He's 94 years old, it's honestly impressive he was still there.
Still, end of an era.
heresie-dabord · 13h ago
> Still, end of an era.
That is an enormous understatement. At 94, Buffet has witnessed history and has represented a vision of betterment, a just society, and sound economic stewardship. These things were not and are not hallucinations.
But for many, it seems, the lessons about co-operation, stable economic growth. the sane application of democratic principles, and the rule of law must be learned again.
It's the end of an era bona fides and respect for truth and accountability as the structural integrity of democratic society.
tw04 · 7h ago
I will say that his pragmatism seemed to fall apart pretty quickly when the rubber met the road - unless I’m misinformed (which I may be).
Berkshire was a key player in the rail workers strike of 2022 and Warren didn’t seem to want to give an inch to the working man when given the opportunity to do so.
The idea that companies should just agree to whatever proposal comes in from a union is preposterous.
postpawl · 2h ago
They were negotiating their way up from zero paid sick days per year.
karaterobot · 6h ago
I'm not clear how this represents him not being pragmatic, could you say more?
arrosenberg · 5h ago
Deteriorating conditions for the working class are the main driver of our push toward authoritarian government. A pragmatist would have been more sympathetic for reasons beyond pure capitalist economics.
pazimzadeh · 5h ago
Replying to @linotype, below your comment:
> I just don’t buy this argument. By global standards, even the poorest Americans (with obvious exceptions like the homeless) are relatively wealthy. Comparison is the theft of joy.
Define wealth. The cheapest option for many foods in other countries is often not only much cheaper, but also of much higher quality than the cheapest option for the same type of item in the US (bread, rice, etc..) in fact their cheap version could easily be pass for the US premium grocery version.
dragonwriter · 4h ago
> Deteriorating conditions for the working class are the main driver of our push toward authoritarian government.
No, they aren't. It's dubious that even the widening relative gap between the working class and the capitalist class plays a major role, though that at least has the virtue of being a real condition and not a fantasy.
arrosenberg · 2h ago
If you have an alternative hypothesis, I’m all ears. The lack of good paying jobs and the knock on effects of expanding wealth disparity seems to be underlying most of the issues driving radicalism, left and right, up and down.
In America, at least, workers think tomorrow will be worse than today and they are resorting to populism to try and reverse the trend.
iepathos · 2h ago
I don’t think it’s accurate to say that the working class is “resorting to populism to reverse the trend.” If anything, the fact that so many working-class voters support a wealthy oligarchy—one that consistently advances policies benefiting the super-rich at the expense of ordinary people—suggests that a significant portion of the population is being swayed by misinformation and manipulation, not that they’re successfully advocating for their own interests.
Ironically, it’s often the opposite party that actually pushes for policies that would materially benefit the working class. The real fallacy is equating the current wave of so-called “populism” with a genuine effort to improve conditions for workers. In practice, what’s being called “populism” is frequently just another vehicle for entrenched elites to consolidate power, not a movement to empower ordinary people.
sumedh · 1h ago
> it’s often the opposite party that actually pushes for policies that would materially benefit the working class.
Except on immigration.
lurk2 · 2h ago
> Ironically, it’s often the opposite party that actually pushes for policies that would materially benefit the working class.
Such as?
dragonwriter · 2h ago
> If you have an alternative hypothesis, I’m all ears.
How about if I let you do that:
> In America, at least, workers think tomorrow will be worse than today and they are resorting to populism to try and reverse the trend.
See, belief about likely future conditions is a very different hypothesis than factually-existing current conditions, and a better one. To the extent that, IMO, its at least part of the actual explanation.
arrosenberg · 2h ago
It’s the same hypothesis. Its a line trending down, and there is an awareness that today is less than yesterday and more than tomorrow.
lurk2 · 2h ago
> It's dubious that even the widening relative gap between the working class and the capitalist class plays a major role
This description could apply to the French Revolution, Tsarist Russia, the fall of the Weimar Republic, and the Colombian Civil War. Why do you think it is dubious?
philipov · 4h ago
You are speaking as if there is a single objective agreement between people on what constitutes the most pragmatic answer. There is no such agreement. The foundation of liberalism is that we can not agree on first principles. An authoritarian crackdown is just as much an expression of pragmatism if the actor believes they can win.
Der_Einzige · 4h ago
If we are always close to the lower middle class causing fascism, maybe class war ain’t so bad right? /s
So much for the tolerant left. Class based analysis is incoherent. Marxian alienation and the LTV don’t make sense in a world of computers. I don’t exploit electrons (oh wait actually soon Marxist’s are going to do the anti-AI shit of claiming they’re sentient and thus deserve “rights”)
The analysis of the roots of fascism in the modern era would be much closer to accurately described by a sequel to the book “mass psychology of fascism” by reich which claims fascism comes from sexual failures.
This seems especially likely given the shocking stats about male sexlessness, loneliness, and general anti male sentiment from society at large. Tinder is literally adding a height verification tool at this very moment.
arrosenberg · 3h ago
This is pretty unhinged, so I’ll only respond to the one interesting thing - it’s pretty obvious that part of the male sexlessness problem is related to a lack of good paying, respectable jobs. Tough to get a good woman if you don’t have that going for you.
kmeisthax · 3h ago
What do you think is a driver of that male loneliness? The traditional heterosexual norms of courtship and marriage don't exactly work when your country has a huge swath of people in economic precarity. People put off dating, sex, and procreation because they can't afford it.
Unless you plan to just... force people to fuck? And hope people don't notice their finances getting fucked? Seems like a recipe for drama[0].
> oh wait actually soon Marxist’s are going to do the anti-AI shit of claiming they’re sentient and thus deserve “rights”
As someone who's never read Marx, this feels like a strawman at best? At the very least, "liberate the robots" is a pro-AI position, not an anti-AI one.
I just don’t buy this argument. By global standards, even the poorest Americans (with obvious exceptions like the homeless) are relatively wealthy. Comparison is the theft of joy.
nandomrumber · 2h ago
You say comparison is the theft of joy, and then ask us to compare to an irrelevant metric.
If living standards are falling, grocery prices have increased, rents have gone up, wages have stagnated, what does the price of eggs in China have to do with my assessment of the local conditions.
arrosenberg · 5h ago
Seems kind of silly to pretend it won’t happen though. Especially since we’ve chosen to base social status on wealth.
teaearlgraycold · 2h ago
Well it would be one thing if it were an inevitable natural conclusion. But working people are getting poorer because the owner class is hoarding wealth. It’s simply unjust. It’s the difference between losing your house to a hurricane and having someone burn it down.
jagged-chisel · 5h ago
Where did pragmatism enter this thread?
Rebelgecko · 4h ago
The comment above
kinnth · 13h ago
Buffet reminded me a lot of Angela Merkel.
They stood clearly and simply for good moral judgment, fair systems and looked at the bigger picture to carry most people forward. They also based all their decision in facts, truth and science. They learn't their trades (economics & politics) over time and weren't afraid to adapt as times changed.
Their slow and steady presence did more for equality and fairness than many others. We will need to find these values again after the current times have played out.
thi2 · 13h ago
That has to be about a different Angela Merkel, the one I know had one priority: preserving status quo.
btilly · 4h ago
She also was for making Germany economically dependent on gas pipelines to Russia, even though she knew that she was funding Russia's war in Ukraine.
I am not inclined to give her a free pass on that.
Aeolun · 5h ago
> slow and steady presence
> preserving status quo
That sounds like the same thing to me?
FirmwareBurner · 11h ago
Which recent German politician in power wasn't about preserving the status quo? The entire country and culture is all about the status quo.
riffraff · 4h ago
I'm. It sure of the "recent" definition but Schroeder's tenure brought a lot of changes (which one can argue against, but it was not conservative).
ponector · 11h ago
Silent approval of Putin's invasions to Georgia and Ukraine doesn't look like "good moral judgment, fair systems"
neom · 12h ago
Measured governance. I feel the same, although I'm sure the Europeans and Germans not at all, but they also talked Angela out of nuclear, so one might argue the Germans are a bit too measured compared to their Chancellor.
huijzer · 11h ago
> They stood clearly and simply for good moral judgment
Merkel has severely underestimated Putin. She played a role in the continuous betting on Russian oil. Merkel has called the internet “neuland” and wasn’t her government also the one starting with hydrogen subsidies. I donno about you but to this day I only hear lots of talk about hydrogen but near zero results. So all the wrong bets.
Also I don’t know whether you noticed but Germany is expected to be in a recession for three years in a row now.
About equity and fairness okay I guess you are right. Everybody in Germany will be poor if things continue like this.
newbie578 · 10h ago
I cannot believe that there are people praising Merkel with a straight face. She is literally a laughing stock in Europe, I put her as the poster boy for immigration crisis together with the energy crisis. The only thing she did was shove problems further in the future not caring about the consequences.
FirmwareBurner · 3h ago
You're being downvoted but notice how nobody is saying you are wrong.
bergheim · 13h ago
> They also based all their decision in facts, truth and science
What? She shut down nuclear power plants to ramp up coal and Russian dependence.
Idolizing people is rarely helpful.
JimmyBiscuit · 12h ago
She shut down nuclear power because of extreme pressure from the population. Tens of thousands protested around her office. Nuclear is complicated (and mostly fear driven) in Germany. Oddly enough the first exit was done under Schröder who is a russian asset. Makes you think.
AdamJacobMuller · 12h ago
> Tens of thousands protested around her office
Germany has a population of 84 million people. 10,000 should not be able to dictate a policy decision of this magnitude, regardless of how loud they are.
> Nuclear is complicated (and mostly fear driven)
The politics of nuclear are complicated, the science (more engineering) of nuclear are complicated, the imperative is clear and simple. You are correct that it's mostly fear driven, but stoked by "green" advocacy organizations and/or manipulated by people with a stake in the continued use of fossil fuels (and largely the latter funding the former).
True leadership would stand up to both of these pressures, making people understand that the voice of 10,000 (or even 100,000) people can not dictate policy alone and educating people on the reality of nuclear power, while also fixing some of the real issues with nuclear power (an aging power plant fleet and an inability economically build better replacements).
Merkel totally flopped on energy policy.
cjpearson · 10h ago
The protestors were not a very vocal minority, but representative of the majority opinion. At the time well over 80% of Germans wanted an end to nuclear power. (Although now following the Ukraine invasion and rising energy costs the opposition has significantly softened.)
In a democratic system it is simply difficult to maintain such extremely unpopular positions. Governments which do so don't last long. Merkel flip-flopped and maintained her Chancellorship.
Sure, NRX and NRU were research rigs running experiments far outside normal reactor envelopes. And I think it's amusing that it's considered INES-5 when very little actually happened and there was...no..wider...events... literally. If the worst we can cite is a 70 year old research accident that killed no one and ultimately produced design fixes we still use, you have a the strong case for nuclear safety...Anyway: The Walrus needs to find some new civic interest story around Barrie to write about or something, it's an awful rag. We could decarbonize our grid completely with 15 new reactors, if I was PM we'd be popping them up like it was CANDU Christmas.
netsharc · 11h ago
She finally agreed to shut down nuclear because Fukushima happened just a few days before the state elections of Baden-Württemberg. She was afraid of a rout so she agreed to do the above, and her party lost to the Greens anyway.
codethief · 12h ago
> Oddly enough the first exit was done under Schröder who is a russian asset. Makes you think.
Oddly enough? Schröder was in a coalition with the green party that had emerged from the anti-nuclear movement two decades before.
fifilura · 13h ago
It is ok, I understand how you are thinking.
But unfortunately I think Merkels legacy will be "Wandel durch handel".
Trying to pacify Russia and Putin through increasing trade. Did not work.
jnwatson · 13h ago
Don't forget the climate-change-decision-accelerating decision to mothball all their nuclear reactors. This was a monumentally poor strategic decision from multiple angles.
impossiblefork · 12h ago
It doesn't have to have been totally wrong always, but it's certainly been wrong at least since the invasion of Georgia in 2008.
