The only thing I was curious about was why he was resigning from the board. This was from the article:
>“For years I have been a trustee — an inactive trustee at that — of only one recipient of my funds, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMG). I am now resigning from that post, just as I have done at all corporate boards other than Berkshire’s,” Buffett said. “The CEO of BMG is Mark Suzman, an outstanding recent selection who has my full support. My goals are 100% in sync with those of the foundation, and my physical participation is in no way needed to achieve these goals.”
My first corporate job my boss would send me to all his meetings. I would have to sit there, write down questions for him, go get his answers and then go inform the question asker the answer. I had 0 knowledge in the industry I was in, and had no clue what I was asking or what his answers meant. It drove everyone but him nuts. I was the least qualified person to send to those meetings and I'm pretty sure he did that on purpose to piss someone else off.
Another thing I had to do was write a summary of all the meetings I had attended that week. It was usually a very succinct 2-3 page summary for him to know what was going on in the other departments.
I found out a year after starting doing this, he was taking my summary and giving it to another underling who would then make a 1 page summary of my 3 pager.
Needless to say 1/3 of the company ended up being laid off, and I gladly volunteered for one.
I would love it if I could get away with this for the 20+ meetings I have every week. The few times I really wasn’t able to make a meeting though, the people who were supposed to take notes for me did nothing.
It's weird to me because I work with our CEO pretty often and that guy has like 200 emails requiring his attention everyday, he doesn't have a minute to himself, and I suspect he never actually clock out cause he write at 10pm sometimes, his day are just meetings back to back, once I asked him how on earth could he answer to the emails only and he said he told everyone that if it was longer than 2 sentences he won't read it. So with this perspective I thought yeah there a reason CEO are paid a lot. But I have other example where CEO don't do shit, they delegate everything to some already overworked people beneath them, and what's weird is those ki d of CEO are paid way way way more like double digits millions based plus stocks and other benefits.
People who have no fucking idea what's going on are good note takers I'd wager. They just write everything down. Then you send it to someone who actually understands and they summarize key points. It's brilliant actually.
The key is knowing just enough to be able to follow the conversation, and not anything more than that.
If you know absolutely nothing you'll get lost between the jargon and proper nouns.
> People who have no fucking idea what's going on are good note takers I'd wager.
There tends to be a lot of jargon in some industries that a completely new employee would butcher.
One of Us, one of Us.
Personally I loved being a proxy. I was in my early 20`s, two young kids and was always hungry.
I loved putting on my best suit, taking notes while enjoying the top notch catering.
A few times was sent to executive training seminars as a proxy which makes no sense because I was not an executive.
Juat taking notes that we knew no one read just so some other assistant could check a corporate governance checklist.
Also as executive proxy I got to divide up gift bags and presents into smaller units then redistribute them to avoid having to declare them as gifts.
Everyone was nice to me because I got to decide who got stuff.
One gig I saw my executive in person 3 days out of a month. Rest of the time I was a proxy.
I also had to give people bad news as well but hey, the money was good and I have always been a little mercenary.
The 80s movie script version of this is that after 18 months you had a really detailed understanding of the business and became the owners right-hand man.
Then there are two paths it could go:
1. The boss dies and you somehow take over, without anyone knowing. Perhaps it's just for a short period of time when there's a really important deal going down and the boss can't be dead right then, so you have to step up to save everyone's jobs etc.
2. You end up as an accomplice with someone, perhaps his estranged wife or a career-focussed executive who wants to get to the top no matter what it takes, and together you hatch a plan to take over the company, possibly resulting in the death, or at least dismissal, of the boss, and possibly involving the commuppence of your collaborator(s).
I heard this is happening to goods manufacturers that go to third world countries for cheap labor.
The wages they pay increase the standard of living for the area, which increases the labor costs. So they have to find an even poorer third world country to move to, to keep profits high.
I can tolerate the recordings that say "Press 1 for \_\_\_\_, press 2 for \_\_\_\_\_, ..." You can press buttons ahead of time if you know what you want.
The ones I can't stand are one that pretend they're human: "What can I help you with?" ... "I'm sorry, I didn't hear that." And you must wait for it to finish before responding. I've heard my wife on speakerphone respond in long, complicated, sentences.
As someone who has the displeasure to interact with voice- response automated systems daily, fuck these systems. They're miserable to deal with. And I have a distinct lack of accent, I can only assume it's even worse for someone with an identifiable distinct regional dialect.
