View: Warren Buffett and the Myth of the ‘Good Billionaire’

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/business/view-warren-buffett-and-the-myth-of-the-good-billionaire/articleshow/83502579.cms

by paulpauper • 5 years ago

43 51 5 years ago

economictimes.indiatimes.com

FredPret3• 5 years ago

“As America slouches toward plutocracy”

JD Rockefeller once was worth 2% of the US GDP.

The “sky-is-falling, everything is getting worse” narrative gets eyeballs but isn’t true.

dtech• 5 years ago

Rockefeller and standard oil was a big problem, and required large-scale government anti-trust actions to be fixed.

Do you see similar things happening now?

HarryHirsch• 5 years ago

Can someone explain why someone who isn't Zuckerberg would argue that Facebook isn't a monopoly?

bobiny8• 5 years ago

Standard Oil was split as I recall. Similar action is geared towards Amazon, Google, Apple and FB

FredPret3• 5 years ago

Fair enough. I know I’m personally not buying anything from Amazon anymore. Just saying it’s not been a one-way inevitable downhill slide like some people make out.

npmaile• 5 years ago

By the time standard oil was broken up, it had already dropped from >90% to around 60% market share and was dropping fast.

The government intervention just artificially sped up a process that was already happening.

caseyross• 5 years ago

Plutocracy is the natural state of a capitalist society. But America managed to break out of it briefly in roughly the 1940s-70s period, and has since regressed to the mean. So in a "what your grandparents remember" sense, things have definitely gotten worse.

mdorazio• 5 years ago

See [1] for a good summary. Then pair it with [2]. The full picture is, as usual, more complex than a catchy title can summarize, but the trends are pretty clear. If you're in the top 20% of earners, things are improving. If you're not, things are generally stagnant or getting worse. So we're heading for something that's kind of plutocracy and kind of a class-based system of "haves" and "have nots".

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-...

[2] https://www.pnas.org/content/117/1/251

Aqueous3• 5 years ago

Imagine generalizing about any other group of people like this - ‘Myth of the good X.'

Billionaires are not going to get a lot of sympathy, but it’s repugnant to characterize entire groups of people with the same brush.

The problem with this kind of rhetoric is that it overplays your hand, and therefore ends up detracting from your core points. Most of us want wealth inequality lessened. Demonizing one group over another is not going to get us there.

bobiny8• 5 years ago

I think finding similarities and generalization is part of scientific process, but "good billionaire" is a bad category.

StevenRayOrr• 5 years ago

it’s repugnant to characterize entire groups of people with the same brush.

No, it's not. This isn't about whatever imagined prejudice or discrimination you're talking about. As the synopsis makes clear, the piece is marking an argument about the how "There is no way to be a billionaire in America without taking advantage of a system predicated on cruelty." Warran Buffett is being attacked because he has been able to manipulate the American system of capital, which the piece suggests is fundamentally unjust, to his extreme advantage, while millions of Americans are pushed further and further to the margins.

You can disagree with that premise, but don't pretend that this is discrimination.

bidirectional2• 5 years ago

If a category is entirely optional and not based on anything inherent, why is it wrong to generalise? Buffett could stop being a billionaire tomorrow if he wanted to.

Aqueous3• 5 years ago

If Buffett chose to stop being a billionaire tomorrow, would that fix any of the systems that allowed him to become a billionaire in the first place?

Brian_K_White• 5 years ago

Imagine trying to equate an innate or irrelevant property like one's skin color or sexual orientation with one like "posesses billions of dollars somehow"

The whole reason the article focusses on Buffet is to explore exactly your worry that there might be any such thing as a mixed group of varying innocence being painted with a single brush unfairly.

Pick the best possible example and judge, does the best known example of a billionaire validate the idea of billionaires? And at least this analysis decides no it does not. You may argue that this analysis is in error but I'm addressing your question about the right to do the analysis at all.

Billionaires are artificial constructs. The entire class can be judged and un-created with no moral problem at all. One's billionair-ism isn't like one's atheism or albinism. We can decide any time we want that no such thing as a billionaire should be possible, and make it so.

Aqueous3• 5 years ago

That equation is not one that I made.

pwinnski3• 5 years ago

Are we talking about groups of people based on intrinsic attributes, like nation of origin or gender? Or groups of people based on behavior?

"Myth of the good arms dealer" seems fair. "Myth of the good mob boss" seems fair. The article makes the case that there's no way to accumulate $1,000,000,000 without taking advantage of people in inexcusable ways, so I'm not sure I see your criticism as valid.

slowhand09• 5 years ago

Sorry indiatimes.com, you have too much power, bandwidth and resources. Too much voice and impact. You are one of the worst kind of media outlets. I propose you immediately contribute all your assets, earned or not, into an asset pool where less influential journalism outlets may help themselves to it. Only then will justice be achieved. /S

twobuy• 5 years ago

Warren Buffet is vertically integrated on Diabetes. He owns Dialysis companies, Dairy Queen, and the insurance companies.