Aeolun · 5h ago
Yes. But that wasn’t a rational outcome. By any measure Russia is momumentally worse off after basically anything it’s done in the past three years.
FiniteField · 11h ago
"The current times" are a direct result of decisions like that of Merkel to throw open the borders of Germany to a million unchecked foreign men. If there's one reason that the AfD is the largest party in Germany today, it's because of that decision Merkel made a whole decade ago. How was that "based in facts, truth and science", or "slow and steady"?
Aeolun · 5h ago
The million unchecked foreign men (and women) are presumably propping up the German economy as we speak.
There will always be people that dislike change, but it may ultimately be better to start integrating them earlier rather than later. If you make it through the bad times (e.g. now), at the other end is the outcome you desire.
alephnerd · 3h ago
> The million unchecked foreign men (and women) are presumably propping up the German economy as we speak.
The refugee crisis didn't appear to have a significant impact (positive or negative) on the labor market based on a recent study by the IZA and ZEW [0] - "Our estimates suggest that those migrants have not displaced native workers but have themselves struggled to find gainful employment. We find moderate increases in crime, and our analysis further indicates that while at the macro level increased migration was accompanied by increased support for anti-immigrant parties, exposure to asylum seekers at the micro level had a small negative effect." [0]
There are systemic issues with the German economy that aren't related to immigration. A lot of the current malaise can be attributed to the economic slowdowns in Russia (with the Russian Invasion of Ukraine) [1] and China (due to Zero COVID and the subsequent indigenization) [2], due to how tied German industry was with both markets [3].
>The million unchecked foreign men (and women) are presumably propping up the German economy as we speak.
How many of those unchecked are women? What's the point of having borders then? Or law enforcement putting criminals in jails, when they could be out there propping up the economy. As long as your illegal activities are putting money into the state coffers, you should be allowed to continue unchecked, screw the laws.
Yeah sure, they might cause some trouble for the lower and middle class living amongst them, but think of the economic gains for the top 1%! Their real estate and stock portfolios have never looked so good. And if people vocally disagree with this you call them fascist and put them in jail for threatening your "democracy".
How does Poland's economy manage to grow faster than Germany's without illegal immigration? Maybe they can send some researchers there to find out.
gnulinux996 · 6h ago
> At 94, Buffet has witnessed history and has represented a vision of betterment, a just society, and sound economic stewardship
How exactly did he "represented a vision of betterment, a just society, and sound economic stewardship"?
> But for many, it seems, the lessons about co-operation, stable economic growth. the sane application of democratic principles, and the rule of law must be learned again.
Who are these "many" that need to be taught about those "democratic principles" and the "rule of law". How are these related to Buffett?
> It's the end of an era bona fides and respect for truth and accountability as the structural integrity of democratic society.
What?
throwaway314155 · 6h ago
> Who are these "many" that need to be taught about those "democratic principles" and the "rule of law". How are these related to Buffett?
The current status of things in US politics is what I assume is being referred to here. Happy to be corrected.
emchammer · 8h ago
I wish I could have breakfast with him and just talk about what it all means. I hear he goes to some local diner.
jasonpeacock · 11h ago
Chocolate chips[1] were invented in 1937, when Buffet was 6yrs old, and commercialized as we know them today in 1941 when Buffet was 10.
My father is 98. His health has declined gradually but visibly over the last 10 years. He's taking a mouthful of pills each day to keep himself alive. However, he's able to get up, walk, use the bathroom, feed himself etc. He can remember things that happened 5 minutes ago, last week and in his childhood. He keeps up to date with all the family affairs, and watches the news. Also my mother (his wife) is still alive and healthy, and they don't hate each other.
That's more than most people can expect if they even make it to their late 80s.
Frankly I'm astonished at people like Warren Buffet and David Attenborough (a hero of mine).
asdfman123 · 2h ago
It's the nominal end of a career spanning 4-5 eras
HeavyStorm · 11h ago
I read the title and thought, about time, he's probably 80-something.
I really hope I could be productive at 90. Heck, I hope I'm productive at 70.
sbankowi · 11h ago
Heck, I hope I’m productive on Monday!
mckirk · 11h ago
Generally I'm really glad that HN has resisted the social media brain-rot trends, but sometimes the ability to react to a comment with a heart emoji would be cool.
sagarpatil · 4h ago
Must be a record: 94 years old and CEO of a publicly traded company.
paulpauper · 12h ago
Munger was still going strong at 99, good genes both of them, i guess
mitthrowaway2 · 4h ago
I met a lady in her 90s who looks and acts the same age as her daughter, who is in her 60s. She lives independently, talks quickly, walks without a cane, and has a generally youthful appearance and demeanor.
I asked what her secret is to aging so well. "I don't know, just don't have any health issues, I guess", she said.
Maybe if you can make it that long without encountering Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis, arthritis, or various other major issues... then you basically have a decent shot at still being fine and healthy at 94.
enjo · 2h ago
Maybe. But I often think about my grandparents. Both lived to be 96. Neither had significant health issues until the day they died.
My grandmother was extremely active throughout her life. She worked out. She was active at church. She volunteered throughout her 70's and 80's. She was always happy to go out to dinner with anyone that wanted.
Most of my memories of my grandfather (her husband) where him sitting on a recliner watching TV. He rarely left the house.
Their quality of life in the last 15 years of their lives was so different. Grandma died on her feet. She had a heart attack in the middle of the night and that was it. The day before she had been out with friends and had dinner with the family. My grandfather just sort of wasted away. He was weak, frail, and kind of miserable.
All I'm saying is there sure seemed to be a lot more than dodging all of those diseases and issues with those two. My grandmother invested in herself. She worked really hard to maintain that quality of life.
She's my role model as I age.
nly · 12h ago
And the best healthcare money can buy anywhere in the world.
KajMagnus · 12h ago
Doctors aren't that useful, unfortunately
Ekaros · 12h ago
Yeah, quality years at end of life are not solved problem even for the rich. Being this active must be genetic.
Aeolun · 5h ago
Strong sense of purpose?
xboxnolifes · 10h ago
And no amount of good doctors can make you change your lifestyle. At the end of the day, a ton of doctor advise is ways to change your lifestyle, and that takes personal effort.
liamwire · 5h ago
Buffet, famously, is known for not having great dietary habits. I agree with you, but he’s not a good example here.
tasuki · 2h ago
I think he's actually a great example: it's much more complicated than good dietary habits!
xboxnolifes · 48m ago
He's a perfectly fine example. I didn't suggest he had habits he changed.
riffraff · 4h ago
Yeah I wonder how much of Buffet's decision to quit is just that it's less "fun" to be doing this without Munger.
KajMagnus · 12h ago
Having friends also contributes to living longer (Buffet and Charlie)
apexalpha · 12h ago
I’m not sure if it’s originally his but a small talk by him about getting a car made an impression on me and since watching it it’s become a good motivator to stay in shape.
The interesting thing about this is that Buffett himself has never really had a reputation for taking care of his body in terms of getting exercise or eating well.
colechristensen · 3h ago
At 94, there have probably been a dozen contradictory versions of what "eating well" meant to a large consensus of people. There should be a lot of skepticism for any particular version of "healthy" is when it comes to diet.
"Variety and moderation" is probably good enough advice for most people without specific health conditions.
bamboozled · 12h ago
Real talk.
tchalla · 14h ago
Buffet on Tariffs
> “It’s a big mistake, in my view, when you have seven and a half billion people that don’t like you very well, and you got 300 million that are crowing in some way about how well they’ve done - I don’t think it’s right, and I don’t think it’s wise,” Buffett said. “The United States won. I mean, we have become an incredibly important country, starting from nothing 250 years ago. There’s not been anything like it.”
sillysaurusx · 12h ago
I’m a bit slow in this field. Could someone explain how this quote relates to tariffs? I’ve re-read it three times now, looking for the connection to a tax on imported goods, but I just can’t see it.
I think it’s saying that the US population is crowing about how well we’ve done, and so we should be able to tax whatever imports we want? But what an odd way to say that if so. How well we’ve done seems completely unrelated to tariffs.
Then the quote caps off with some back-patting about how we’ve only been around 250 years, and that our rise is unprecedented. Again seemingly unrelated to tariffs.
terribleperson · 12h ago
Part of the justification for tarriffs is that America is somehow being 'taken advantage' of by the rest of the world and the tarriffs are the rest of the world finally paying their fair share. The reality is that (until now) America has had a uniquely privileged position in the world economy that got America, in general, very beneficial trade deals.
He's commenting on the attitude driving the tariffs.
WalterBright · 12h ago
Uniquely privileged position?
The only unique thing about America is free markets. Any country can become highly successful by enacting free markets. The only thing in the way is their disbelief that they work.
There's a common thread across the world and history. The more free market a country is, the more it prospers.
pyth0 · 11h ago
This is only true if you ignore the important material and historical factors that go into the success of a country. Like for example, the immense wealth of natural resources and variation in climates that the US has. Or how about escaping much of the devastation that Europe faced in WW2 and benefiting immensely from helping them rebuild. Or having (for the most part) incredibly safe and stable relationships with neighbors to the north and south. Free markets have certainly contributed to success, but to say it's the only unique thing about America is just wrong.
WalterBright · 9h ago
The Sovied Union and Communist China all had vast natural resources. But a third world economy.
Japan, S Korea and Hong Kong have next to no natural resources. Great prosperity.
Germany turned to free markets after WW2 and enjoyed the "German Miracle". (Germany has since turned to socialism, with predictable results.) Germany received far, far less Marshall Plan money than Britain and France, who had no miracle.
> but to say it's the only unique thing about America is just wrong
History shows otherwise.
dehugger · 5h ago
Consider, for a moment, the state that China was in at the conclusion of WW2. It hadn't even industrialized yet. The British and the Japanese absolutely trashed China for over a hundred years!
Russia was also not industrialized until after their revolution in ~1920, and suffered horrific losses in the homeland during WW2.
The US emerged from WW2 fully industrialized and nearly unscathed. The US mainland remained untouched throughout both world wars.
The starting positions were far from equal. You attribute too much to free markets.
pests · 4h ago
> The US mainland remained untouched throughout both world wars.
Minus some balloons from the Japanese I believe?
WalterBright · 3h ago
China didn't industrialize until after 1978, when they gave up on communism and began a transition to capitalism. Over 30 years after WW2 concluded.
Russia did not industrialize in the 1920s. They did collectivize agriculture, famine ensued. They turned back to free market farming, famine went away. They turned again to collectivization, and farming collapsed again. Eventually, the Soviets allowed farmers to farm small plots and sell what they could raise. These small free market plots kept the country from starving.
Russia did work hard at industrializing during WW2, but it was propped up by the US, who heavily supplied the Soviets. The US actually built factories in the US, dismantled them, and shipped them to the Soviet Union during the war. US engineers and craftsmen taught them.
When WW2 ended, the Soviets looted everything industrial they could find from the Soviet sector. Whole factories were moved east. Soviet industrial output grew during the war.
British industry was also untouched, because the German bomber fleet did not have the range to cover much of Britain, and because Hitler stupidly decided to bomb houses instead of factories. Britain had a pretty anemic recovery from the war - despite getting far more Marshall Plan money than Germany.
Japan did not have a free market before the war, and not much of an industrial economy. Curtis LeMay had a hard time finding industrial targets to bomb, as Japanese industry was characterized as "a drill press in every home". Japan turned to free markets after the war, and we know what happened next. Recall that Japan was burned into ash in WW2. They went from utter defeat to economic superpower, despite not having any natural resources, in just 30 years.
How much more of an "unequal" starting point could there possibly be?