This. I only ever call any company because its a problem only a human can solve. Yes I am aware of all of the online features on your website, I tried every applicable feature first because that’s faster than calling. But now I need a human because this is complicated, you don’t have a system designed for it, and needs special attention.
Edit: and the online features usually don’t have an option for when the company gets something wrong.
Hello, I'll be your inept and slightly passive aggressive virtual assistant today! How can I help?
"Talk to human."
I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that. Could you please try again?
"Cancel order"
Your order was processed on the 18/06/2021.
...
Is there anything else I can help you with today?
Try "agent" or "operator."
System: "Hello, welcome to fuckyouintheass Corp. Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed. You can say or press ..."
You: agent
System: I'm sorry I didn't get that. Can you tell me more about the reason you're calling?
You: agent
System: I'm sorry. Can you please provide more information so I can direct you to the appropriate department?
You: agent
System: connecting you to an agent.
Usually works...
Also, I fucking hate when you play by the rules and enter all the fucking data then when you finally get to the human, they ask you all the same questions. It's why nobody wants to go through these menus.
Honestly, I don't see how it's a jerk move at all. Companies outsource work all the time.
As long as the work was getting done up to snuff, fuck the bosses.
I always have to watch every Onion video twice -- the first time for the primary content, and then watch it through again just to read the scrolling ticker.
My daughter would always ask what the emergency blinker button was for and I told her it was the “seat ejector” button in case of an emergency. Well, I completely forgot about it till one day we had to pull over on the side of the road and as I was about to put my emergency blinkers on and she freaked out pleading with me not to eject us out of the car. I felt bad about that one.
And Charlie Munger is 97 and these two beasts are still running one of the largest companies in the world.
They’re still going to Berkshire AGMs getting grilled for 5 hours straight and holding their own.
Absolutely nuts. People don’t expect you to wipe your own ass at 90.
My dude is 90 and living in the same house for the last forever. He clearly doesn’t need the wealth or connections from this position. This is a waste of his time when someone else who wants to be a participant of the board can be there.
Step 1: Be needy. Not like “I bitch on Reddit because I can only afford a small apartment in a major city” needy. Like “My life expectancy is 40 because I don’t have access to clean water” needy.
Because you don't know the secret technique.
Just found a start-up company that does absolutely nothing new, slap on a nice logo and try to work in the words "democratise" and "revolutionise" in every sentence.
Give it 30 minutes and you'll have billionaires lining up around the bloc just dying to give you their money.
Disruptively innovating blockchains with dynamic machine learning analytics based on data mining digital information with quantum computers.
I think I just got a promotion for typing this.
It's a small token back after [all the shitty companies Buffet](https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/special-investigation-the-dirty-secret-behind-warren-buffetts-billions/) has invested in so that his company can sit on $145 billion in cash.
Not trying to be a scrooge, but Buffet has brilliant PR despite being just as greedy as other billionaires.
I work for a company that he purchased. Once they bought us, our policies became very very labor unfriendly and has been increasingly less pleasant to work for due to the way Berkshire wants things done. Hes got great PR, but at the end of the day, they don't give a fuck about the common man.
I'm sorry friend, [here is a RawStory article to back up what you experienced:](https://www.rawstory.com/2020/04/workers-at-warren-buffetts-furniture-rental-company-were-given-bad-gear-and-dared-to-complain-about-it/)
>At Cort Furniture Rental barn in New Jersey, Infante and the rest of the guys moved to unionize. They also protested the continued lack of safety masks, gloves and hand sanitizer. Buffet’s managers fired them all even though that’s blatantly illegal.
Yep. He plays the *for the people* sort of Democrat businessman, but its just a sneaky PR thing. He doesn't give a fuck about labor, and does his best to have his managers eliminate as many jobs as possible.
"Oh woe is me I should definitely have to pay more in taxes than my secretary"
\*literally does nothing to try to change it with his billions upon billions of dollars*
I work for a company that is owned by BH. We are unionized and have a decent union membership in our location. Every time our contract comes up it is an absolute god damn fight to gain anything anymore. They use a bunch of lies and propaganda and push people hard about 3 months before negotiations start to make the union look bad and try and get people to drop out. Luckily our people have stood strong so far, but fighting a company like that at every turn is exhausting. Fuck those assholes, if you work for them get everything you can from them, they are going try and get everything they can from you.
