The Rich and the Super-Rich: A Study in the Power of Money Today

Thirty years ago, a bombshell of a book appeared which told the story of the lords of wealth and their glittering clans. It was called America's Sixty Families. It rocked the nation and became a classic. Lundberg showed how America was ruled by a plutocracy of inherited wealth, even under the New Deal. At the time he could only provide a sampling of the economic and political patterns of those families, which, for one reason or another, had come under public scrutiny. In addition to the Sixty Families he dealt with in depth he was able to outline the probable holdings of a few hundred other families. Where are they today - those Sixty Families? What ravages of time, death and taxes worked on the mighty fortunes of yesteryear? Is the "Welfare State" robbing them of the opulence they knew in the good old days?... Lundberg shows that there are 200,000 very wealthy individuals in the United states. Most of them are of some 500 super-millionaire families. Examples are 250 Du Ponts, 73 Rockefellers. Some 61% of the 200,000 inherited their wealth. These families are far wealthier than ever before.... These families have all the old levers of power and pelf plus a whole host of new ones created for them during the intervening decades by the politicians, lawyers and judges who serve them.