are having a very bad day.

After releasing a lower-than-anticipated revenue outlook for the next year, the four heirs of Sam Walton who control more than half of the shares of Walmart Stores Incorporated, just lost $11 billion as their stock price plummeted to its lowest level since 1999.

It is estimated that their total loss in net worth since the beginning of the year is more than $41 billion, most of which can be attributed to increasing customer dissatisfaction andpublic perception of the brand as one that is synonymous with greed and poor working conditions.

As if that wasn’t bad enough news for the wealthy Walmart heirs, their biggest rivals have simultaneously seen a spike in growth over the same period.

• Shares of Target have gone up almost $17 per share since the beginning of the year while Amazon has seen a massive valuation increase of more than $200 per share over the same time period.
• Costco, the company often mentioned as the most similar to Wal-Mart, while managing to pay their staff a living wage and a much better benefit package than their rivals, are up more than $27 per share since November 2014.

While their stock price and personal fortune should continue to slide as their earnings keep dropping, you can probably hold off on starting an online fundraiser for the Walton family.

Even with the bad year they just had, their combined wealth is still more than $120 billion, or more than the United States federal government has spent over the last decade rebuilding the gulf coast after Hurricane Katrina. As Bernie Sanders pointed out, the Walton heirs still own more than the combined wealth of the poorest 40 percent of Americans — a claim Politifact rated “True.”

 

Source:  Usuncut