The only common characteristic of prosperity is free markets. And the more free market an economy is, the more prosperous it is. Over and over. It goes back to the middle ages.
The other common characteristic is when countries turn towards socialism, things just get worse and worse for them.
ii41 · 2h ago
Before opening up in 70s, China had acquired the ability to build by itself: huge numbers of machine guns and grenades, tanks, fighter planes, rockets and satellites (aka missiles), nukes.
These minus nukes and missiles plus battleships is pre-WWII Japan.
This may be helpful if you're curious why so many countries that choose free market instead of Communism after WWII are still not industrialized today.
jjani · 41m ago
Besides the many factors (e.g. reserve currency) others have already mentioned, here's another one:
Digital services not being taxed/tariffed when exported whereas physical goods are, is purely a historical artifact. The US has managed to get the whole world addicted to their doomscrolling dopamine algorithms, raking in trillions of dollars. If these were physical goods, this would've been entirely different.
The heroine dealer of the world. So far they've been allowed this position, which is incredibly privileged. And now that the EU sometimes takes a (paltry) step towards slightly taxing the drugs, the dealer screams and kicks, "it's unfair! They're targeting just me!".
brookst · 5h ago
This is painfully naive.
Simple, obvious contradiction: can every country enjoy the benefits of issuing the de facto reserve currency for the world? Just by having free markets?
The US has been incredibly privileged. I’d argue that was earned in some ways and lucky in others. But it’s undeniably true.
WalterBright · 3h ago
> The US has been incredibly privileged.
Free markets are a choice the US made. Any country can choose to have a free market, and some have. The reserve currency thing has nothing to do with it.
DavidPiper · 2h ago
Your position that the country controlling the de facto global reserve currency isn't in a privileged economic position is very hard to understand.
What would you say is the economic impact on a country of controlling a global reserve currency?
tasuki · 35m ago
America was uniquely positioned due to the dollar being the world's most desired reserve currency. This enabled the USA to spend far beyond what it produced.
TeaBrain · 11h ago
>The only unique thing about America is free markets
This is less unique than the dollar being the dominant reserve currency and dominant currency for settling international trade.
Panzer04 · 7h ago
And why do you think the dollar is dominant in international trade?
You appear to be putting the cart before the horse.
TeaBrain · 6h ago
>And why do you think the dollar is dominant in international trade?
The dollar isn't dominant in international trade because the domestic market is free, like the above user was referencing. The dollar has been the dominant reserve currency and currency for international trade since it overtook the pound for both of those functions in the mid 20th century, which didn't coincide with the US having a free market.
Also, I wasn't make any causal relationship in my comment, like you seem to be implying. The fact that USD is the dominant reserve currency and dominant trade currency is unquestionably more unique than having free markets, considering that the US is truly completely unique in both of these regards, while it is not nearly as unique in having a free market.
WalterBright · 5h ago
The US was the most prosperous country in the world in the mid 20th century. It was also the free'est market in the world at the time.
TeaBrain · 5h ago
Once again, regardless of how free the US market was in the mid-20th century, this is not the most unique privilege about the US today, as you put it in your previous comment. Any country could institute the same market regulations and degrees of freedom as the US, but only one country can have the position of having the dominant reserve currency and dominant trade currency.
WalterBright · 3h ago
As countries that have turned to free markets have shown, they enjoy great prosperity from it. The reserve currency thing is irrelevant.
TeaBrain · 2h ago
>The reserve currency thing is irrelevant.
The little "thing" or status of having reserve currency has allowed the US to enjoy lower international borrowing costs than anywhere else in the world. This has immensely benefited the US, in facilitating ease of borrowing with relatively low interest rates and by facilitating lower exchange rate risk in borrowing than any other nation.
riffraff · 4h ago
Because of the bretton woods accords.
And those were not based on free market choices, as the UK would have been just as much free, but it was a devastated economy in a small country.
terribleperson · 11h ago
I would say that the dollar being the global reserve currency is a unique privilege, yes.
WalterBright · 9h ago
It's a result of American prosperity, not the cause.
terribleperson · 6h ago
Real life is rarely as simple as discrete causes and effects. The dollar being a reserve currency is the result of both advantaged position America was in at the end of WWII combined with subsequent economic policy. Economic policy alone would not have resulted in the powerhouse America became, and it certainly could have squandered its post-WWII position with bad policy.
The dollar becoming the reserve currency has given America a lot of power, however. It certainly is a factor in the way America is able to run a trade deficit and yet still benefit.
WalterBright · 5h ago
> Economic policy alone would not have resulted in the powerhouse America became
During WW2, the US was the most powerful economy in the world. It fought WW2 in both hemispheres (which required two navies), and supplied all the allies.
Japan was well aware they could never win a sustained war with the US, and hoped that the attack on Pearl Harbor would get them a negotiated settlement. Hitler, in probably the stupidest miscalculation in history, declared war on the US.
TeaBrain · 4h ago
You are getting two things confused here. The original question was what privileges the US had that others do not. The USD being the reserve currency is unquestionably a privilege. That it is not the original cause of American prosperity is completely besides the point.
WalterBright · 3h ago
Oh, it's exactly the point.
TeaBrain · 2h ago
Yes, it does happen to be a point, but it's completely besides the point of the subject in question existing as a privilege in the current day.
yodsanklai · 11h ago
> The only unique thing about America is free markets
Is that unique to America? I'm in EU, I thought we had free markets too.
> The more free market a country is, the more it prospers.
Some countries, including the US, reached prosperity by protecting their markets.
austhrow743 · 10h ago
One of the biggest “services” expenses, i think maybe the biggest, comes in the form of employees.
Afaik the EU is regulated much more heavily in that area than the US, like here in Australia.
It makes sense to me that some amount of the US’ economic advantage comes from their ability to more efficiently match employees with the work currently demanded by the market.
WalterBright · 9h ago
> I'm in EU, I thought we had free markets too
Significantly less free than in the US, and correspondingly less prosperity.
> Some countries, including the US, reached prosperity by protecting their markets.
Not true. If it was true, N Korea would be massively prosperous.
TeaBrain · 5h ago
>Significantly less free than in the US, and correspondingly less prosperity.
Which measures of freedom became restricted in the EU following the GFC that led to the prosperity of the EU diverging from the US?
I'm aware, and I'm not contesting this, but this is besides the point. What I'm getting at is that Walter seems to think that prosperity has a 1 to 1 correlation to market freedom. If the GDP of the US started diverging farther away from the EU at a greater rate than prior to the GFC, then to his way of thinking, this must have something to do with how the EU limited market freedom following the GFC.
WalterBright · 3h ago
One problem is you cannot fire people in the EU. This makes for companies being very slow to hire, and inefficient allocation of workers to jobs.
Free markets are chaotic, and are constantly reallocating resources from less efficient uses to more efficient uses.
Regulations that impede that make for lower prosperity.
disgruntledphd2 · 35m ago
But those laws have only got closer to the US ones since the 2008 crisis, and yet measures of productivity have diverged negatively in the EU.
How does your theory account for this?
WalterBright · 6h ago
> Some countries, including the US, reached prosperity by protecting their markets.
Protecting markets is done with tariffs. Are you sure you want to assert that tariffs are good for the economy?
terribleperson · 6h ago
There are barriers to trade besides tarriffs. That's literally the only sensible part of the nonsense justification for the initial values of Liberation Day tarriffs. The E.U., for example, has barriers to trade like food regulations and PDO and such. Protectionism takes forms besides tarriffs. Tarriffs are probably among the least useful, most damaging, most blunt protectionist tools.
yupitsme123 · 10h ago
They created one kind of prosperity early on by protecting their markets and letting industries develop. Many other countries have done the same thing.
The unique thing was that they then created another, less broadly shared, kind of prosperity by eliminating those protections and offshoring those industries, and focusing instead on dollar diplomacy.
Not sure is this is what OP meant, but it's a huge advantage that the current administration seems bent on getting rid of
ajross · 11h ago
> Any country can become highly successful by enacting free markets.
And the existence proof for that assertion is which country, exactly? Lots of nations lack regulation of some form or another, many of them are "freer" than the US. The US isn't entirely "free" of trade barriers either (c.f. tariffpocalype).
Basically this sounds like a no-true-scotsman in the making. No, it's not that simple.
WalterBright · 9h ago
The US is not a perfect free market. But it is closer than other countries.
Socialism, on the other hand, makes things worse the closer one gets to "true" socialism.
mmooss · 6h ago
Worse for who? The US outcomes have been very good for the wealthy, especially the ultra-wealthy, but less good for other people than outcomes in many other wealthy countries.
WalterBright · 5h ago
During the 19th century, the US elevated scores of millions of immigrants from poverty to the middle class and beyond. The newly wealthy "aristocracy" sprang from the poor, much to the disdain of European royalty.
Poverty in the US continued going down until 1968, when it began edging up again. 1968 was the advent of the "Great Society" programs.
mmooss · 3h ago
The current wealth disparity, at historic levels, began growing mostly in the 1980s.
> 1968 was the advent of the "Great Society" programs.
1968 was when Nixon was elected.
> During the 19th century, the US elevated scores of millions of immigrants from poverty to the middle class and beyond. The newly wealthy "aristocracy" sprang from the poor
I don't grasp the relevance of these 19th century events to today. How does it address the fact that today, for most of the population, US outcomes are worse than many peer countries?
Who are you quoting with "aristocracy" and did they really come from poor people or from the middle class?
WalterBright · 3h ago
The US was not settled by wealthy people, or even middle class people. The poor people came by the scores of millions. Many came as indentured servants. The Irish came here because of the potato famine. And so on.
If you like, name a wealthy American who came from royalty. I can't think of any.
Fun fact: the Titanic was not built to transport rich people to the US. Quite the contrary, the bulk of it was for poor people immigrating to the US. The first class section was for status and marketing. The money came from the rest of the human cargo.
akdor1154 · 5h ago
> There's a common thread across the world and history. The more free market a country is, the more it prospers.
As long as the trend of capitalist market+power consolidation is considered to be 'less free market', I think I'd agree with you.
- Sincerely, an otherwise raging leftie
WalterBright · 3h ago
Just for fun, name the largest 10 US corporations in 1920, and how they came to consolidate power today.
zeven7 · 1h ago
Good question, and I think the misunderstanding is Buffett is speaking against, not for, tariffs here. I’m surprised none of the responses have spelled that out clearly yet.
He’s saying tariffs are making 7.5 billion people dislike us even more, and that jeopardizes our unique position in the world.
danielmarkbruce · 5h ago
He's saying starting a trade war with china is really dumb - you don't want 7.5 people mad at you.
EasyMark · 8h ago
Because we're letting one clown running a circus toss it all on a bonfire because 10% of the population lost manufacturing jobs.
Though he makes the distinction between "import certificates" and Trump's version of tariffs.
throw0101b · 12h ago
Contra:
> A common response I’ve seen to this is Warren Buffett repeatedly expressing concern about the trade deficit. Buffett’s main concern has always been that we’re sending pieces of paper abroad that give foreigners claims on US assets. And this is true, but I’d argue it’s been a massive net positive on the whole. First, as a percentage of total ownership, foreign ownership of US securities is actually flat since 2008. So despite 20 years of a persistent current account deficit there hasn’t been a huge change in foreign ownership as a percentage of the total. But the current account deficit also reflects the way many firms in the USA outsource their comparative advantage. And that accrues to US firms (and households) as increases in net worth. This is a big reason why corporate profit margins have expanded so much in the last 30 years. Global competition has made US firms more efficient and that’s accrued to Americans as a huge gain in net worth. So this isn’t a situation where we’re just sending Dollars abroad for no good reason. We’re doing it in large part because that is investment in our businesses that has added value to those very firms and their owners. Could that all reverse? For sure. And weirdly, the thing that would cause it to reverse is ultra protectionist measures thereby reducing demand for US Dollar assets and reducing investment in US firms.