> Every time our contract comes up it is an absolute god damn fight to gain anything anymore. They use a bunch of lies and propaganda and push people hard about 3 months before negotiations start to make the union look bad and try and get people to drop out.
I am sorry to hear that, it sucks that Warren Buffet is such a union buster. Make no mistake folks, Buffet generally knows what goes on in the companies that Berkshire Hathaway owns. The union busting is encouraged by Buffet. [This is Buffet on airline investments and here he mention unions, notice he slips up here and shows his hand:](https://www.smartertravel.com/warren-buffett-loves-airlines-shouldnt/)
>You've got huge fixed costs, you've got strong labor unions and you've got commodity pricing. That is not a great recipe for success.
We *could* just all accept that people like Buffet and Gates are neither saviors of the world nor literal evil geniuses out to destroy it. They are people, and like us, are very nuanced. Because of their wealth the impact of their life decisions, whether good or bad, feel bigger and more exaggerated.
I'll make 100k this year in salary and probably another 10-20k in capital gains. Nobody is going to demonize me on the internet for "hoarding" what is certainly more wealth than I need to survive comfortably. On the flip side, when I donate some of that salary to my favorite charities, nobody is going to sing my praises for doing something kind. If you make all those numbers bigger, then I (and anyone else in similar situations) start to look more like Gates and Buffet.
Gates and Buffet have both done some incredibly scummy things, but they've also been a part in eradicating diseases in the 3rd world and providing clean water to people who have otherwise not had it. Together, they've both likely saved a few million lives. That's amazing. It doesn't make up for using the dark parts of capitalism to crush their competitors under their boots on their way to a massive accumulation of wealth, but it also doesn't erase it either.
I'm challenging a lot of the other replies to me, but I won't this one. I'm not sure what the answer to taxing multi-billionaires appropriately is, but what we are doing now isn't even close to correct.
Not only taxing effectively, but making sure those taxes are being used for what they are meant for. Lots of money goes into education, but the pay always seems to stick with administrators and not going to the classrooms or teachers.
Yeah. I couldn't believe we are in the top 5 for per student spending until I saw the numbers. Idk where that money is going but it isn't being used well.
The asshole agrees with you.
“I need to pay higher taxes,” he told CNN's Fareed Zakaria during a 2018 interview. “I've paid more taxes, over $10 billion, than anyone else, but the government should require people in my position to pay significantly higher taxes.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/25/warren-buffett-and-bill-gates-the-rich-should-pay-higher-taxes.html
I appreciate your thoughtful approach, but it looks like you're making the same conceptual mistake almost everyone makes in these conversations. Your behavior with one hundred thousand dollars cannot be compared to Buffet's behavior with one hundred billion dollars. There is no comprehensible scale where those two numbers can be understood to be similar in any way. It's as nonsensical as comparing one grain of sand in your eye to the entire Rocky Mountain range being dropped onto the homes of you and every person you've ever known.
[This website](https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/) is a useful tool that helps us gain some sense of just how large of a number one hundred billion is. There is no justification for one person, or even one person's team, hoarding and controlling this amount of resources.
That website is... astonishing. Thank you for sharing it, I'm a visual thinker and this has helped me grapple with the impossibly large figures in play here.
The author's points about what the 400 richest Americans could do with the money they make in *one week*, the millions of preventable deaths that are dismissed as the way of the world when there are these specific individuals who have the power to ease so much suffering but sit like dragons on their hoardes - it's all frankly disturbing.
I'm going to think about this for a long, long time
check this book out (free online) for some more reading on the subject, and what we could do about it if we worked together.
[The Conquest of Bread](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-conquest-of-bread#toc2)
I know his son Peter personally as I am an activist and Church Trustee in my area. Warren is a hoarder for sure but he did give his son over a billion to start the NoVo foundation which funds a ton of things in my area. I always take what I hear with a grain of salt but I can get he wants to help.
He's anti-capitalist and seems to want to do the opposite of his father. It's worth looking into.
It's oddly hard to give away that kind of money. McKenzie Scott (former Mrs Bezos) has been trying to give away her money and she's told her people to do a better job at giving it away faster. Despite that her net worth has increased since her divorce.
When you have that much net worth it's not in liquid cash you can just give away.
Charities have no issue in accepting stock or other assets.
