Summary
Warren Buffett gave $1.1 billion in Berkshire Hathaway stock to family foundations and detailed plans for distributing his $147 billion fortune after his death.
His three children will oversee giving the remainder within 10 years, with designated successors in case they predecease him.
Buffett, 94, reaffirmed his belief in avoiding dynastic wealth, favoring philanthropy instead.
Over the years, he has donated $55 billion to the Gates Foundation but plans to shift focus to his family’s foundations.
Buffett continues leading Berkshire Hathaway while preparing Greg Abel as his successor.
if I take 100 dollars from you and give back 10 to random people, does that seem fair?
How did he take 100 from me, though? If I bought shares of Intel and made $100, how is it that I took it from you?
A good example is wage theft. Employees are not paid the value they produce. Instead of bonuses or fair salaries the company gives out dividends, etc.
You pay taxes, they don’t. Their risks and lifestyle are subsidized, yours isn’t.
You are paying for his lifestyle and if you stop doing it the police come for you.
Also just wage theft generally.
Did he use his money to change tax laws? He didn’t create the crooked tax system. You aren’t going out of your way to pay more, either.
Berkshire Hathaway hasn’t paid taxes?
You know how rail workers get boned at every opportunity (no days off, shit medical insurance, etc.) Well its Warren Buffet doing the boning.
You know how people buying all the available housing so they can turn residential housing into profit machines via Air BnB et. al.? Well its Warren Buffet buying all the houses.
You know how companies lay off 10000 workers and then immediately give their CEO a 50 million dollar bonus? Well, warren buffet gets all that money, and it was entirely comprised of stolen salaries.
There’s a ton of examples. But it is impossible to earn a billion dollars. It can only be stolen from someone else by not paying them a fair value.
None of that is Warren Buffet. You can’t just say all stock holders are evil thieves. Stock holders are the reason many of those businesses exist.
Side note: did you actually know how much the rail workers were already being paid before the strike? It was better than most jobs by a fair amount. They didn’t have sick time because it was already previously negotiated away for other things in a previous contract.
It is all warren buffet. who do you think owns the rail corporations lol. And yes, all stock holders are thieves if that is their only source of income. Those businesses should not exist.
Oh well as long as they’re getting paid I guess that means its a-ok that they can never spend time with their family or ever go to the doctor! Its just grand that they are being worked to death in a dystopian capitalist hellscape! Think of all the money they’ll never be able to spend!
Look. Like six dudes own something like 95% of all the wealth in the world. That’s more than six billion people combined. (I made those number up but i brt its pretty close) With that kind of money we could solve all the problems of the world and have lasting peace, but oh no, we can’t do that because the dragons have to have their mountains of gold.
https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/?v=3
Yeah…rail workers average $74k a year and get 30 days vacation a year. What do you get?
*Edit:Also, I did a bit of digging. He does now own one railroad company. He only got it 14 years ago. He didn’t make his money as one of the railroad tycoons.
I make 140k/year. I get 30 vacation days per year and can accumulate up to 75 days. Plus 2 weeks of sick time that doesn’t roll over per year. Plus 2 personal days I can use whenever tf I want. Plus 1:1 comp time whenever i have to work overtime. I get a 1:1 employer match on my 7.5% retirement contribution and i have excellent health care. None of that includes my wife’s income. And no this isn’t a private sector job.
I found a way to cheat the system and man let me tell you this should be the minimum standard of living. What the fuck is the point of being the richest nation in the world if that entire wealth is held by six assholes.
Rail work is skilled labor. It is abhorrent they’re making half of what I am as a desk jockey. They should be making at least twice as much as me, except Warren Buffet is stealing all that wealth for himself.
Yeah, must be great to be white collar. It took me loads of training and certifications and ongoing certs to make far less.
Thing is, corporations will and have always tried making as much as possible. That isn’t Warren’s fault. He just didn’t do anything to fix it. The reason he and all these other billionaires can do this is because our shit government has undone taxes on the wealthy for the past 65 years. Our crooked government is to blame for the massive disparity. Not the guy who threw money at company’s he thought would continue to prosper. He’s just a symptom if he wasn’t involved with paying off and bribing the government. No idea if he has or not, there.
So tax the fucking rich. You should be making at least as much money as me. It sounds like you are a skilled laborer, and that work has value. Value that your bosses and superiors are taking for themselves. If you produce goods worth 300k/year, don’t you think you’re entitled to 200k of that? That still leaves 100k for the company and operating costs. Why should the CEO get most of it? They’re literally taking your money. Yes, its because the system is broken. But the fix is to tax the fuck outta the billionaires and use the government to redistribute that wealth through free health care, free education through college, and investing in our infrastructure like our power grid, water supply systems (remember Flint?), passenger rail, and investing in cities designed for humans.
We don’t need to be a communist state like Russia or China. We can fund the whole thing with capitalism. We can even have an exuberant luxury class if we still want that for whatever reason. Taking away 90% of Jeff Bezos or Warren Buffet’s wealth still leaves them the richest people in the world.
Capitalism is fine but has been allowed to run completely out of control to the benefit of a shockingly small minority of people.