Buffett actually does share a fear of trade deficits, though. His proposed solution, as an alternative to tariffs, were "import certificates"-essentially a marketable credit required to import goods. These would be earned via exports by exporters, be freely priced and traded, and would essentially bind import levels to export levels.
Keyframe · 12h ago
That sounds awful a lot like we had it back in the Yugoslavia days. It wasn't exactly free market, as you might know. Companies that exported stuff had credits attached to them and with that quota they could then import goods. They couldn't trade those credits. You then had absurd situations like a company that sells agricultural stuff and has stores for those was also selling, for example, commodore 64 in their stores since that's what they imported.
nabla9 · 13h ago
It's really a non-problem.
Net capital inflows into the U.S. = U.S. trade deficit.
The balance of payments is simply: Sales of assets – Purchases of assets = Purchases of goods – Sales of goods
If you balance the trade, it means foreigners must stop investing into the US.
chrisco255 · 13h ago
If you balance the trade, it means reduced foreign ownership of U.S. assets, yes, which means ownership of U.S. assets by domestic citizens will increase. One of the primary problems with an unbalanced trade deficit is that your own inhabitants are left with less wealth over time, as assets are sold off to fund consumption.
ChadNauseam · 12h ago
That’s zero-sum thinking. Increases demand for US assets can make americans wealthier in many ways (e.g. providing more capital to american businesses).
bnjms · 12h ago
Some goods are zero sum. Land is zero sum. Ownership of land by non local entities is… idk seems bad
yellowapple · 8h ago
The solution to that is land value taxation, not foreign trade policies that have zero bearing on land ownership.
epolanski · 11h ago
Why?
What's the issue, if me, an Italian, own land in Indiana or North Cali?
chrisco255 · 10h ago
You, a single actor, probably wouldn't be a significant factor. However, an international government or corporate entity owning hundreds of thousands of acres and exploiting resources on the land and routing them back to their home country can be problematic. It places additional strain on limited resources and the profits are not spent in the local economy...just sent overseas. Absentee ownership of non-productive real estate can also drive up the costs of housing for citizens, making homeownership more difficult and driving down wealth in the middle class.
epolanski · 9h ago
I see it completely opposite of you.
1) The foreign entity is investing where Americans aren't.
2) There is a very huge risk for the foreign entity to own such an operation because of political changes. By law or decree the US or the state can always nationalize these lands.
Thus, ultimately, I see no issue there.
gwbrooks · 3h ago
1. Foreign entities are also investing in land that is strategically or tactically important -- agricultural land is a good example of the former; land near military bases an example of the latter. China has demonstrated a willingness to do both.
2. I think this represents a misunderstanding of the U.S. Constitution and U.S. law. The Constitution provides no power for the federal government to acquire land without just compensation, which courts have regularly held to mean fair market value. Put another way: The feds can likely devise a path for buying your land, but can't outright nationalize it. Changing that is not a matter of presidential decree or even a law by Congress; it would require an amendment to the Constitution itself, which is an extraordinarily heavy political and policy lift.
epolanski · 39m ago
I still see no issue, the government can always buy it out at fair price, whatever it is, and it can just print money or easily issue debt to fund that.
dragonwriter · 12h ago
> If you balance the trade, it means reduced foreign ownership of U.S. assets, yes, which means ownership of U.S. assets by domestic citizens will increase.
Proportionately, perhaps, but that doesn't mean by value of assets owned. It just means the aggregate value of assets in the US will be less.
nabla9 · 12h ago
>U.S. assets by domestic citizens will increase.
You think zero sum like accountant or land owner.
They money coming is invested for opportunities. There will be less opportunities for startups, less VC money. Less affordable loans for corporations to expand and invest.
epolanski · 11h ago
Why would it even be desirable to have less foreign ownership of US assets?
Like what is the sound logic here?
As an Italian I would love more foreign ownership of Italian businesses, that would not only bring capital but more scrutiny.
Ekaros · 11h ago
On one side it could mean that less money leaves. That is no dividends are paid to outside the country. All profits stay in.
On other hand the economy overall and stock market especially have enormously increased due to outside investments. As injection of money in later one directly pushes valuations up. And the borrowing is only possible when someone loans money...
yupitsme123 · 10h ago
The extreme opposite of zero foreign ownership would be full foreign ownerhship, ie. colonization. All your resources and wealth belong to a foreign nation.
If we agree that that's a bad thing, then it stands to reason that there's a certain point where foreign ownership becomes a bad thing.
I think China has done an excellent job of bringing in foreign investment while keeping those foreign investors from running amok.
chrisco255 · 10h ago
If the foreign entities are not aligned with your country's values, what good is it? For example, Putin is arguably one of the wealthiest individuals in the world. Would you be bothered if he scooped up a controlling share in Italy's defense contractors or machining manufacturers?
monadINtop · 12h ago
>which means ownership of U.S. assets by domestic citizens will increase
Which to be clear will be largely domestic oligarchs and other whales since the vast majority of domestic citizens in the US don't have enough capital to own any significant amount of assets, US or otherwise.
chrisco255 · 10h ago
It applies across the spectrum, but to your point, at least domestic billionaires pay domestic taxes and spend money domestically.
Speaking to the middle class, home ownership (traditionally one of the most reliable sources of wealth for the middle class) would increase.
danielmarkbruce · 5h ago
By this definition "investing in" includes people overspending and getting themselves in a huge hole with debt. Sure, tell yourself that "creditors are investing in them".
johntarter · 13h ago
It was a problem to Warren Buffet and he used a parable in the past to explain the issue:
A perpetuation of this transfer will lead to major trouble. To understand why, take a wildly fanciful trip with me to two isolated, side-by-side islands of equal size, Squanderville and Thriftville. Land is the only capital asset on these islands, and their communities are primitive, needing only food and producing only food. Working eight hours a day, in fact, each inhabitant can produce enough food to sustain himself or herself. And for a long time that’s how things go along. On each island everybody works the prescribed eight hours a day, which means that each society is self-sufficient.
Eventually, though, the industrious citizens of Thriftville decide to do some serious saving and investing, and they start to work 16 hours a day. In this mode they continue to live off the food they produce in eight hours of work but begin exporting an equal amount to their one and only trading outlet, Squanderville.
The citizens of Squanderville are ecstatic about this turn of events, since they can now live their lives free from toil but eat as well as ever. Oh, yes, there’s a quid pro quo–but to the Squanders, it seems harmless: All that the Thrifts want in exchange for their food is Squanderbonds (which are denominated, naturally, in Squanderbucks).
Over time Thriftville accumulates an enormous amount of these bonds, which at their core represent claim checks on the future output of Squanderville. A few pundits in Squanderville smell trouble coming. They foresee that for the Squanders both to eat and to pay off–or simply service–the debt they’re piling up will eventually require them to work more than eight hours a day. But the residents of Squanderville are in no mood to listen to such doomsaying.
Meanwhile, the citizens of Thriftville begin to get nervous. Just how good, they ask, are the IOUs of a shiftless island? So the Thrifts change strategy: Though they continue to hold some bonds, they sell most of them to Squanderville residents for Squanderbucks and use the proceeds to buy Squanderville land. And eventually the Thrifts own all of Squanderville.
At that point, the Squanders are forced to deal with an ugly equation: They must now not only return to working eight hours a day in order to eat–they have nothing left to trade–but must also work additional hours to service their debt and pay Thriftville rent on the land so imprudently sold. In effect, Squanderville has been colonized by purchase rather than conquest.
It can be argued, of course, that the present value of the future production that Squanderville must forever ship to Thriftville only equates to the production Thriftville initially gave up and that therefore both have received a fair deal. But since one generation of Squanders gets the free ride and future generations pay in perpetuity for it, there are–in economist talk–some pretty dramatic “intergenerational inequities.”
The failure of this parable is the assuming that money that comes in to Squanderville is spent on consumption.
In reality people in Thriftville invest money in Squanderville and that money grows new sectors other than manufacturing while the share of manufacturing as GDP declines everywhere.
yupitsme123 · 10h ago
If they're the "investors" then aren't they also the equity owners? Yes they're growing new sectors, but they own the profits of those sectors, not the people in Squanderville, who have no capital left to invest. Hence the "colonization" analogy in the parable.
chrisco255 · 13h ago
Sounds like it would achieve a similar effect, but would be far more complex to implement and yet would still have the effect of being a tax on imports while not actually generating any revenue for the federal government.
ashoeafoot · 12h ago
Change in general, should always come gradually , that way the inevitable consequences rear their head early. Its the bold paintstrokes that topple the world on its side.
Obamas biofuels come to mind triggering the arab spring by raising bread prices.
andrewl · 13h ago
Buffett worked, at least informally, with the Obama administration on some financial policy issues. And he is a proponent of greater taxes on the very rich. Here's one short video (2:46) in which he talks about it:
If the US government really wanted to bring back industrial manufacturing, tax policy is one obvious route - eg a 2/3 tax on billionaire and corporate wealth, such as on the huge pile of cash Buffet-Berkshire is sitting on, but then offer a way out - invest that cash in domestic manufacturing and R & D and it won't be taxed.
This could motivate the private sector to go back to the Bell Labs model, too.
WalterBright · 11h ago
Billionaires get that way by investing in companies. You don't have to force them into it.
mmooss · 6h ago
They also get that way by inheriting wealth, by buying favorable laws and regulations, by anticompetitive practices (we've seen a few in the IT sector), and by other problematic behavior.
I agree that free markets are great in principle but your comments seem dogmatic - all free markets and only free markets. The conversation would be much more interesting if it was about the nuances.
WalterBright · 5h ago
> They also get that way by inheriting wealth,
Then their parents must have been billionaires, generating it with investments. If the inheritors divest from those investments, then they incur enormous income taxes. So it's likely to stay.
> by buying favorable laws and regulations,
Then it's not free market. There is no government system that is immune from buying influence and corruption.
> by anticompetitive practices (we've seen a few in the IT sector), and by other problematic behavior.
Nothing is perfect.
> The conversation would be much more interesting if it was about the nuances.
Perhaps, but nuances do not drive prosperity. It would also be more interesting if you showed me a prosperous socialist economy.
riffraff · 4h ago
> the inheritors divest from those investments, then they incur enormous income taxes.
But isn't this sidestepped buy the "buy, borrow, die" approach, often criticized?
The investments remain if they borrow against them. They just become collateral for the loan.
Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe · 2h ago
> Then it's not free market. There is no government system that is immune from buying influence and corruption
The point is that if you're forced to put your money into industries / r&d etc then you don't have enough money to bribe people / political parties / news outlets etc.
mmooss · 3h ago
Your Manichean divide between 'free market' and 'socialist' doesn't reflect reality. You seem obsessed.
> nothing is perfect
The same could be said about anything, including free market economics. It's meaningless.
> nuances do not drive prosperity
They certainly do. The differences are often in the details.
> Perhaps
That's honest, at least ...
WalterBright · 3h ago
> You seem obsessed
Being rude is not persuasive.
> including free market economics. It's meaningless.
I've explicitly said many times that free markets work even if they're not ideal or perfect.
33MHz-i486 · 12h ago
that doesnt really work if they have to compete on price with foreign producers that have lower labor costs, looser environmental regulations, deeper supply chains and better process knowledge. might as well eat the tax (waiting for monopolistic opportunities) or light the money on fire
maxilevi · 13h ago
As if the government could do better capital allocation in the economy than buffett
andrewl · 12h ago
As if the government could do better capital allocation in the economy than buffett
That seems to be what Buffett is suggesting.
