Comment by postalcoder
4 hours ago
Warren Buffett is a great investor but nobody in finance buys his folksy image. Everybody knows he's an animal.
I heard from folks in the room that the way 3G and Buffett came in to do layoffs at Tim Hortons was one of the most cold blooded things they've ever seen.
He's donated, already, the equivalent of 200+ billions USD (give or take 420M class B shares).
Say what you want, but the list of billionaires who have donated such large amounts of money while still alive (or dead) is small.
Cherry picking events like layoffs, without truly knowing how much was he involved (Berkshire directors notoriously enjoy lots of autonomy) or if the layoffs made sense, etc, seems a stretch when we're drowned with sociopath world-ruling-ambitious CEOs, from Musk to Altman, through Thiele.
If somebody focuses on something negative, it's cherry-picking, but if you focus on something positive it isn't?
How much money has he saved dodging taxes over the years[1]?
[1]: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trov...
You really fighting on the wrong side of the hill, Buffett has advocated for higher taxes for ages. He's neve made it a secret and he's always said that he pays a lower effective tax rate than his secretary.
In any case, what am I looking at here? There's no tax dodging. He gets paid 100Mish per year and pays taxes on those amounts.
You don't get taxes on your stock appreciation until you sell.
Benchmarking against a single person doesn't make sense. Consider how philanthropic someone is vs. how philanthropic they could be with their means. This list helps give perspective.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeswealthteam/2025/02/03/ame...
You lose by not playing the game, it doesn't mean you "like" it.
To whom? To "charities" owned by other billionaires such as Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and those owned by his children.
I don't want billionaires to donate anything, I don't want them to use their money to shape the world to their liking. I want them to pay their fair share of taxes and a functional government that properly allocates those extra funds instead of funding the bare minimum.
Your government is pretty dysfunctional the way it is. I'm not surprised billionaires don't want to waste their taxes on that crap.
2 replies →
The government already has way more money every year to spend. It wastes a lot of it. A world where all surpluses are distributed by a committee of politicians and their buddies would a be a terrible one.
We are saying different things.
You're saying that WB was not shy to give away money. I'm saying that he was not shy to make it.
Warren Buffet is the definition of oligarchy. Dude runs a rail and insurance monopoly while buying large top stocks for yield. He maintains a persona of this traditional and nice family dude who is old and wise. But this is the US, and people are ranked/valued by how rich they are regardless of how it is acquired.
Still, he avoided political scrutiny (say comparing to Musk or Bezos) by maintaining this image. That was wise.
> Warren Buffet is the definition of oligarchy.
Find a better dictionary.