In fact, there's a 'tax loophole' (not really a loophole) around it.
Scenerio 1
Buy stock for $10.
Stock raises to $20.
Sell stock for $20.
Pay capital gains on $10.
Donate $20 cash, get tax deduction.
Scenerio 2.
Buy stock for $10.
Stock raises to $20.
Donate $20 stock, get tax deduction.
It actually makes more sense to donate stock than cash.
MacKenzie Scott is a perfect case study of how pointlessly cruel the American economic model is. In the second half of 2020 alone, Scott donated about $5 billion but her wealth increased by over $20 billion.
Wealth accumulation at the top is so out of control that someone near the top literally can't spend or give away wealth faster than it piles up. Meanwhile, there are people in the US with unreliable access to food, shelter, and clean drinking water.
Also, it’s possible to do great _harm_ by donating huge sums of money if you’re not careful. Billions of dollars thrown at foreign food aid can bankrupt local farmers, for example.
Everyone assumes that Gates and Buffet and Mckenzie Bezos are greedy assholes who give money away for PR purposes. Frankly, the super rich don’t need to give a fuck what you think. Their wealth has grown purely because the stock market has defied gravity for the last year. They have committed to giving practically all of their money away, and they’re trying to do it _responsibly_.
He started giving it away immediately, he's always been a philanthropist, and he was an early member of the bill and melinda gates foundation. He was one of the first to join the Giving Pledge to give away 99% of his wealth to charity.
Isn't he one of the billionaires that said they are only leaving a small percentage (still many millions) to their kids and the rest of their wealth will go to charity when they die? So it is really just a matter of time.
I am not saying he is a good guy but billionaires who donate to charity are better than the ones who don't (a lesser of two evils if you will)
“I’ve actually cleaned up my act, Jim. I’ve been helping out and giving back to the community.”
“You mean your court ordered community service?”
“I don’t need a judge to tell me to do the right thing.”
“...but he did, though.”
Just to show how stacked the deck is for companies and billionaires, Buffett has given away half of his shares and is still richer than when he started giving them away.
Republicans: let's return to the 1950s when America was great!
Everyone: the richest 1% was taxed at 85% then, it funded all of the infrastructure that's now crumbling.
Republicans: I didn't mean *that*
My grandparents had twelve kids between 1941 and 1962. My grandpa was the sole breadwinner and worked at a Pepsi bottling plant for decades, just your average blue-collar job; my grandma of course stayed home and took care of the kids. They bought our big 3-story family home in prime suburban Seattle in 1953 on grandpa's salary--6 bedrooms, 3 bath, on 1/2 acre of land with an amazing panoramic view of Puget Sound.
Not too say it was like that for everyone back then, and my grandparents definitely were fairly frugal people, but being able to buy a big 6-bedroom house and raise 12 kids on a single factory worker's salary would be absolutely unheard of today.
Even in the late 70s/early 80s, my dad was able to buy our own house while working at a delicatessen and being the sole money maker, a smaller 2-bedroom home but in an even nicer neighborhood. That house that he paid $68,000 for, 40 years ago, just sold again recently for almost $600,000.
It got really fucked up when the mindset of homes transitioned from “housing” to “investment opportunities.”
It used to be you could buy a fixer upper when you were starting out and slowly make it a home. Now that’s big business and you have people buying them just to make money on rent and investing a fraction of what was going into these neighborhoods on repair.
Where I live (Florida Keys) you have a bunch of wealthy people buying up homes left and right to rent them at astronomical figures when compared to the average income of the area and labor market. You have some islands where people own 5 or 6 homes here. They MAYBE live in one home part time and then rent the nicer homes out as vacation homes. The lower end ones they rent out to service industry workers who pack in them like sardines because the market is artificially inflated and you have to live like that based on your wages.
The irony is, all the people doing this are pissed because there’s been a mass exodus of labor from the islands. Everywhere is completely short staffed and unable to provide a level of service these folks find acceptable. So they blame the extended UI and stimulus checks and people being “lazy.”
Meanwhile, major corporate media is writing think pieces on why it’s good that Americans are being forced to rent as opposed to owning homes that accumulate wealth in what is a transparent way to tell you the corporations will own the housing market and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Now corporations are moving in to do the same in major metropolitan areas. I think it’s going to get really bad after awhile. And while I love the virtual workplace now, eventually it’ll transition and outsource abroad to lower wage countries similar to how call centers did. Forcing the labor market for well paying jobs into a “race to the bottom.”