Someone · 12h ago
Why couldn’t they, for the citizens of the USA? Buffett likely would not allocate it to optimize the outcome for US citizens.
nu11ptr · 14h ago
Wow, not sure why this surprises me, but I guess I figured he would be like Charlie and keep working until he passed.
danielmarkbruce · 5h ago
I bet he does. He has money outside berkshire and I'm sure the thought of spending hours every day investing his own money in smaller things, taking more risks etc sounds like fun.
andsoitis · 14h ago
You want an orderly succession.
bloodyplonker22 · 12h ago
The difference is that Charlie didn't have his partner die.
rufus_foreman · 14h ago
I would assume this means that he is not in great health. Hopefully I'm wrong and he just decided that 85 years or so of hustling for dollars was enough.
On one hand, he doesn't sound that great (in terms of subtle overall health markers in his voice) when he talks.
On the other hand, he's 94 and most people (especially men) don't make it into their 90s, so...
paulpauper · 12h ago
comparing the video to 2024, he sounded similar to last year. not much of a difference
unsnap_biceps · 14h ago
At 94, if he had a health concern, I don't think he'd be planning out 7 months for stepping down.
Supermancho · 14h ago
I heard he has a knack for prediction. Pair that with advantageous events (or prior to) and 7mo ahead is the result of a calculation.
unsnap_biceps · 13h ago
Sure, but at his age, heath issues spiral out of control very very very fast. I fully expect that he doesn't have a specific health concern right now and is planning ahead because if he did have a specific health issue, I don't expect that he would be able to plan 7 months ahead.
0cf8612b2e1e · 12h ago
I suspect there has been succession a plan in place for at least 20 years.
paulpauper · 12h ago
Stepping down ASAP would look worse than doing it 7 months out
unsnap_biceps · 11h ago
Sure, but if there is a health concern, announcing a date and then passing away before then is even worse then just stepping down asap.
nabla9 · 12h ago
He probably took a health insurance and plans to cash in.
Lammy · 14h ago
Had to look this up because I am not rich enough to be on a first-name basis with my close personal billionaire friend Charles Thomas Munger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Munger
palmotea · 14h ago
> Had to look this up because I am not rich enough to be on a first-name basis with my close personal billionaire friend Charles Thomas Munger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Munger
It's almost certain that the GP isn't either, and is only parasocially on a first name basis.
danielmarkbruce · 5h ago
"had to look this up because i've been living under rock"
pests · 2h ago
Everyone lives under a rock, just different rocks. I'm sure there is plenty you don't know too.
8f2ab37a-ed6c · 14h ago
I always run across great quotes from Warren Buffett, but I never spent any time actually reading any of his writings or anything written about him. What's the best place to start to absorb some of his wisdom? Anything that's applicable to startups, tech, and life in general, beyond being the CEO of a holding company?
tchalla · 14h ago
Start here - The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville
I still remember the feeling I got when I first read the first paragraph and especially this phrase:
"For one thing, if (a) you had taken 225 million orangutans distributed roughly as the U.S. population is; if (b) 215 winners were left after 20 days; and if (c) you found that 40 came from a particular zoo in Omaha, you would be pretty sure you were on to something."
Compared to anything in finance I've read up until then, it felt like I just found the right guy.
xNeil · 14h ago
Not by Buffett, but you'll love Poor Charlie's Alamanack, by Charlie Munger, his lifelong business partner.
For Buffett I recommend Essays of Warren Buffett. Regarding Munger’s Almanack, I wrote a nice summary just before his death:
”A real estate investment of $24 by the Dutch to buy the island of Manhattan would today be roughly equivalent to $3 trillion. Across 378 years, that’s about a seven percent annual compound rate of return…”
> “In terms of managing money, there wasn’t anybody better in the world to talk to for many, many decades than Charlie.”
Buffet gets all the press, but he acknowledges Munger as a huge part, if you listen.
nabla9 · 12h ago
Munger really gave Buffet wings. They did it together.
KajMagnus · 12h ago
It's a great book (I think), reading it now. It's the only book this far that I've brought with me to the gym (because I wanted to continue reading it, in between the exercises)
dehrmann · 13h ago
Not to diminish any of his accomplishments, but read his quotes and story as being a product of his time. He famously missed out on a lot of solid tech investments because of his background as a value investor. Value investing doesn't exist the same way it did when Berkshire started making a name for itself. Tech investing also isn't them same as 1997, 2004, or 2010.
nabla9 · 12h ago
Berkshire has outperformed Nasdaq and SP500 from the IPO (May 9, 1996), 10y, 5y, 1y time periods and he has now $340B in cash.
All this with low risk holding lots of cash. He has not missed anything.
nojito · 9h ago
His only miss was actually buying Berkshire. He estimates that he lost out on well over $200B had he never bought Berkshire.
dehrmann · 12h ago
Just because it beat indexes doesn't mean it couldn't have done better.
Someone probably said something similar in the 1960s when Buffet avoided crowded Go-Go era investments in the 1960s to his benefit.
nabla9 · 12h ago
"Not to diminish the accomplishments of Magnus Carlsen , but he has lost many games."
"Not to diminish the accomplishments of the world's best poker player, but he did lose many hands."
dehrmann · 12h ago
My point is that you have to put all of his wisdom and stories in the context of what he's good at and the environment he was in. He tried to apply his value investing playbook to early Google, and it looked like a bad investment. He later realized this (see my link), but that gets talked about less than value investing in its heyday. Aside: for debated reasons, value investing, which used to outperform, has been in a slump for a long time.
It's east to hear his story and think if you do the same thing, you'd be successful. If you did the same thing in 1970, you might be! And some of his wisdom is generally applicable, but reading his story as a guide for investing today isn't the right approach.
nabla9 · 11h ago
Think of the time horizon.
The current tech investing boom is just a blip just like previous tech booms (Auto industry boom, aircraft boom, personal computer boom).
jxjnskkzxxhx · 6h ago
This is extremely superficial.
epolanski · 11h ago
You are, and you're doing so naively, because one of the reasons Buffett has been successful is that he stuck to things that were in his circle of competence.
readthenotes1 · 12h ago
It's not that he missed out on it, both Buffett and munger said that they didn't really understand technology so they didn't feel a reason to go there. They felt they better understood insurance and railroads and candies and whatnot and they made Bank doing it.
zhivota · 11h ago
I agree and I think furthermore no one has really understood technology enough to have consistently made the right moves, because tech stocks fundamentally were blazing a new trail.
Buffett invested in businesses that, relatively speaking, were already well understood, if not widely by everyone, the point being that you could look at the balances and financial statements of an insurance company and derive an investment plan that was based on basically nothing new. Google, and tech in general, were not like that.
I think now some tech stocks do look like that. Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, all have business models that are much more well understood at this point than 30 years ago.
Even though Google has been wildly successful, I do see them as riskier since they derive so much of their income from web search ads, which feels like a precarious position compared to selling office productivity suites, databases, and CRMs to enterprises (I know Google does some of this but it's not where they make the bulk of their income).
Animats · 12h ago
"The Intelligent Investor", by Benjamin Graham. He was Buffett's mentor, and contributed to that book. It's straight value investing. Never buy a startup.
There are biographies of Buffett. I read one of them years ago. It goes into great detail about the early deals that got him started. I never did quite understand the deal that moved him into the big leagues, the takeover of GEICO insurance.
edouard-harris · 13h ago
Somewhat dated (10 years old), but a classic and probably the best single place to get started:
His shareholder letters are on the Berkshire website and are excellent.
physicles · 5h ago
For his personal background, the history of his companies, and insight into his overall investment philosophy, the Aquired podcast did a three part series on Berkshire Hathaway back in 2021. They also interviewed Charlie Munger just before he passed away. They’re good overviews and enjoyable listens.
jxjnskkzxxhx · 6h ago
I downloaded his letters to shareholders to an ebook reader, starting I believe in 1971 or so. Read all of it to the present, about 1500 pages (there's a lot of repetition)
What sticks out the most is what a clear thinker he is.
bluocms · 6h ago
Would be possible for you to share it? I think would be a very interesting read. Thanks
I'm guessing the real problem is he's irrationally bullish on the US stock market when there's no sane reason to be.
y-curious · 4h ago
I wish there was a way for me to automatically show you this post in 10 years in a smug and hostile fashion
danielmarkbruce · 5h ago
Selling billions of dollars in equities to hold cash doesn't scream bullish.
zahlman · 10h ago
I have been hearing about him being overall bearish for quite some time (or at least, more cautious than average). I have no idea what your sources might be. He does pick individual stocks that he expects to do well, of course.
aliljet · 13h ago
How much of Berkshire actually relied on Buffet toward this announcement? I'm increasingly suspect of 90+ or 80+ adults operating the machinery of massive entities. Lots of examples of this.
Frost1x · 13h ago
You’re probably right, but I suspect he guided the general direction of investments. I suspect they had very clever highly qualified younger people dealing with most the day to day decisions within those boundaries. I wouldn’t discount the contribution of either: both broad vision and narrow focus can add a lot of value.
deeg · 9h ago
Conventional wisdom (which I believe) is that long term individual investors do not beat the market. However, from my mostly-uniformed view, Buffett did exactly that. What was his "secret"? Did he build most of his wealth outside the market?
Flatcircle · 9h ago
Charlie Munger used to talk about how easy it used to be because there was so much less competition and the competition wasn't that smart. Think by the 70's once they figured out how to accurately price options with the Black-Scholes model things started to ramp up. By that point, Buffett was already a player and had the funds to make moves.
deeg · 7h ago
Interesting. I've never heard of that model. So what Munger is implying is that by the 80s even Buffett wasn't beating the market but was leveraging his money for gains. Thanks!
Flatcircle · 1h ago
Sorry I didn’t mean Buffett and munger used the option pricing, I mean regular people did. They also got more money by buying up insurance companies and investing the float
It's kind of a damn shame a man like that was not tapped for any major economic position in the government. I don't know how men like Peter Navarro got so far. In a sense, all the money in the world didn't actually fulfill his true potential, and I say that with the utmost respect.
gen220 · 7h ago
He was asked by Schwarzenegger for advice on California economic policy. Warren did his research, and astutely suggested they should try to scrap Proposition 13 (IMO it's among California's worst policies, but it's a political third rail). I don't think he was asked for economic policy advice ever again :)
I'm sure he's full of good ideas. I think they were just a bit more ambitious than the last 40 years of politicians were willing to stomach or advocate for.
xNeil · 14h ago
Not convinced working for government is the best use of your potential, though considering he owns 5% of all US Treasury Bills, I wouldn't say his impact is any less than being a government employee.
curiousgal · 14h ago
> best use
Well I don't think him sitting on billions of dollars at 94 is better from a societal perspective.
dghlsakjg · 13h ago
That money has already been committed to charitable use for the most part, or already donated. He is essentially managing billions of dollars on behalf of charitable causes. Seems like a pretty good use of his money management skills.
Besides all that he has advocated for that money to be taxed away from him for decades.
He pretty famously lives below his means in a normal suburban house and drives around in a car that most software engineers could afford (Cadillac sedan).
From a societal perspective, I’m not sure you could ask for much more from any one man.
knorker · 11h ago
The money isn't "out of circulation". That's not how money works.
Even as T-bills they're doing something.
mulmen · 13h ago
“Sitting on”? He famously invests in companies that do things.
johntarter · 12h ago
Warren Buffet has warned about the trade deficit problem since 2003 and has proposed an alternate solution called "import certificates" where exporters could earn them and sell them to the importers who must use them. This would result in an even trade balance. He admitted it's essentially a tariff by another name but a more fair and systematic one. In other words, he aligns with Peter Navarro in the problem but differs in the solution.
wood_spirit · 13h ago
> I don't know how men like Peter Navarro got so far.
It’s a weird story. IIRC in the run for president before trumps first term he sent Jared Kushner to find out about trade. Kushner browsed Amazon, looking at book covers, and picked Navarro’s book because he liked the title… and the rest is history
atombender · 12h ago
Trump should have hired Ron Vara [1], seems like a much more competent guy.
