Warren Buffett announced earlier this month that he would retire as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway by the end of the year. The multinational conglomerate, which he acquired in 1965 when it was a textile mill, became the first non-technology company to reach a $1 trillion market cap. At age 94, Buffett is the fifth-wealthiest person in the world.
We can learn a lot a lot about economics, politics, philanthropy, taxes and tariffs from “the Oracle of Omaha.”
Born in 1930, Buffett is an American success story. He began making money selling chewing gum, old golf balls, stamps, calendars, newspapers and magazines door-to-door before he was a teenager. At age 14, he filed his first tax return, taking a $35 deduction for his bicycle. By the 1950s, he was acquiring a reputation as one of the nation’s premier “value investors.”
Buffett attributes his wealth to living in the U.S., working within a system of free-market capitalism, plus “some lucky genes and compound interest.” Being male and white, he recognizes, “also removed huge obstacles that a majority of Americans” in his generation faced.
Buffett, who became a billionaire in 1985, has always lived modestly. He lives in the same five-bedroom home in Omaha he purchased in 1958 for $31,500. Most mornings, he eats breakfast at McDonald’s on his way to work; he is addicted to Chicken McNuggets. Buffett buys a new car “very infrequently.” He did not trade in his flip phone for a smart phone until 2020.
“I don’t need fancy clothes. I don’t need fancy food,” he says. “I have everything I need to have and I don’t need any more because it doesn’t make any difference after a point.” Buffett made an exception about 20 years ago, he acknowledges, when he splurged on a private jet to make travel easier.
Revealing that between 2014 and 2018 his own effective tax rate was about 0.1 percent, Buffett insists that wealthy Americans should not pay a smaller percentage of their income than their far-less-affluent employees. His proposal of a 30 percent minimum tax on people who make more than $1 million each year has been dubbed “the Buffett Rule.” And he is proud of Berkshire Hathaway’s $26.8 billion tax payment in 2024 — the largest in U.S. history.
If America’s 800 biggest corporations paid their “fair” share, Buffett claims (no doubt with intentional hyperbole), federal taxes for most Americans could be near zero. A just tax code would reduce the burden on middle-class and working-class Americans, provide resources for public services and infrastructure and help pay down the national debt. Equally important, according to Buffett, government should “take care of the many who, for no fault of their own, get the short straws on life. They deserve better.”
In 2006, Buffett made a commitment to contribute to five charities each year, designating the vast majority of the money to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Trust. His donations in 2024 totaled $5.3 billion. Buffett’s giving pledge specifies that 99 percent of his wealth will go to philanthropy during his life and at his death. He has also urged rich Americans to allocate at least 50 percent of their wealth to charitable organizations.
Recently, Buffett addressed global trade and tariffs. In March, he emphasized that over time, tariffs “are a tax on goods. I mean the Tooth Fairy doesn’t pay them. And then what? You always have to ask that question in economics. You always say, ‘And then what?’”
The “then what,” he implied, was in essence a consumption tax that would fall disproportionately on middle- and working-class Americans.
In May, Buffett said that it wasn’t “a good idea to design a world where a few countries say, ‘ha, ha, ha, we’ve won.’” In a clear reference to the tariff wars started by the Trump administration, he deemed it “a big mistake” to “have 7.5 billion people who don’t like you very well and you have 300 million who are crowing about how they have done.”
“The more prosperous the world becomes,” Buffett declared, “the more prosperous we’ll become — and the safer we’ll feel and our children will feel some day.”
Midwestern common sense delivered in plain spoken English. And, as with so many other recommendations Buffett has made, Americans across the ideological spectrum may well say, “from his lips to God’s ears.”
Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.