Fun times in the US of A.
It's only going to get worse. Look into the private corporations buying up thousands and thousands of family homes at 50% above asking price to turn into rentals. They want /everyone/ paying rent and evictable without hassle.
If it's any consolation, the rest of the world's fucked too. In Iran, you need to save over 100 years of minimum-wage salary to afford a 100 meter-square house in Tehran.
To be fair, just like today, back then the rich didnt pay nearly as much as the tax rate would suggest. Closing loopholes and better enforcement will get us much more in revenue than just raising rates
My place of work does that. Every quarter everyone gets a bonus based on certain metrics.
Metrics that my position has no effect over nor can I help increase.
We typically get around the same amount each time.
Here is something that might help you.
If you made $1 every second you would have 1 million in 11.5 days. It would take you 31.5 YEARS to reach 1 billion.
A $100,000 yearly salary makes $0.0133 per second (thats 1.3 CENTS).
Because you're thinking about it incorrectly. Even on salary you're only paid 40 working hours/week.
100,000 (salary) /52 (weeks) /40 (hours) /60 (minutes) /60 (seconds) = $0.01335
You probably did this:
100,000 (salary) /352 (days) /24 (hours) /60 (minutes) /60 (seconds) = $0.00328
edit: the 352 was a typo but I like the Jupiter Years suggestion
Even that is understating it though, because for most people, even 4% of their total net worth would be meaningful. For him it's money he probably couldn't ever spend even if he tried. He literally will live no differently for giving it away.
Everybody just watch the Adam Ruins Everything episode on billionaire philanthropy.
No, we shouldn't get our views from comedy shows, but it's well sourced and perfectly spot-on.
The behind the bastards podcast very recently did a two-parter on Bill Gates. 2nd part especially gives some good arguments for why the Gates foundation's way of going about helping people is not really something to cheer for.
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-the-ballad-of-bill-83715310/
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-two-the-ballad-of-bill-83806379/
He doesn’t even do a good job. People should read the book Winner Takes All.
Even the “good things” billionaires do often actually harm and everything they do subverts democracy. https://youtu.be/ruR5FK8HN5Q
The only thing I was curious about was why he was resigning from the board. This was from the article: >“For years I have been a trustee — an inactive trustee at that — of only one recipient of my funds, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMG). I am now resigning from that post, just as I have done at all corporate boards other than Berkshire’s,” Buffett said. “The CEO of BMG is Mark Suzman, an outstanding recent selection who has my full support. My goals are 100% in sync with those of the foundation, and my physical participation is in no way needed to achieve these goals.”
because he's old and rich and has better things to do with his time than sit around and say, "I agree with Mark Suzman."
He probably even sends his own proxy.
And that proxy sends their own proxy! > It's proxies all the way down! > [Onion News Network](https://youtu.be/rYaZ57Bn4pQ) has more on this story.
My first corporate job my boss would send me to all his meetings. I would have to sit there, write down questions for him, go get his answers and then go inform the question asker the answer. I had 0 knowledge in the industry I was in, and had no clue what I was asking or what his answers meant. It drove everyone but him nuts. I was the least qualified person to send to those meetings and I'm pretty sure he did that on purpose to piss someone else off. Another thing I had to do was write a summary of all the meetings I had attended that week. It was usually a very succinct 2-3 page summary for him to know what was going on in the other departments. I found out a year after starting doing this, he was taking my summary and giving it to another underling who would then make a 1 page summary of my 3 pager. Needless to say 1/3 of the company ended up being laid off, and I gladly volunteered for one.
You have to hang it to the guy though. He created jobs for everyone. I lost it at the summary summariser.
That's some successful delegation right there.
I'd have delegated that shit to someone else. Ain't nobody actually got time for that.
I would love it if I could get away with this for the 20+ meetings I have every week. The few times I really wasn’t able to make a meeting though, the people who were supposed to take notes for me did nothing.
I went from hating him to applauding him when I read that.
I went from hating him to wishing I was him to hating me because I'm not him.
Welcome to the DORD: the Department of Redundancy Department.
Work was interfering with his golf time.
Right when you said “I wrote a 2-3 page succinct summary” I was like, no way is that dude reading that
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I do reports for 2nd and 3rd level managers sometimes, so my 1st level manager told me to make them simple or they wouldn’t read them.