He has been asked many times but was not interested.
moomin · 13h ago
Someone at my firm went to a BH AGM. There’s literally nothing like it; it’s like a Star Trek con, but for capitalism.
khazhoux · 12h ago
For all I've heard about WB the last few decades, I couldn't tell you a single thing he's done that's impacted my life, the country, or the world. AFAIK he's a guy who makes a ton of money, plays bridge with Bill Gates, gives advice, and has a fund that made money for other people. Am I missing something?
zhivota · 11h ago
Buffett invested in boring industries like insurance. As unexciting as it is, businesses like that basically are the invisible infrastructure that makes society work smoothly.
Don't misunderstand flashy at the only way to be important.
khazhoux · 11h ago
Which kind of investment was it though?
* An investment that makes something possible that otherwise wouldn’t happen. Like the US investing in NASA
* Investment that is not consequential in the big scheme except it makes people money.
Did his insurance investments keep some companies alive?
gen220 · 7h ago
I think the right way to think about Berkshire Hathaway these days is that it's a highly decentralized, minimum viable civilization. They do everything from freight locomotives, to furniture-making, shoes, petroleum, chocolates and more. Then there's a layer of financialization on top of it all (insurance, re-insurance, loan issuance, market-making etc.).
If the U.S. became a failed state tomorrow, there's a genuine chance that Berkshire businesses would keep on operating and trading with each other, on Berkshire rails. It's like a hive of cockroaches -- businesses which are individually strong, that when woven together are un-killable.
derivagral · 8h ago
Generally the latter. The very short version is that he focused on cash flow, and liked (re) insurance due to success managing float and risk. From there, he'd buy/invest stable businesses and brands. Insurance wasn't his first go, he started bookie work as a kid.
As for saving, he was the guy with a big pile of money in '08 (and other times). Someone you call when your business is dying or you want to retire; he gets the deal, not you. His Bank of America warrant play was a big one from that time.
I didn't finish snowball, but the first half goes over a lot of it.
I like WB as much as the next guy and while he was wildly successfully at making money, he hasn't really done anything else. His main motivation has always been to make money for himself and his shareholders, so why would we expect anything else?
Some of his biggest investments are in things like candy, soda, beer. Not exactly great for society overall and not really enabling anything other than diabetes.
He was already an massively wealthy in 2008 and just having a huge pile of cash and using it to make more deals is not some great achievement to be celebrated.
Yes he made billions off of his 2011 bofa investment, so good for him and brk but what did this do for anyone else?
If BH didn't exist would it really matter? I don't think so.
epolanski · 11h ago
He's not a politician, he doesn't have to.
Still, he's given dozens of billions in charity, given important counsel to the government during the 80s and 2008 financial crisis.
During 2008 financial crisis he essentially saved Goldman and General Electric both preventing further escape of capital and an even worse situation for the US and potentially world economy.
In any case, he's a capitalist who likes making money for himself and his shareholders, he ain't a medical researcher or your mayor.
ralph84 · 4h ago
Lol, his important counsel was “bail out my portfolio plz.” Saving businesses that deserved to fail using free money printed by the fed isn’t a virtue. He was also a big cheerleader for the frauds at Wells Fargo.
lokimedes · 14h ago
And now after decades of stock buybacks, quantitative easing and other mad financial manipulation, comes again the time for value investors, and he leaves?! :)
AustinDev · 14h ago
They have like half a trillion in cash on the balance sheet. I'm sure they're going to scoop up a bunch of value in the coming years. Whoever takes over has a hell of a war chest to work with.
Supermancho · 14h ago
What are you trying to say? It's not clear at all.
lucianbr · 14h ago
Pretty clear and funny to me. Not sure how to explain it without just repeating the same thing.
It seems the markets will soon go through a period when Buffet's approach will work best, which makes it an inoportune moment for him to retire. Of course at his age retirement is expected, maybe even inevitable - that's the joke.
epolanski · 10h ago
> It seems the markets will soon go through a period when Buffet's approach will work best
Why would you think so?
US equity is still at insanely high valuations, markets are full of denials about it and about the future tariff related uncertainty.
HarHarVeryFunny · 12h ago
I don't know how much of Bershire's funds Buffet personally manages nowadays - he's had other people managing a lot of it for years.
Supermancho · 11h ago
> And now after decades of stock buybacks, quantitative easing and other mad financial manipulation, comes again the time for value investors
These are things that have happened in the past. Mad financial manipulations? Like what is "mad"? "Comes again the time." How is it different than any other day?
> Pretty clear and funny to me.
You're making up your own interpretation of nonsense then calling it obvious. Good luck with that.
lokimedes · 14h ago
Just finding it mildly amusing to consider that in the messed up economics we are entering with Trump, there may be a shift to value investing, something I have always associated with Buffett.
All that money and he's still a mortal just like the rest of us. I wonder if mega billionaires like him have done private research on life longevity, cryosleep, mind-upload, etc. It's the only useful thing they can do with that much money that directly benefits them. Anything else (legacy, influence, children, etc.) doesn't benefit them when they're gone.
locallost · 13h ago
There are things I don't like about him, and the way he is idolized by people that want to accumulate money. But I will say you can't really throw that "all that money and he's still mortal" thing at him because in reality he lived really below his means. So the money part is interesting, why did he try to get so much if he didn't really need it? I think (without really knowing anything about him), that he wanted money like everyone else to be independent, but at one point it turned into a game to see how much he can win.
DontchaKnowit · 13h ago
Hes literally like, autistic or something. If you've ever watched the documentary on him he has a got a weird way about him. Hes got an obsessive knack for numbers and just got into the finance game where literally your job is to make as much money as possible. Its your fiduciary obligation. The rest os history.
deadbabe · 11h ago
With all the billionaires we've had, the fact that no one is living unnaturally long or in some kind of cryosleep or AI simulation probably means one thing: It's simply not possible, and if it is, all the money in the world won't get you there.
D-Coder · 8h ago
> the fact that no one is living unnaturally long or in some kind of cryosleep or AI simulation probably means one thing: It's simply not possible
_Yet_.
If you looked at the Wright Brothers aircraft, what real use is there for a vehicle that carries one person, maybe 50lbs of cargo, and moves at 80 mph?
That is an enormous understatement. At 94, Buffet has witnessed history and has represented a vision of betterment, a just society, and sound economic stewardship. These things were not and are not hallucinations.
But for many, it seems, the lessons about co-operation, stable economic growth. the sane application of democratic principles, and the rule of law must be learned again.
It's the end of an era bona fides and respect for truth and accountability as the structural integrity of democratic society.
Berkshire was a key player in the rail workers strike of 2022 and Warren didn’t seem to want to give an inch to the working man when given the opportunity to do so.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_railroad_...
> I just don’t buy this argument. By global standards, even the poorest Americans (with obvious exceptions like the homeless) are relatively wealthy. Comparison is the theft of joy.
Define wealth. The cheapest option for many foods in other countries is often not only much cheaper, but also of much higher quality than the cheapest option for the same type of item in the US (bread, rice, etc..) in fact their cheap version could easily be pass for the US premium grocery version.
No, they aren't. It's dubious that even the widening relative gap between the working class and the capitalist class plays a major role, though that at least has the virtue of being a real condition and not a fantasy.
In America, at least, workers think tomorrow will be worse than today and they are resorting to populism to try and reverse the trend.
Ironically, it’s often the opposite party that actually pushes for policies that would materially benefit the working class. The real fallacy is equating the current wave of so-called “populism” with a genuine effort to improve conditions for workers. In practice, what’s being called “populism” is frequently just another vehicle for entrenched elites to consolidate power, not a movement to empower ordinary people.
Except on immigration.
Such as?
How about if I let you do that:
> In America, at least, workers think tomorrow will be worse than today and they are resorting to populism to try and reverse the trend.
See, belief about likely future conditions is a very different hypothesis than factually-existing current conditions, and a better one. To the extent that, IMO, its at least part of the actual explanation.
This description could apply to the French Revolution, Tsarist Russia, the fall of the Weimar Republic, and the Colombian Civil War. Why do you think it is dubious?
So much for the tolerant left. Class based analysis is incoherent. Marxian alienation and the LTV don’t make sense in a world of computers. I don’t exploit electrons (oh wait actually soon Marxist’s are going to do the anti-AI shit of claiming they’re sentient and thus deserve “rights”)
The analysis of the roots of fascism in the modern era would be much closer to accurately described by a sequel to the book “mass psychology of fascism” by reich which claims fascism comes from sexual failures.
This seems especially likely given the shocking stats about male sexlessness, loneliness, and general anti male sentiment from society at large. Tinder is literally adding a height verification tool at this very moment.
Unless you plan to just... force people to fuck? And hope people don't notice their finances getting fucked? Seems like a recipe for drama[0].
> oh wait actually soon Marxist’s are going to do the anti-AI shit of claiming they’re sentient and thus deserve “rights”
As someone who's never read Marx, this feels like a strawman at best? At the very least, "liberate the robots" is a pro-AI position, not an anti-AI one.
[0] https://xkcd.com/592/
If living standards are falling, grocery prices have increased, rents have gone up, wages have stagnated, what does the price of eggs in China have to do with my assessment of the local conditions.
They stood clearly and simply for good moral judgment, fair systems and looked at the bigger picture to carry most people forward. They also based all their decision in facts, truth and science. They learn't their trades (economics & politics) over time and weren't afraid to adapt as times changed.
Their slow and steady presence did more for equality and fairness than many others. We will need to find these values again after the current times have played out.
I am not inclined to give her a free pass on that.
> preserving status quo
That sounds like the same thing to me?
Merkel has severely underestimated Putin. She played a role in the continuous betting on Russian oil. Merkel has called the internet “neuland” and wasn’t her government also the one starting with hydrogen subsidies. I donno about you but to this day I only hear lots of talk about hydrogen but near zero results. So all the wrong bets.
Also I don’t know whether you noticed but Germany is expected to be in a recession for three years in a row now.
About equity and fairness okay I guess you are right. Everybody in Germany will be poor if things continue like this.
What? She shut down nuclear power plants to ramp up coal and Russian dependence.
Idolizing people is rarely helpful.
Germany has a population of 84 million people. 10,000 should not be able to dictate a policy decision of this magnitude, regardless of how loud they are.
> Nuclear is complicated (and mostly fear driven)
The politics of nuclear are complicated, the science (more engineering) of nuclear are complicated, the imperative is clear and simple. You are correct that it's mostly fear driven, but stoked by "green" advocacy organizations and/or manipulated by people with a stake in the continued use of fossil fuels (and largely the latter funding the former).
True leadership would stand up to both of these pressures, making people understand that the voice of 10,000 (or even 100,000) people can not dictate policy alone and educating people on the reality of nuclear power, while also fixing some of the real issues with nuclear power (an aging power plant fleet and an inability economically build better replacements).
Merkel totally flopped on energy policy.
In a democratic system it is simply difficult to maintain such extremely unpopular positions. Governments which do so don't last long. Merkel flip-flopped and maintained her Chancellorship.
Oddly enough? Schröder was in a coalition with the green party that had emerged from the anti-nuclear movement two decades before.
But unfortunately I think Merkels legacy will be "Wandel durch handel".
Trying to pacify Russia and Putin through increasing trade. Did not work.
There will always be people that dislike change, but it may ultimately be better to start integrating them earlier rather than later. If you make it through the bad times (e.g. now), at the other end is the outcome you desire.
