Warren Buffett: the 1% of the 1%
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What can you say about a multi-billionaire who
• has lived in the same house since 1958?
• advises that regarding financial markets one should bet that "the intelligent thing will eventually get done"?
• calls the tax rate for the uber-wealthy "an outrage", getting him labeled a "socialist" by FOX News?
• is donating 99% of his wealth to charity?
A portrait from the New Yorker.
"Warren's Way
Warren Buffett’s tastes haven’t changed much over the years. 'I like today what I liked fifty years ago,' he told me the other day. 'I like reading 10-Ks. I like playing bridge. I haven’t acquired a lot of new habits. I was happy when I was in my twenties, and I don’t see a reason to change things.' We were having lunch with Carol Loomis, one of his closest friends, who is the editor of 'Tap-Dancing to Work,' a new anthology of Fortune writings by and about Buffett. As if to illustrate his point, lunch was the same lunch he’s probably been eating since he was a kid: a hamburger and fries, followed by vanilla ice cream, 'strong on the chocolate syrup.' It isn’t just his tastes, though: as the new book shows, Buffett’s philosophy of investing has stayed remarkably consistent."
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"You can see this at work in his campaign to get the rich to pay more in taxes. There’s certainly a moral dimension to it—he calls the fact that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary 'an outrage.' Yet his tone is less hectoring than utilitarian: we need more revenue to narrow the deficit, and having the wealthy pay more in taxes won’t hurt them or the economy. His decision to give away ninety-nine per cent of his wealth feels similarly rational. As he told me, what his wealth amounts to is a giant pile of 'claim checks' on the world’s resources, claim checks that are largely 'worthless' to him but potentially valuable to others."
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2012/12/10/121210ta_talk_surowiecki#ixzz2E62i5Hwb
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Give away 99% of his wealth and still be a multi-millionaire....
Not generous enough, is he? 