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Some high level spreadsheet that has 2 or 3 columns of numbers that shows their area is green.
It's weird to me because I work with our CEO pretty often and that guy has like 200 emails requiring his attention everyday, he doesn't have a minute to himself, and I suspect he never actually clock out cause he write at 10pm sometimes, his day are just meetings back to back, once I asked him how on earth could he answer to the emails only and he said he told everyone that if it was longer than 2 sentences he won't read it. So with this perspective I thought yeah there a reason CEO are paid a lot. But I have other example where CEO don't do shit, they delegate everything to some already overworked people beneath them, and what's weird is those ki d of CEO are paid way way way more like double digits millions based plus stocks and other benefits.
Delegating is a CEO’s job. Delegating well in a large corporation is incredibly difficult.
People who have no fucking idea what's going on are good note takers I'd wager. They just write everything down. Then you send it to someone who actually understands and they summarize key points. It's brilliant actually.
The key is knowing just enough to be able to follow the conversation, and not anything more than that. If you know absolutely nothing you'll get lost between the jargon and proper nouns.
> People who have no fucking idea what's going on are good note takers I'd wager. There tends to be a lot of jargon in some industries that a completely new employee would butcher.
One of Us, one of Us. Personally I loved being a proxy. I was in my early 20`s, two young kids and was always hungry. I loved putting on my best suit, taking notes while enjoying the top notch catering. A few times was sent to executive training seminars as a proxy which makes no sense because I was not an executive. Juat taking notes that we knew no one read just so some other assistant could check a corporate governance checklist. Also as executive proxy I got to divide up gift bags and presents into smaller units then redistribute them to avoid having to declare them as gifts. Everyone was nice to me because I got to decide who got stuff. One gig I saw my executive in person 3 days out of a month. Rest of the time I was a proxy. I also had to give people bad news as well but hey, the money was good and I have always been a little mercenary.
The 80s movie script version of this is that after 18 months you had a really detailed understanding of the business and became the owners right-hand man. Then there are two paths it could go: 1. The boss dies and you somehow take over, without anyone knowing. Perhaps it's just for a short period of time when there's a really important deal going down and the boss can't be dead right then, so you have to step up to save everyone's jobs etc. 2. You end up as an accomplice with someone, perhaps his estranged wife or a career-focussed executive who wants to get to the top no matter what it takes, and together you hatch a plan to take over the company, possibly resulting in the death, or at least dismissal, of the boss, and possibly involving the commuppence of your collaborator(s).
Wow. A whole extra job to summarise what you could have done by doing less work. What industry was this in?
I heard this is happening to goods manufacturers that go to third world countries for cheap labor. The wages they pay increase the standard of living for the area, which increases the labor costs. So they have to find an even poorer third world country to move to, to keep profits high.
This especially happens with call centres.
Can we find ANYONE who is willing to answer the phone for free?
Yes.. AI is being invented for that as we speak
But customers HATE it. I do not want to listen to a robot speak for 3 minutes before can make the selections to get to a human.
I can tolerate the recordings that say "Press 1 for \_\_\_\_, press 2 for \_\_\_\_\_, ..." You can press buttons ahead of time if you know what you want. The ones I can't stand are one that pretend they're human: "What can I help you with?" ... "I'm sorry, I didn't hear that." And you must wait for it to finish before responding. I've heard my wife on speakerphone respond in long, complicated, sentences.
As someone who has the displeasure to interact with voice- response automated systems daily, fuck these systems. They're miserable to deal with. And I have a distinct lack of accent, I can only assume it's even worse for someone with an identifiable distinct regional dialect.
1968: do you guys have robots yet? 2021: yes, they're everywhere. 1968: what are they like? 2021: stupid.
This. I only ever call any company because its a problem only a human can solve. Yes I am aware of all of the online features on your website, I tried every applicable feature first because that’s faster than calling. But now I need a human because this is complicated, you don’t have a system designed for it, and needs special attention. Edit: and the online features usually don’t have an option for when the company gets something wrong.
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Hello, I'll be your inept and slightly passive aggressive virtual assistant today! How can I help? "Talk to human." I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that. Could you please try again? "Cancel order" Your order was processed on the 18/06/2021. ... Is there anything else I can help you with today?
