Summary

Warren Buffett gave $1.1 billion in Berkshire Hathaway stock to family foundations and detailed plans for distributing his $147 billion fortune after his death.

His three children will oversee giving the remainder within 10 years, with designated successors in case they predecease him.

Buffett, 94, reaffirmed his belief in avoiding dynastic wealth, favoring philanthropy instead.

Over the years, he has donated $55 billion to the Gates Foundation but plans to shift focus to his family’s foundations.

Buffett continues leading Berkshire Hathaway while preparing Greg Abel as his successor.

      • walden@sub.wetshaving.social
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        26 days ago

        Lemmy, in general, thinks anyone with money is evil, and their money was sucked from the teets of the poor. It’s sort of annoying. Not just super wealthy people, either. If you have any sort of investment that increases in value over time, you’re a bad person. That money should have gone to poor people, somehow.

          • walden@sub.wetshaving.social
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            26 days ago

            Meh, that’s an oversimplification. Mutual funds don’t go around taking money from workers, but the tankies (and whoever else they can convince) think it’s clever to go around saying that. Simple minds, maybe?

            It’s a complicated system, and I’d like to see a LOT of change. There has been a lot of change in some states, but it’d be nice to get the national minimum wage increased.

            The wrong guy was voted in. Anti-union, anti-worker, anti-everything. Just a big piece of garbage.

            It’s just annoying that of all the solutions out there, Lemmy users somehow decided to latch on to “uhhh, stocks steal money directly from workers! How else would the stock price go up?”

          • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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            26 days ago

            He had nothing to do with stealing it, though. I had stock in AMD for a while and it made some money. Did that make the people at amd poor? In that company’s case they would have filed for bankruptcy over 15 years ago. Investors kept the business alive. Same for Apple in the 90’s.

            Yes, all most really care about is making money, but that doesn’t change if there is or isn’t a stock market.

        • killingspark@feddit.org
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          26 days ago

          The money investors get, just by owning the stock, is produced by people working with the stuff the investors money bought. The money isn’t supposed to go to “poor people somehow” it’s supposed to go to the people doing the work.

          • walden@sub.wetshaving.social
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            26 days ago

            Are the workers not poor? Isn’t that the whole argument?

            Anyway, maybe it’s a mutual benefit. When people buy stocks, it’s a quick infusion of cash to a company, and the company can then spend money on producing stuff, hiring people, etc.

            Would you rather companies get loans from banks instead?

            There are so many other solutions to low wages.

            • killingspark@feddit.org
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              26 days ago

              Yes the workers are generally poorer than the investors. But that’s not the point here, the point is that it’s in its essence an unfair system where you are forced to work for someone else’s profit unless you are wealthy enough to yourself be an investor that can live from their investments returns.

              Getting monetary benefits should come from work and not ownership.

              Again, this isn’t really about low or high wages it’s about the extraction of money from the workers towards owners without any work being done by the owners.

              The common image people conjure to justify this are the small shops built by someone and then being employing some staff. You must realize though that that isn’t the biggest chunk of wealth and not the really problematic part of the system.

              The biggest chunk of wealth is concentrated on a few percent of the population and it’s mostly inherited not built up by themselves. And it’s here where we actually see wealth being extracted from the workers.

      • drkt@scribe.disroot.org
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        26 days ago

        if I take 100 dollars from you and give back 10 to random people, does that seem fair?

        • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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          26 days ago

          How did he take 100 from me, though? If I bought shares of Intel and made $100, how is it that I took it from you?

          • drkt@scribe.disroot.org
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            26 days ago

            You pay taxes, they don’t. Their risks and lifestyle are subsidized, yours isn’t.

            You are paying for his lifestyle and if you stop doing it the police come for you.

            Also just wage theft generally.

            • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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              26 days ago

              None of that is Warren Buffet. You can’t just say all stock holders are evil thieves. Stock holders are the reason many of those businesses exist.

              Side note: did you actually know how much the rail workers were already being paid before the strike? It was better than most jobs by a fair amount. They didn’t have sick time because it was already previously negotiated away for other things in a previous contract.

                • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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                  26 days ago

                  Yeah…rail workers average $74k a year and get 30 days vacation a year. What do you get?

                  *Edit:Also, I did a bit of digging. He does now own one railroad company. He only got it 14 years ago. He didn’t make his money as one of the railroad tycoons.

          • beansbeansbeans@lemmy.world
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            26 days ago

            A good example is wage theft. Employees are not paid the value they produce. Instead of bonuses or fair salaries the company gives out dividends, etc.