Warren Buffet on Death & Taxes, and other things.

[LinusKS]

On Gold-bugs:

"It gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head."


On brokers:

"but investors should understand that what is good for the croupier is not good for the customer."


On the Death Tax:

Repealing the estate tax would be like "choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the eldest sons of the gold-medal winners in the 2000 Olympics."


On tax cuts for the rich:

"Putting $1,000 in the pockets of 310,000 families with urgent needs is going to provide far more stimulus to the economy than putting the same $310 million in my pockets."


On class warfare:

"If class warfare is being waged in America, my class is clearly winning."

[LinusKS]

Warren Buffet on executive pay:

"Getting fired can produce a particularly bountiful payday for a CEO. Indeed, he can “earn” more in that single day, while cleaning out his desk, than an American worker earns in a lifetime of cleaning toilets. Forget the old maxim about nothing succeeding like success: Today, in the executive suite, the all too-prevalent rule is that nothing succeeds like failure."


I wouldn't say he's angry about being rich. If he's angry about anything - which I doubt - it's at the way the interests of the rich & powerful have subsumed the interests of the country as a whole.

In other words, he's an honest guy.

[SmileyEH]

I [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] Warren Buffet.

-SmileyEH

[LinusKS]

Buffet makes a great point about the markets in his newsletter - that they don't "create" wealth. They just allow it to change hands.

[ QUOTE ]
With unimportant
exceptions... the most that owners in aggregate can earn between now and Judgment Day is what their businesses in aggregate earn. True, by buying and selling that is clever or lucky, investor A may take more than his share of the pie at the expense of investor B. And, yes, all investors feel richer when stocks soar. But an owner can exit only by
having someone take his place. If one investor sells high, another must buy high. For owners as a whole, there is simply no magic – no shower of money from outer space – that will enable them to extract wealth from their companies beyond that created by the companies themselves.

[/ QUOTE ]

He goes on to say the hands brokers are most anxious to transfer money to - are their own.