One of the most interesting but least discussed aspects of French economist Thomas Piketty’s bestseller Capital in the 21st Century is Piketty’s conspiracy theory that magazine lists of rich people, such as the Forbes 400, are basically propaganda to make it look like rich people tend to be entrepreneurs, when Piketty’s r>g theory proves instead that the rich must be mostly scions of old wealth.

Piketty told Matthew Yglesias:

The quick answer is that we don’t really know because the wealth rankings of magazines are very much biased in favor of entrepreneurs. First, they are biased in an ideological sense. They have been created in order to celebrate the entrepreneur, although Steve Forbes himself is a grandson of the founder of Forbes. … I think they are missing the bigger part of top inherited wealth and top entrepreneurial wealth.

I’m fascinated by Piketty’s idea that there is all this Secret Old Money out there. It seems pretty luridly interesting, but few seem to share my interest. I keep trying to come up with evidence for or against Piketty’s theory by asking: what the Secret Old Money do with their Old Money? Do they buy sports teams? Yachts? Backyard golf courses?

Mostly, so far as I can tell … no. Most of the more fun assets are bought by first or second generation billionaires.

Or at least in America. Perhaps it’s different in Europe?

But where can we get data?

Well, from … magazine lists of rich families. Of course, that will never convince Piketty because to him it’s all just wheels within wheels.

But anyway, here’s Bloomberg’s new list of 25 huge family fortunes

Trillion Dollar Inheritance: The World’s Biggest Family Fortunes Walmart, Samsung, Koch Industries and Hermes have built some of the biggest fortunes to ever be handed down between generations.

Number one in the world according to Bloomberg is The Waltons (Walmart) with $151 billion. Their dad Sam Walton was not poor growing up, but he was a self-made man.

#4 with $54 billion is a clan more amenable to Piketty’s theory: the beer-brewing VAN DAMME, DE SPOELBERCH, DE MEVIUS who own a chunk of InBev Anheuser-Busch:

The collective enterprise of these three Belgian beermaking families has roots in the 14th century. The Van Damme family joined the others when the 1987 merger between Piedboeuf and Artois led to the creation of Interbrew, which merged with Brazil’s AmBev in 2004.

Some of the other European families seem to go back to high bourgeois wealth fairly indefinitely, but a few are fairly recent entrepreneurial families.

One possible asset for Secret Old Money European heirs is inherited art. If, say, your ancestor the Duke commissioned a dozen Rubens paintings and they’re just sitting around your castle, they’d likely be worth a lot.

On the other hand, trends in the art markets aren’t that favorable toward Old Masters compared to the new stuff that new money likes. For example, David Rockefeller’s estate recently auctioned off some of his collection for what struck me as a giant amount of money. But the New York Times article was dismissive of his returns on his investment. See, Mr and Mrs Rockefeller had bought only works of art that they found attractive and wanted to have hanging on the walls of their house. So they refused to buy ugly modern stuff. But if Rockefeller had instead poured all his money into Baquiats and other fast appreciating recent stuff, he would have made a real fortune!

Speaking of Rockefeller, Bloomberg adds:

… And any calculation is likely to be a lowball figure. The wealth of families like the Rothschilds or Rockefellers is too diffuse to value. The nature of many dynastic fortunes — backed by decades and sometimes centuries of assets and dividends — can obfuscate the true extent of their holdings. Clans whose source of wealth is currently unverifiable or derives primarily from the state, such as the sprawling House of Saud, are also absent.

So more research is necessary!