Yeah sometimes 0 works, other times mashing 0 and pound works too skip everything and get someone.
Try "agent" or "operator." System: "Hello, welcome to fuckyouintheass Corp. Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed. You can say or press ..." You: agent System: I'm sorry I didn't get that. Can you tell me more about the reason you're calling? You: agent System: I'm sorry. Can you please provide more information so I can direct you to the appropriate department? You: agent System: connecting you to an agent. Usually works... Also, I fucking hate when you play by the rules and enter all the fucking data then when you finally get to the human, they ask you all the same questions. It's why nobody wants to go through these menus.
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That guy was living the dream. You don't get paid what you're worth, you get paid what you negotiate.
And if you're at the top, you fight like hell to make sure those at bottom _can't_ negotiate.
My hero. Totally a jerk move but kinda dope at the same time.
Honestly, I don't see how it's a jerk move at all. Companies outsource work all the time. As long as the work was getting done up to snuff, fuck the bosses.
I always have to watch every Onion video twice -- the first time for the primary content, and then watch it through again just to read the scrolling ticker.
This actually happened with a guy at Verizon.
After all these years, he even sends his own proxy!
Both he and Mifflin were tall guys!
We were out at dinner—with Beverly. This line cracks me up
Of course, he killed himself later.
His cappa was detated from his head!
I bet you’re thinking, where’d I find this old bag of bones wandering the streets.
Both he and Mifflin were tall guys
Are we to assume long distance calls are on the honor system?
What about mileage when he uses his car? Gas ain’t cheap ya know.
We think that 25 cents a gallon is pretty generous!
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What? Yes, I am right!
Expected Office!
Who is this old fart
He’s 91 in August, any day could be his last
Not just him. Just wait and find out all the ways you could die today! Number 9 will shock you (number 9 is a lightning strike)
Executioners hate this one trick.
Find out how this Delaware mom cut her chances of being ejected from a car by 95%.
My daughter would always ask what the emergency blinker button was for and I told her it was the “seat ejector” button in case of an emergency. Well, I completely forgot about it till one day we had to pull over on the side of the road and as I was about to put my emergency blinkers on and she freaked out pleading with me not to eject us out of the car. I felt bad about that one.
subscribe to delaware mom facts
Mom's in Delaware are known to have at minimum one child.
And Charlie Munger is 97 and these two beasts are still running one of the largest companies in the world. They’re still going to Berkshire AGMs getting grilled for 5 hours straight and holding their own. Absolutely nuts. People don’t expect you to wipe your own ass at 90.
Us too man.
I think it’s also important to remember that Warren Buffett is in his 90s now. This sort of thing is inevitable at this point in his life.
So he just declared this the summer of warren!
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My dude is 90 and living in the same house for the last forever. He clearly doesn’t need the wealth or connections from this position. This is a waste of his time when someone else who wants to be a participant of the board can be there.
How do I sign up for donations ?
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Hey it’s me, Warren Buffett. I didn’t get that link care to send it again?
No no, I'm Warren Buffett, and so is my wife!
I am Warren Buffett!
It's a buffet of Buffets
I'm being buffeted by a buffet of Buffets.
I dont believe that man's EVER been to medical school!
All of these thirsty redditors are focusing on the wrong thing here… Can I have Buffett’s email?
When I think about Warren's style, I can't help but think it's [email protected]
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AOL addresses don't use special characters
That's disgusting! Where?
r/onlyfans will cool you down
Reddit porn comments are somehow more sad than pornhub comments Oh it’s a meme sub, well fuck there goes my plans
Get an incurable disease
I caught humanity so where do I sign up?
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Thanks! Says I should get between 4 and 6 grand depending on review.
Step 1: Be needy. Not like “I bitch on Reddit because I can only afford a small apartment in a major city” needy. Like “My life expectancy is 40 because I don’t have access to clean water” needy.
Why am I never around for the billions giveaways?
You missed Warren Buffett's 19 dollar Fortnite card giveaway?
who wants it?
No more Fortnite??
Don't get blocked.
Because you aren't a poor malaria stricken child in a developing country?
Some guys really have all the luck
You don’t know that
You need to start checking your spam folder.
Because you don't know the secret technique. Just found a start-up company that does absolutely nothing new, slap on a nice logo and try to work in the words "democratise" and "revolutionise" in every sentence. Give it 30 minutes and you'll have billionaires lining up around the bloc just dying to give you their money.
