This post is part of our feature on Money Winners of 2008. See all 20.

Think you could live comfortably on $23 billion? That's what each of the four Walton heirs live on today thanks to the company built by their father or father-in-law Sam Walton -- Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT). Walton heirs were beat out by only three other billionaires for the top spot on the Forbes 400 Richest Americans list in 2008 -- William Gates, Warren Buffett, and Lawrence Ellison.

Only two of the Walton heirs have anything to do with the company from which they get their riches. S. Robson Walton is chairman of the board and he has served on the Wal-Mart board since 1978. Jim Walton is a member of the board, which he joined in 2005. Alice and Christy Walton, who are not involved in the running of Wal-Mart, do get the richest women in America title thanks to their Wal-Mart holdings. The Walton heirs recovered from a rough spot in 2006 when their stock holdings dropped to $18 billion and they fell to 17 to 20 on the Forbes list.

So who are are Walton heirs?

Jim Walton ($23.4 billion and #4 on the Forbes list), son of Sam Walton, is 60 years old and married with four children (future Walton heirs). He lives in Bentonville, Ark., and chairs the Arvest Bank Group. He got his BA at the University of Arkansas. He joined the Wal-Mart board in 2005.

If you lined up 1,000 economists, politicians and activists and asked them whether Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s (NYSE: WMT) success during the current economic downturn was good for the country, you would get 1,000 different answers. The issue surrounding the world's largest retailer are that murky.

Wal-Mart's business model is about as basic as it gets -- -buy low and sell high (but still lower than many of its competitors). Founder Sam Walton was famous for demanding the "Wal-Mart discount" from suppliers eager to do business with the retailing behmoth. Their profit margins were not his problem. After flirting briefly and disastrously with attracting wealthier consumers, Chief Executive H. Lee Scott decided to get back to what the company knows best -- selling stuff cheaper than anyone else. That strategy has paid off.

The company is the only member of the Dow Jones industrial average whose shares have risen this year, according to Bloomberg News. The results it reported today would be the envy of most companies struggling in the faltering economy. Net income rose 9.8% to $3.14 billion, or 80 cents per share. Revenue soared 7.5% to $97.6 billion. The results handily beat Wall Street expectations.

This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.

You probably wouldn't think that the world's largest public corporation is located in a small town with a population of just 29,538 (based on the 2005 Census), but Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) maintains its corporate headquarters in such a town -- Bentonville, Arkansas. Sam Walton opened his first store there in the mid-1940s -- Walton's Five and Dime -- on Main Street as a Ben Franklin franchise. Today that store is Wal-Mart's visitors' center where you can find thousands of company photographs and memorabilia.

Sam Walton's first Wal-Mart Discount City store opened in 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas, and within five years Walton had 24 stores in various towns in Arkansas. In 1968 he opened his first stores outside Arkansas, in Missouri and Oklahoma. Walton incorporated Wal-Mart Stores in 1969 and started selling shares over-the-counter in 1970. The company was first listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1972. Today Wal-Mart has more than 6,700 stores worldwide and serves more than 176 million customers weekly.

One of Sam Walton's relatives is joining the Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) board, so there is, of course, speculation that he may one day get the top job. Of course, he probably does not have one iota of qualification to do anything at the world's largest retailer.

According to The Wall Street Journal, "Gregory B. Penner, who was nominated to the board in April, is the 38-year-old son-in-law of Wal-Mart Chairman S. Robson Walton, himself a son of company founder Sam Walton." That is not entirely true. He was the CFO of the company's Japan operation which has lost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Penner's parents are sex therapists. An excellent background for running a massive chain of big stores.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) is recently up .23 to $44.71. Bloomberg reported WMT considered spinning off Sam's Club, CEO McMillon says. WMT October option implied volatility is at 19, November is at 22; near its 26-week average of 23 according to Track Data.

Marriott (NYSE: MAR) is expected to report EPS of .30 cents on 10/4/07 according to Thomson First Call. BEST said on 10/1 "areas to focus on for MAR continue to be 1) development pipeline trends, 2) incentive management fee trends, 3) share buyback pace, and 4) any impact to timeshare given current tougher credit environment." MAR October option implied volatility of 35 is above its 26-week average of 29 according to Track Data, suggesting larger risk.

Daily options Update is provided by Stock Specialist Paul Foster of theflyonthewall.com.

WakeUpWalMart.com, a rather ferocious watchdog group that tracks every move retailer Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) makes these days, is planning on launching a new $1 million television advertising campaign that will target a loyal group of Wal-Mart shoppers: conservative Republicans. The new ad campaign will use the theme of Wal-Mart "not being American anymore" and will begin in the South, Southeast, and Midwest regions of the country.

WakeUpWalMart.com believes that a "values conflict" exists among many consumers who like low prices but do not like to see more manufacturing jobs moving overseas. This is true from my experience; the double standard of wanting everything cheap (or for free) but wanting to keep things "American" is a sharp, dual-edged sword. You cannot have it both ways, although many millions of consumers may erroneously think you can.

So, based on that conflictual thinking, WakeUpWalMart will begin this month using TV ads that demonstrate Wal-Mart having moved away from founder Sam Walton's vision of buying American. The retailer, instead, drives companies to shut down U.S. operations and move everything to China to keep up with the retailer's demand to have "everyday low prices." With Wal-Mart directly sourcing about $9 billion in goods from China, is the amount really that low? For a company that had $344 billion in sales within its latest fiscal year, $9 billion seems like a drop in the bucket here. Wal-Mart has said that another $9 billion of goods from vendors who make goods in China can also be found on Wal-Mart shelves, but with these figures coming from a "spokesperson," how accurate are they?

While Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) is a high-profile target of critics of corporate greed, the Walton family has, without great media attention, done very little for charity. But with the death Helen Walton, the widow of founder Sam Walton, that could change. With her stake in the company making her a billionaire several times over, the Walton Family Foundation could become one of the three biggest charities in the country, if Ms. Walton's shares go to it.

It remains to be seen what will happen, but Wal-Mart's PR executives have to be praying that the Waltons will finally become a major force in philanthropy. They'll be able to say "Look, the money that we're making paying low wages with poor benefits ends up going to charity anyway."

But until that happens, the stinginess of the Waltons is bad PR for the Wal-Mart company, although it's something they obviously have no control over. But if the Walton Family Foundation grows rapidly from Helen Walton's estate, I would expect them to make some public relations hay out of it.

With the recent death of Helen Walton, the family announced that a "significant portion" of the Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) stock in her estate would go to charity and be sold over a period of several years. Ms. Walton owned about 8.1% of the company's shares and their divestiture could cause a significant increase in the company's float -- the number of freely trading shares.

According to a statement released by Wal-Mart on behalf of the family, "While Helen Walton's disposition of her Wal-Mart interest will not require sales of a substantial number of Wal-Mart shares for the next several years, it is expected that Wal-Mart shares will be disposed of over time to fund charitable programs."

Members of the Walton family currently control about 40% of the company's stock, effectively limiting the control of outside investors in the management of the company. However, unlike the situation at the New York Times, the company has not been run in a way that has drawn the scrutiny of its major investors.

But here's my question: Over the years as the Walton family's share of the company declines with deaths and sales, could Wal-Mart's stagnant share price cause investors to seek strategic alternatives? Could Wal-Mart become the largest private equity buyout in history? Just a thought.

According to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Wal-Mart Inc.'s (NYSE: WMT) latest innovation is to treat its employees just the same as its inventory. For too long, many of Wal-Mart's employees have had regular work schedules. Wal-Mart excels at stocking each store with the items that customers want to buy and shunning the rest; and it's finally dawned on management that Wal-Mart can apply this same just-in-time approach to putting employees in its stores.

Using a computer system similiar to one from Kronos, Inc. (NASDAQ: KRON), Wal-Mart will be able to schedule employees to maintain a constant ratio of employees to customers. (KRON's system tracks individual store sales, transactions, units sold, and customer traffic in 15-minute increments over seven weeks, and compares data to the prior year's, before scheduling workers.) Workers will need to be on call so they can arrive in the store in case they're needed. And more importantly for Wal-Mart's profits, workers who previously had regular shifts will have variable ones instead -- this should reduce Wal-Mart's labor costs.

I'm not a big Wal-Mart shopper but every time I've been in one of their stores, I've found the employees to be surly and unhelpful. And I would imagine that this new system will make Wal-Mart employees even more angry -- an emotion they'll share with customers. As I noted in Value Leadership, Sam Walton believed that if you treat employees well, they'll do the same for customers.

Treating Wal-Mart employees like just-in-time inventory must be making Walton turn over in his grave.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm, and a Professor of Management at Babson College. He has no financial interest in Kronos or Wal-Mart.

This post is written as part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst 2006. If there's no one you'd like to see lose a fortune more than Bill Gates, be sure to cast your vote.

After one too many Windows blue screens of death (and isn't just one really one to many), who wouldn't fantasize about Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) founder and former CEO Bill Gates losing all his money? Uber-nerd Gates has been listed as the wealthiest person on earth for more than a dozen years, with a recent estimated net worth at more than $50 billion. In 1999 Gates' wealth briefly surpassed $100 billion, making him the world's first centibillionaire. His family ranks second only to the family of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton as the wealthiest family in the world.

On the other hand, since 2000 Gates has donated more than $25 billion to scientific research programs and charitable organizations through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He has appeared on the cover of Time magazine eight times, and his home in Medina, Washington, is one of the most expensive houses in the world, with an annual property tax estimated at just under $1 million. In 1994 Gates bought at auction a collection of writings by Leonardo da Vinci for more than $30 million. In 2004 he became a director of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK.A), the investment company headed by longtime friend Warren Buffett (who also appears in the signature style category of the Best & Worst 2006).

In May 2006 Gates said in an interview that he wished that he wasn't the richest man in the world, because he disliked the attention it brought. Isn't that a problem more of us wish we had to struggle with?

This post is written as part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst 2006. If you wouldn't mind seeing the Waltons lose all their money, be sure to cast your vote.

The patriarch of the Walton family, the wealthiest family in the world, is Sam Walton, founder of retail giants Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) and Sam's Club. Forbes called him the richest man in the world from 1985 to 1988, and Time magazine listed him as one of the 100 most influential people of the twentieth century. Papa Walton received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992 from President George H.W. Bush. When Sam died in April of 1992, his eldest son, Rob, succeeded him as chairman of the board. Sam's widow and other children, John, Jim, and Alice, all own shares in the company, and members of the family held five spots in the top ten richest people in the United States until 2005. It has been suggested that if Sam were still alive today, his wealth would be nearly double that of Bill Gates, fellow nominee in this category.

John Walton, a Green Beret, saw action in the Vietnam War and was awarded the Silver Star. He sat on the Wal-Mart board until he died in a plane crash in 2005, at which time he was worth an estimated $18 billion, tied with his brother Jim as the eleventh richest person in the world, according to Forbes.

Helen Walton, Sam's widow, and her daughter Alice each have an estimated net worth of around $18 billion. Jim Walton's estimated net worth is around $15 billion. The daughters of Sam's partner and brother, Bud Walton, also hold shares in the company and are billionaires as well.