The refugee crisis didn't appear to have a significant impact (positive or negative) on the labor market based on a recent study by the IZA and ZEW [0] - "Our estimates suggest that those migrants have not displaced native workers but have themselves struggled to find gainful employment. We find moderate increases in crime, and our analysis further indicates that while at the macro level increased migration was accompanied by increased support for anti-immigrant parties, exposure to asylum seekers at the micro level had a small negative effect." [0]
There are systemic issues with the German economy that aren't related to immigration. A lot of the current malaise can be attributed to the economic slowdowns in Russia (with the Russian Invasion of Ukraine) [1] and China (due to Zero COVID and the subsequent indigenization) [2], due to how tied German industry was with both markets [3].
[0] - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecca.12420
[1] - https://dgap.org/en/research/publications/no-more-illusions-...
[2] - https://ecfr.eu/article/the-end-of-germanys-china-illusion/?...
[3] - https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/001/2024/130/arti...
How many of those unchecked are women? What's the point of having borders then? Or law enforcement putting criminals in jails, when they could be out there propping up the economy. As long as your illegal activities are putting money into the state coffers, you should be allowed to continue unchecked, screw the laws.
Yeah sure, they might cause some trouble for the lower and middle class living amongst them, but think of the economic gains for the top 1%! Their real estate and stock portfolios have never looked so good. And if people vocally disagree with this you call them fascist and put them in jail for threatening your "democracy".
How does Poland's economy manage to grow faster than Germany's without illegal immigration? Maybe they can send some researchers there to find out.
How exactly did he "represented a vision of betterment, a just society, and sound economic stewardship"?
> But for many, it seems, the lessons about co-operation, stable economic growth. the sane application of democratic principles, and the rule of law must be learned again.
Who are these "many" that need to be taught about those "democratic principles" and the "rule of law". How are these related to Buffett?
> It's the end of an era bona fides and respect for truth and accountability as the structural integrity of democratic society.
What?
The current status of things in US politics is what I assume is being referred to here. Happy to be corrected.
He's literally older than chocolate chips!
[1] https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate_chip
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That's more than most people can expect if they even make it to their late 80s.
Frankly I'm astonished at people like Warren Buffet and David Attenborough (a hero of mine).
I really hope I could be productive at 90. Heck, I hope I'm productive at 70.
I asked what her secret is to aging so well. "I don't know, just don't have any health issues, I guess", she said.
Maybe if you can make it that long without encountering Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis, arthritis, or various other major issues... then you basically have a decent shot at still being fine and healthy at 94.
My grandmother was extremely active throughout her life. She worked out. She was active at church. She volunteered throughout her 70's and 80's. She was always happy to go out to dinner with anyone that wanted.
Most of my memories of my grandfather (her husband) where him sitting on a recliner watching TV. He rarely left the house.
Their quality of life in the last 15 years of their lives was so different. Grandma died on her feet. She had a heart attack in the middle of the night and that was it. The day before she had been out with friends and had dinner with the family. My grandfather just sort of wasted away. He was weak, frail, and kind of miserable.
All I'm saying is there sure seemed to be a lot more than dodging all of those diseases and issues with those two. My grandmother invested in herself. She worked really hard to maintain that quality of life.
She's my role model as I age.
This seems like a good moment to share it.
https://youtu.be/0fMRHpguTPM?si=75lLHzDynMCKhT9H
"Variety and moderation" is probably good enough advice for most people without specific health conditions.
> “It’s a big mistake, in my view, when you have seven and a half billion people that don’t like you very well, and you got 300 million that are crowing in some way about how well they’ve done - I don’t think it’s right, and I don’t think it’s wise,” Buffett said. “The United States won. I mean, we have become an incredibly important country, starting from nothing 250 years ago. There’s not been anything like it.”
I think it’s saying that the US population is crowing about how well we’ve done, and so we should be able to tax whatever imports we want? But what an odd way to say that if so. How well we’ve done seems completely unrelated to tariffs.
Then the quote caps off with some back-patting about how we’ve only been around 250 years, and that our rise is unprecedented. Again seemingly unrelated to tariffs.
He's commenting on the attitude driving the tariffs.
The only unique thing about America is free markets. Any country can become highly successful by enacting free markets. The only thing in the way is their disbelief that they work.
There's a common thread across the world and history. The more free market a country is, the more it prospers.
Japan, S Korea and Hong Kong have next to no natural resources. Great prosperity.
Germany turned to free markets after WW2 and enjoyed the "German Miracle". (Germany has since turned to socialism, with predictable results.) Germany received far, far less Marshall Plan money than Britain and France, who had no miracle.
> but to say it's the only unique thing about America is just wrong
History shows otherwise.
Russia was also not industrialized until after their revolution in ~1920, and suffered horrific losses in the homeland during WW2.
The US emerged from WW2 fully industrialized and nearly unscathed. The US mainland remained untouched throughout both world wars.
The starting positions were far from equal. You attribute too much to free markets.
Minus some balloons from the Japanese I believe?
Russia did not industrialize in the 1920s. They did collectivize agriculture, famine ensued. They turned back to free market farming, famine went away. They turned again to collectivization, and farming collapsed again. Eventually, the Soviets allowed farmers to farm small plots and sell what they could raise. These small free market plots kept the country from starving.
Russia did work hard at industrializing during WW2, but it was propped up by the US, who heavily supplied the Soviets. The US actually built factories in the US, dismantled them, and shipped them to the Soviet Union during the war. US engineers and craftsmen taught them.
When WW2 ended, the Soviets looted everything industrial they could find from the Soviet sector. Whole factories were moved east. Soviet industrial output grew during the war.
British industry was also untouched, because the German bomber fleet did not have the range to cover much of Britain, and because Hitler stupidly decided to bomb houses instead of factories. Britain had a pretty anemic recovery from the war - despite getting far more Marshall Plan money than Germany.
Japan did not have a free market before the war, and not much of an industrial economy. Curtis LeMay had a hard time finding industrial targets to bomb, as Japanese industry was characterized as "a drill press in every home". Japan turned to free markets after the war, and we know what happened next. Recall that Japan was burned into ash in WW2. They went from utter defeat to economic superpower, despite not having any natural resources, in just 30 years.
How much more of an "unequal" starting point could there possibly be?
The only common characteristic of prosperity is free markets. And the more free market an economy is, the more prosperous it is. Over and over. It goes back to the middle ages.
The other common characteristic is when countries turn towards socialism, things just get worse and worse for them.
These minus nukes and missiles plus battleships is pre-WWII Japan.
This may be helpful if you're curious why so many countries that choose free market instead of Communism after WWII are still not industrialized today.
Digital services not being taxed/tariffed when exported whereas physical goods are, is purely a historical artifact. The US has managed to get the whole world addicted to their doomscrolling dopamine algorithms, raking in trillions of dollars. If these were physical goods, this would've been entirely different.
The heroine dealer of the world. So far they've been allowed this position, which is incredibly privileged. And now that the EU sometimes takes a (paltry) step towards slightly taxing the drugs, the dealer screams and kicks, "it's unfair! They're targeting just me!".
Simple, obvious contradiction: can every country enjoy the benefits of issuing the de facto reserve currency for the world? Just by having free markets?
The US has been incredibly privileged. I’d argue that was earned in some ways and lucky in others. But it’s undeniably true.
Free markets are a choice the US made. Any country can choose to have a free market, and some have. The reserve currency thing has nothing to do with it.
What would you say is the economic impact on a country of controlling a global reserve currency?
This is less unique than the dollar being the dominant reserve currency and dominant currency for settling international trade.
You appear to be putting the cart before the horse.
The dollar isn't dominant in international trade because the domestic market is free, like the above user was referencing. The dollar has been the dominant reserve currency and currency for international trade since it overtook the pound for both of those functions in the mid 20th century, which didn't coincide with the US having a free market.
Also, I wasn't make any causal relationship in my comment, like you seem to be implying. The fact that USD is the dominant reserve currency and dominant trade currency is unquestionably more unique than having free markets, considering that the US is truly completely unique in both of these regards, while it is not nearly as unique in having a free market.
The little "thing" or status of having reserve currency has allowed the US to enjoy lower international borrowing costs than anywhere else in the world. This has immensely benefited the US, in facilitating ease of borrowing with relatively low interest rates and by facilitating lower exchange rate risk in borrowing than any other nation.
And those were not based on free market choices, as the UK would have been just as much free, but it was a devastated economy in a small country.
The dollar becoming the reserve currency has given America a lot of power, however. It certainly is a factor in the way America is able to run a trade deficit and yet still benefit.
During WW2, the US was the most powerful economy in the world. It fought WW2 in both hemispheres (which required two navies), and supplied all the allies.
Japan was well aware they could never win a sustained war with the US, and hoped that the attack on Pearl Harbor would get them a negotiated settlement. Hitler, in probably the stupidest miscalculation in history, declared war on the US.
Is that unique to America? I'm in EU, I thought we had free markets too.
> The more free market a country is, the more it prospers.
Some countries, including the US, reached prosperity by protecting their markets.
Afaik the EU is regulated much more heavily in that area than the US, like here in Australia.
It makes sense to me that some amount of the US’ economic advantage comes from their ability to more efficiently match employees with the work currently demanded by the market.
Significantly less free than in the US, and correspondingly less prosperity.
> Some countries, including the US, reached prosperity by protecting their markets.
Not true. If it was true, N Korea would be massively prosperous.
Which measures of freedom became restricted in the EU following the GFC that led to the prosperity of the EU diverging from the US?
Free markets are chaotic, and are constantly reallocating resources from less efficient uses to more efficient uses.
Regulations that impede that make for lower prosperity.
How does your theory account for this?
Protecting markets is done with tariffs. Are you sure you want to assert that tariffs are good for the economy?
The unique thing was that they then created another, less broadly shared, kind of prosperity by eliminating those protections and offshoring those industries, and focusing instead on dollar diplomacy.
Not sure is this is what OP meant, but it's a huge advantage that the current administration seems bent on getting rid of
And the existence proof for that assertion is which country, exactly? Lots of nations lack regulation of some form or another, many of them are "freer" than the US. The US isn't entirely "free" of trade barriers either (c.f. tariffpocalype).
Basically this sounds like a no-true-scotsman in the making. No, it's not that simple.
Socialism, on the other hand, makes things worse the closer one gets to "true" socialism.
Poverty in the US continued going down until 1968, when it began edging up again. 1968 was the advent of the "Great Society" programs.
> 1968 was the advent of the "Great Society" programs.
1968 was when Nixon was elected.
> During the 19th century, the US elevated scores of millions of immigrants from poverty to the middle class and beyond. The newly wealthy "aristocracy" sprang from the poor
I don't grasp the relevance of these 19th century events to today. How does it address the fact that today, for most of the population, US outcomes are worse than many peer countries?
Who are you quoting with "aristocracy" and did they really come from poor people or from the middle class?
If you like, name a wealthy American who came from royalty. I can't think of any.
Fun fact: the Titanic was not built to transport rich people to the US. Quite the contrary, the bulk of it was for poor people immigrating to the US. The first class section was for status and marketing. The money came from the rest of the human cargo.
As long as the trend of capitalist market+power consolidation is considered to be 'less free market', I think I'd agree with you.
- Sincerely, an otherwise raging leftie
He’s saying tariffs are making 7.5 billion people dislike us even more, and that jeopardizes our unique position in the world.
https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/growing.pdf
Though he makes the distinction between "import certificates" and Trump's version of tariffs.
> A common response I’ve seen to this is Warren Buffett repeatedly expressing concern about the trade deficit. Buffett’s main concern has always been that we’re sending pieces of paper abroad that give foreigners claims on US assets. And this is true, but I’d argue it’s been a massive net positive on the whole. First, as a percentage of total ownership, foreign ownership of US securities is actually flat since 2008. So despite 20 years of a persistent current account deficit there hasn’t been a huge change in foreign ownership as a percentage of the total. But the current account deficit also reflects the way many firms in the USA outsource their comparative advantage. And that accrues to US firms (and households) as increases in net worth. This is a big reason why corporate profit margins have expanded so much in the last 30 years. Global competition has made US firms more efficient and that’s accrued to Americans as a huge gain in net worth. So this isn’t a situation where we’re just sending Dollars abroad for no good reason. We’re doing it in large part because that is investment in our businesses that has added value to those very firms and their owners. Could that all reverse? For sure. And weirdly, the thing that would cause it to reverse is ultra protectionist measures thereby reducing demand for US Dollar assets and reducing investment in US firms.
