I.O.U.S.A - Addison Wiggin [96]
Q: Do you think supply - side theories are 100 percent effective and effi cient, or does it depend on where we are in the world?
Warren Buffett: I think that the market system generally works pretty well. And I think a rule of law helps enormously, and I think equality of opportunity is enormously important. You ’ ve got to have a way for the Jack Welches or the Bill Gateses or the Andy Groves to get into the positions that they should be in, where they ’ re very good at using resources. And we have had a system in this country that ’ s done a far better job in that respect than around the world. So you want a system where Mike Tyson is fi ghting for the heavyweight championship and Jack Welch is running General Electric, but you don ’ t want Mike Tyson to be running General Electric and Jack Welch in the heavyweight ring. Government allocation of resources has tended, too often, to misallocate, and I think a market system does a pretty good job of allocating. But I also think you need a better distribution of the magnifi cent amount of goods and services that are turned out by the system.
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Warren
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Q: Do you think your grandchildren are going to live in a great country 50 years from now? What do you hope for your grandchildren and what do you see?
Warren Buffett: Well, 50 years later, I really hope to be around myself and be the world ’ s oldest living man. I would love the idea of living 50 years from now if we can somehow solve the dilemma of weapons of mass destruction.
Q: And what does life look like for your grandchildren do you hope, and what do you really honestly think?
Warren Buffett: Economically, my grandchildren will live better than I lived, even if they earn a tenth of 1 percent of what I earn now. The average American is going to live better 10 years from now, 20 years from now, and 50 years from now.
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James Areddy
James Areddy is a China correspondent with the Wall Street Journal, based in Shanghai. He covers the fi nancial markets, the banking system, the currency in China, and various other fi nancial issues — basically, the bread - and - butter type stories for the Wall Street Journal. He and several colleagues recently won the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting and international news. His particular contribution was about riding on the train to Tibet and about how China ’ s economic juggernaut is rat-tling on in one of its more western provinces.
Q: Why is the Shanghai Bureau important? And where does their importance fi t in the global economic story?
James Areddy: China ’ s probably the biggest global economic story going right now. It affects everything from big business, Wall Street, and down - home America to countries all over the world. You can go anywhere and see Chinese people and Chinese exports. Whether it ’ s bicycles or high - air refrigerators or freezers, you certainly are feeling the effects of China pretty much anywhere. Every company wants to sell and be here because it ’ s the world ’ s biggest consumer market, 1.2 billion people.
There ’ s a lot of nervousness around the world about what that means for people ’ s jobs and what it means for their incomes.
Perhaps anxiety is a better word than nervousness, because there is a lot of opportunity here. There are more and more foreigners pumping into China. They all bring in money, they ’ ve all got investment ideas, and they see China as the new West, as really the untapped frontier. It really is an economic miracle, taking place right now. It is a fascinating story from every possible angle.
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198 The
Interviews
Q: If you were able to go back a thousand years and look at what ’ s happened in China in the last 15 years, how would you say life is different today than it was decades ago?
James Areddy: What ’ s happening