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by Py-o7
1203 days ago
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BRK salary is 100k; the corp pays for the private jet ("the Indefensible"). Aside from Berkshire, he also has a personal stock portfolio worth 9 digits or so [in essence due to investment work prior to Berkshire]. He is able to compound that at high rates and is tax savvy so almost all returns are long-term cap gains (or at dividend rates); this is what he's pointed out when stating how low his overall tax rate is vs say typical administrative staff. Evidently neither you nor the person you're arguing with actually knows much about this topic. It seems like you already have an extremely strong opinion on the man and are trying to back-fill it with "facts". Oh well. |
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One of the sources was anti-capitalist, but the journalists who wrote a a couple of those articles for business news sources undoubtedly were supporters of capitalism, and are likely to be know much more about the financial issues than most us do.
Although there are larger questions of whether anyone should be in a position to hoard so much wealth, what 'cost' that wealth comes at for the rest of us, and whether the accompanying power he exercises (even if indirectly) is good for society.
Those are larger philosophical and ethical queries, that do often come with strong opinions for good reason. Those on the right worry that regulating wealth may come with an affect on some other freedoms, those on the left worry that such wealth comes with a risk to the integrity of the democratic process and comes at a high societal cost.
Most of the defences of Buffett against this criticism have seemed to have been: "he is just a money geek who doesn't get into those details", "at least he is planning to give a lot of it away", and "you are in no position to judge him." I, like many others, do not feel he is beyond criticism or that those are sufficient answers.