* https://disciplinefunds.com/2025/04/24/three-things-you-gues...
Net capital inflows into the U.S. = U.S. trade deficit. The balance of payments is simply: Sales of assets – Purchases of assets = Purchases of goods – Sales of goods
If you balance the trade, it means foreigners must stop investing into the US.
What's the issue, if me, an Italian, own land in Indiana or North Cali?
1) The foreign entity is investing where Americans aren't.
2) There is a very huge risk for the foreign entity to own such an operation because of political changes. By law or decree the US or the state can always nationalize these lands.
Thus, ultimately, I see no issue there.
2. I think this represents a misunderstanding of the U.S. Constitution and U.S. law. The Constitution provides no power for the federal government to acquire land without just compensation, which courts have regularly held to mean fair market value. Put another way: The feds can likely devise a path for buying your land, but can't outright nationalize it. Changing that is not a matter of presidential decree or even a law by Congress; it would require an amendment to the Constitution itself, which is an extraordinarily heavy political and policy lift.
Proportionately, perhaps, but that doesn't mean by value of assets owned. It just means the aggregate value of assets in the US will be less.
You think zero sum like accountant or land owner.
They money coming is invested for opportunities. There will be less opportunities for startups, less VC money. Less affordable loans for corporations to expand and invest.
Like what is the sound logic here?
As an Italian I would love more foreign ownership of Italian businesses, that would not only bring capital but more scrutiny.
On other hand the economy overall and stock market especially have enormously increased due to outside investments. As injection of money in later one directly pushes valuations up. And the borrowing is only possible when someone loans money...
If we agree that that's a bad thing, then it stands to reason that there's a certain point where foreign ownership becomes a bad thing.
I think China has done an excellent job of bringing in foreign investment while keeping those foreign investors from running amok.
Which to be clear will be largely domestic oligarchs and other whales since the vast majority of domestic citizens in the US don't have enough capital to own any significant amount of assets, US or otherwise.
Speaking to the middle class, home ownership (traditionally one of the most reliable sources of wealth for the middle class) would increase.
A perpetuation of this transfer will lead to major trouble. To understand why, take a wildly fanciful trip with me to two isolated, side-by-side islands of equal size, Squanderville and Thriftville. Land is the only capital asset on these islands, and their communities are primitive, needing only food and producing only food. Working eight hours a day, in fact, each inhabitant can produce enough food to sustain himself or herself. And for a long time that’s how things go along. On each island everybody works the prescribed eight hours a day, which means that each society is self-sufficient.
Eventually, though, the industrious citizens of Thriftville decide to do some serious saving and investing, and they start to work 16 hours a day. In this mode they continue to live off the food they produce in eight hours of work but begin exporting an equal amount to their one and only trading outlet, Squanderville.
The citizens of Squanderville are ecstatic about this turn of events, since they can now live their lives free from toil but eat as well as ever. Oh, yes, there’s a quid pro quo–but to the Squanders, it seems harmless: All that the Thrifts want in exchange for their food is Squanderbonds (which are denominated, naturally, in Squanderbucks).
Over time Thriftville accumulates an enormous amount of these bonds, which at their core represent claim checks on the future output of Squanderville. A few pundits in Squanderville smell trouble coming. They foresee that for the Squanders both to eat and to pay off–or simply service–the debt they’re piling up will eventually require them to work more than eight hours a day. But the residents of Squanderville are in no mood to listen to such doomsaying. Meanwhile, the citizens of Thriftville begin to get nervous. Just how good, they ask, are the IOUs of a shiftless island? So the Thrifts change strategy: Though they continue to hold some bonds, they sell most of them to Squanderville residents for Squanderbucks and use the proceeds to buy Squanderville land. And eventually the Thrifts own all of Squanderville.
At that point, the Squanders are forced to deal with an ugly equation: They must now not only return to working eight hours a day in order to eat–they have nothing left to trade–but must also work additional hours to service their debt and pay Thriftville rent on the land so imprudently sold. In effect, Squanderville has been colonized by purchase rather than conquest. It can be argued, of course, that the present value of the future production that Squanderville must forever ship to Thriftville only equates to the production Thriftville initially gave up and that therefore both have received a fair deal. But since one generation of Squanders gets the free ride and future generations pay in perpetuity for it, there are–in economist talk–some pretty dramatic “intergenerational inequities.”
Source: https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/growing.pdf
In reality people in Thriftville invest money in Squanderville and that money grows new sectors other than manufacturing while the share of manufacturing as GDP declines everywhere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJzTsTU1xL8
This could motivate the private sector to go back to the Bell Labs model, too.
I agree that free markets are great in principle but your comments seem dogmatic - all free markets and only free markets. The conversation would be much more interesting if it was about the nuances.
Then their parents must have been billionaires, generating it with investments. If the inheritors divest from those investments, then they incur enormous income taxes. So it's likely to stay.
> by buying favorable laws and regulations,
Then it's not free market. There is no government system that is immune from buying influence and corruption.
> by anticompetitive practices (we've seen a few in the IT sector), and by other problematic behavior.
Nothing is perfect.
> The conversation would be much more interesting if it was about the nuances.
Perhaps, but nuances do not drive prosperity. It would also be more interesting if you showed me a prosperous socialist economy.
But isn't this sidestepped buy the "buy, borrow, die" approach, often criticized?
https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/03/tax-loop...
The point is that if you're forced to put your money into industries / r&d etc then you don't have enough money to bribe people / political parties / news outlets etc.
> nothing is perfect
The same could be said about anything, including free market economics. It's meaningless.
> nuances do not drive prosperity
They certainly do. The differences are often in the details.
> Perhaps
That's honest, at least ...
Being rude is not persuasive.
> including free market economics. It's meaningless.
I've explicitly said many times that free markets work even if they're not ideal or perfect.
That seems to be what Buffett is suggesting.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/03/warren-buffett-to-ask-board-...
On one hand, he doesn't sound that great (in terms of subtle overall health markers in his voice) when he talks.
On the other hand, he's 94 and most people (especially men) don't make it into their 90s, so...
It's almost certain that the GP isn't either, and is only parasocially on a first name basis.
https://business.columbia.edu/cgi-finance/chazen-global-insi...
"For one thing, if (a) you had taken 225 million orangutans distributed roughly as the U.S. population is; if (b) 215 winners were left after 20 days; and if (c) you found that 40 came from a particular zoo in Omaha, you would be pretty sure you were on to something."
Compared to anything in finance I've read up until then, it felt like I just found the right guy.
https://www.stripe.press/poor-charlies-almanack/cover
”A real estate investment of $24 by the Dutch to buy the island of Manhattan would today be roughly equivalent to $3 trillion. Across 378 years, that’s about a seven percent annual compound rate of return…”
https://www.lostbookofsales.com/notes/poor-charlies-almanack...
> “In terms of managing money, there wasn’t anybody better in the world to talk to for many, many decades than Charlie.”
Buffet gets all the press, but he acknowledges Munger as a huge part, if you listen.
All this with low risk holding lots of cash. He has not missed anything.
From 2017:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/06/warren-buffett-admits-he-mad...
"Not to diminish the accomplishments of the world's best poker player, but he did lose many hands."
It's east to hear his story and think if you do the same thing, you'd be successful. If you did the same thing in 1970, you might be! And some of his wisdom is generally applicable, but reading his story as a guide for investing today isn't the right approach.
The current tech investing boom is just a blip just like previous tech booms (Auto industry boom, aircraft boom, personal computer boom).
Buffett invested in businesses that, relatively speaking, were already well understood, if not widely by everyone, the point being that you could look at the balances and financial statements of an insurance company and derive an investment plan that was based on basically nothing new. Google, and tech in general, were not like that.
I think now some tech stocks do look like that. Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, all have business models that are much more well understood at this point than 30 years ago.
Even though Google has been wildly successful, I do see them as riskier since they derive so much of their income from web search ads, which feels like a precarious position compared to selling office productivity suites, databases, and CRMs to enterprises (I know Google does some of this but it's not where they make the bulk of their income).
There are biographies of Buffett. I read one of them years ago. It goes into great detail about the early deals that got him started. I never did quite understand the deal that moved him into the big leagues, the takeover of GEICO insurance.
https://www.amazon.com/Essays-Warren-Buffett-Lessons-Corpora...
What sticks out the most is what a clear thinker he is.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7aFD7bbigjgjUt0L2LWk...
Ps. That's not his ex wife though, it's his son's ex wife
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/warren-buffe...
I'm sure he's full of good ideas. I think they were just a bit more ambitious than the last 40 years of politicians were willing to stomach or advocate for.
Well I don't think him sitting on billions of dollars at 94 is better from a societal perspective.
Besides all that he has advocated for that money to be taxed away from him for decades.
He pretty famously lives below his means in a normal suburban house and drives around in a car that most software engineers could afford (Cadillac sedan).
From a societal perspective, I’m not sure you could ask for much more from any one man.
Even as T-bills they're doing something.
It’s a weird story. IIRC in the run for president before trumps first term he sent Jared Kushner to find out about trade. Kushner browsed Amazon, looking at book covers, and picked Navarro’s book because he liked the title… and the rest is history
[1] https://www.instagram.com/reel/DINJlumRqed/
Oh god, you're not:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/328969-report-ku...
I feel impotent, what is there to be done?
Don't misunderstand flashy at the only way to be important.
* An investment that makes something possible that otherwise wouldn’t happen. Like the US investing in NASA
* Investment that is not consequential in the big scheme except it makes people money.
Did his insurance investments keep some companies alive?
If the U.S. became a failed state tomorrow, there's a genuine chance that Berkshire businesses would keep on operating and trading with each other, on Berkshire rails. It's like a hive of cockroaches -- businesses which are individually strong, that when woven together are un-killable.
As for saving, he was the guy with a big pile of money in '08 (and other times). Someone you call when your business is dying or you want to retire; he gets the deal, not you. His Bank of America warrant play was a big one from that time.
I didn't finish snowball, but the first half goes over a lot of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Snowball%3A_Warren_Buffett...
Some of his biggest investments are in things like candy, soda, beer. Not exactly great for society overall and not really enabling anything other than diabetes.
He was already an massively wealthy in 2008 and just having a huge pile of cash and using it to make more deals is not some great achievement to be celebrated.
Yes he made billions off of his 2011 bofa investment, so good for him and brk but what did this do for anyone else?
If BH didn't exist would it really matter? I don't think so.
Still, he's given dozens of billions in charity, given important counsel to the government during the 80s and 2008 financial crisis.
During 2008 financial crisis he essentially saved Goldman and General Electric both preventing further escape of capital and an even worse situation for the US and potentially world economy.
In any case, he's a capitalist who likes making money for himself and his shareholders, he ain't a medical researcher or your mayor.
It seems the markets will soon go through a period when Buffet's approach will work best, which makes it an inoportune moment for him to retire. Of course at his age retirement is expected, maybe even inevitable - that's the joke.
Why would you think so?
US equity is still at insanely high valuations, markets are full of denials about it and about the future tariff related uncertainty.
These are things that have happened in the past. Mad financial manipulations? Like what is "mad"? "Comes again the time." How is it different than any other day?
> Pretty clear and funny to me.
You're making up your own interpretation of nonsense then calling it obvious. Good luck with that.
_Yet_.
If you looked at the Wright Brothers aircraft, what real use is there for a vehicle that carries one person, maybe 50lbs of cargo, and moves at 80 mph?