Warren Buffett Now A Poster Boy For Income Disparities?

What is it about Warren Buffett that The Economist doesn’t like? Not only do they associate him with income inequality, they don’t even give him a credit in the footnotes. Plus, I don’t believe those are his hands holding that cash.

This is a mash-up of the first degree, and I would support Warren in a defamation claim as it makes him look like Mr. Greed.

Warren's Picture Used Without Attribution

And to even imply greed isn’t very fair if you look at recent history,

In June 2006, Buffett gave approximately 10 million Berkshire Hathaway Class B shares to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (worth approximately US$30.7 billion as of 23 June 2006) making it the largest charitable donation in history and Buffett one of the leaders in the philanthrocapitalism revolution.

You could have let Warren work for you and gain some of that wealth yourself (to give away),

According to “Rich Dad’s Guide to Investing”, written by Robert Kiyosaki, “if you had invested US$10,000 in the company in the 1950s, it would have been worth more than $200million today”.

And OK, suppose you didn’t have $10,000 in the 1950’s. You could have invested $1,000, and the result would be sitting on (only) $20 million while you read this.

But I missed that train.

Note: There’s a bit more to this than meets the eye. If you have time (sic!), note that the data came from Saez & Piketty and check out Emanuel Saez’s website, plus this Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal. We call this ‘behind the scene eco-politics’, where ‘eco’ is short for ‘economics’.