WJW• 5 years ago

Not too mention at least one candy company. And several railways to transport the candies to the customers. And a power company to provide electricity to it all.

WB is probably vertically integrated into at least ten verticals if you look at it like this.

jimbokun3• 5 years ago

It’s a set of social arrangements that make it possible for anyone to gain and guard and keep so much wealth, even as millions of others lack for food, work, housing, health, connectivity, education, dignity and the occasion to pursue their happiness.

Modern capitalism has done more to feed, house, and clothe people, provide for advanced medical care, educate people, and enable people to pursue their own happiness, than any other economic system we have come up with so far. The rise in prosperity of China and India over the past several decades as they adopt more capitalist economies has been astounding, as a couple prominent examples.

Capitalist excesses also abound, and there are many places that could benefit from more government intervention, and the USA is likely near the top of that list.

But that doesn't change the fact that the system that creates billionaires also has led to unprecedented prosperity and human flourishing.

pwinnski3• 5 years ago

Absolutely true. Almost all of what you describe happened when the USA had a 70-94% top marginal tax rate and very few billionaires, though. The grossest of distortions has come along after the pace of benefits has long since dropped considerably.

jimbokun3• 5 years ago

That doesn't apply to the stunning rise in prosperity in India and China more recently, though.

elp• 5 years ago

This article seems like its mostly "Warren Buffet is bad because he's richer than me".

He's given away something like $27 Billion so far. Getting upset because he has only paid tax on the money he has physically received and not on his net wealth seems a little disingenuous.

oh_sigh2• 5 years ago

I can't really understand proponents of wealth tax...either they are very confused, or are intentionally obscuring the truth for their political purposes. Based on the author's pedigree, I have to unfortunately assume it is the latter. But either way it isn't a great look.

For example, in the article the author laments that Buffett's wealth went up by $X, but he only paid $Y in taxes, and that's not fair to middle class people. But middle class people benefit in exactly the same way - if you pay $250k for a house and a year later because of a housing boom it is now worth $350k, you don't pay taxes on that $100,000 you "made".

If the whole world decides a random rock in your back yard is worth $10M, you shouldn't need to give the government $3M while the rock just sits there.

chii• 5 years ago

Interesting that every time wealth tax has been proposed by somebody, it always interestingly has the "limit" set above said person's own personal wealth.

dbsmith83• 5 years ago

You don't even need to look at pedigree, the author's intentions are explicit in the beginning:

So I regret to inform you that Mr. Buffett is actually the most dangerous kind of billionaire we have. The worst billionaires are the Good Billionaires. The sort who make it seem like the problem is the distortion of the system when, in fact, the problem is the system.

It's also obvious by what they don't say. The author very breezily mentions that Buffett has donated some money, but no amounts or anything.

side note: India Times, please get rid of the silly copy and paste override. It is just plain obnoxious

bryanlarsen2• 5 years ago

If the whole world decides a random rock in your back yard is worth $10M, you shouldn't need to give the government $3M while the rock just sits there.

Why not?

General taxation is done on two principles -- ability to pay and the principle of fairness. Those who have more pay more.

If you have a rock worth $10M in your back yard you can certainly pay. You'd have to get a loan or sell the rock to do so, but you have more ability to pay than anybody who isn't a millionaire.

And by not selling for $10M, you're demonstrating that the rock is worth more than $10M to you. So the government is doing you a favor by only taxing on the $10M rather than on the actual value to yourself.

rawgabbit2• 5 years ago

because of a housing boom it is now worth $350k, you don't pay taxes on that $100,000 you "made"

Actually, in most states in the USA, you do. When your home's value increases, your property tax in nominal dollars increase.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/homeowners-are-facing-the-...

Dracophoenix• 5 years ago

>But middle class people benefit in exactly the same way - if you pay $250k for a house and a year later because of a housing boom it is now worth $350k, you don't pay taxes on that $100,000 you "made".

Just to note, you don't pay taxes on the speculative "profit", but you do pay property tax as some percentage of it's "value" upon reassessment by a blackbox.

>If the whole world decides a random rock in your back yard is worth $10M, you shouldn't need to give the government $3M while the rock just sits there.

I totally agree. Unfortunately, that's exactly what governments do with cars and boats. No one should be forced to pay a tithe for owning property or risk being thrown in jail for refusing.

shadilay• 5 years ago

Anyone who likes Warren Buffet should look into his early career in corporate raiding. It's doubtful that you will still like him after reading about it. It's equally impressive how little attention it's gotten compared to the mountains of good press he gets now.

View: Warren Buffett and the Myth of the ‘Good Billionaire’

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