He’s the third richest man in the world
and he wants you to stop blaming people like him because you’re so poor.
Warren Buffett has written an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal in which he says ‘the poor are most
definitely not poor because the rich are rich’.
Rallying against a rise in the minimum wage in the U.S., he says
people should be paid more through a government tax credit scheme.
While writing about addressing the widening gap between rich and
poor, he points to Henry Ford, Steve Jobs and Sam Walton and their achievements
in making lives better for all of us because of their innovations.
He said: ‘Nor are the rich undeserving. Most of them have
contributed brilliant innovations or managerial expertise to America’s
well-being. We all live far better because of Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, Sam
Walton and the like. Instead, this widening gap is an inevitable consequence of
an advanced market-based economy.’
Outlining what he thinks the US economic policy objectives should
be, he says everyone who works should receive an income ‘that will provide him
or her a decent lifestyle’. But then he adds that it shouldn’t distort the
market system.
The system, that is, that has seen him valued as being worth
$71.3billion (£46billion).
Buffet wrote that the second goal (about not distorting the
system) would crumble if the minimum wage in the U.S. was raised to $15
(£9.68).
He says the best way to deal with it is keep wages where they
currently are and expand the Earned Income Tax Credit. I.e. the salaries he
pays to his lowest workers would be subsidised by Government.
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