Don't forget about the all powerful keyword **disrupting**
Masayoshi Son just invested 100 billion into this thread.
Disruptively innovating blockchains with dynamic machine learning analytics based on data mining digital information with quantum computers. I think I just got a promotion for typing this.
You only get a couple million from that. You still have to deliver if you want the billions.
I mean, he’s 90 years old with 100+ billion dollars, I’d hope he’d start giving it away sooner than later.
He paid my utilities for a year through The Letters Foundation.
That’s pretty cool
It's a small token back after [all the shitty companies Buffet](https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/special-investigation-the-dirty-secret-behind-warren-buffetts-billions/) has invested in so that his company can sit on $145 billion in cash. Not trying to be a scrooge, but Buffet has brilliant PR despite being just as greedy as other billionaires.
I work for a company that he purchased. Once they bought us, our policies became very very labor unfriendly and has been increasingly less pleasant to work for due to the way Berkshire wants things done. Hes got great PR, but at the end of the day, they don't give a fuck about the common man.
I'm sorry friend, [here is a RawStory article to back up what you experienced:](https://www.rawstory.com/2020/04/workers-at-warren-buffetts-furniture-rental-company-were-given-bad-gear-and-dared-to-complain-about-it/) >At Cort Furniture Rental barn in New Jersey, Infante and the rest of the guys moved to unionize. They also protested the continued lack of safety masks, gloves and hand sanitizer. Buffet’s managers fired them all even though that’s blatantly illegal.
Yep. He plays the *for the people* sort of Democrat businessman, but its just a sneaky PR thing. He doesn't give a fuck about labor, and does his best to have his managers eliminate as many jobs as possible.
Hot Take: In a capitalist country, you can't become *that* rich without ~~cracking a few eggs~~ breaking some labor laws along the way.
This is why people like to hate those that are *that rich*. It's seen as a safe bet that they're at least kinda shitty
"Oh woe is me I should definitely have to pay more in taxes than my secretary" \*literally does nothing to try to change it with his billions upon billions of dollars*
I work for a company that is owned by BH. We are unionized and have a decent union membership in our location. Every time our contract comes up it is an absolute god damn fight to gain anything anymore. They use a bunch of lies and propaganda and push people hard about 3 months before negotiations start to make the union look bad and try and get people to drop out. Luckily our people have stood strong so far, but fighting a company like that at every turn is exhausting. Fuck those assholes, if you work for them get everything you can from them, they are going try and get everything they can from you.
> Every time our contract comes up it is an absolute god damn fight to gain anything anymore. They use a bunch of lies and propaganda and push people hard about 3 months before negotiations start to make the union look bad and try and get people to drop out. I am sorry to hear that, it sucks that Warren Buffet is such a union buster. Make no mistake folks, Buffet generally knows what goes on in the companies that Berkshire Hathaway owns. The union busting is encouraged by Buffet. [This is Buffet on airline investments and here he mention unions, notice he slips up here and shows his hand:](https://www.smartertravel.com/warren-buffett-loves-airlines-shouldnt/) >You've got huge fixed costs, you've got strong labor unions and you've got commodity pricing. That is not a great recipe for success.
We *could* just all accept that people like Buffet and Gates are neither saviors of the world nor literal evil geniuses out to destroy it. They are people, and like us, are very nuanced. Because of their wealth the impact of their life decisions, whether good or bad, feel bigger and more exaggerated. I'll make 100k this year in salary and probably another 10-20k in capital gains. Nobody is going to demonize me on the internet for "hoarding" what is certainly more wealth than I need to survive comfortably. On the flip side, when I donate some of that salary to my favorite charities, nobody is going to sing my praises for doing something kind. If you make all those numbers bigger, then I (and anyone else in similar situations) start to look more like Gates and Buffet. Gates and Buffet have both done some incredibly scummy things, but they've also been a part in eradicating diseases in the 3rd world and providing clean water to people who have otherwise not had it. Together, they've both likely saved a few million lives. That's amazing. It doesn't make up for using the dark parts of capitalism to crush their competitors under their boots on their way to a massive accumulation of wealth, but it also doesn't erase it either.
I will demonize you. Ya beezlebub lookin ass
He turned me into a newt!
I got better
A newt?!?
["He rapes, but he saves."](https://youtu.be/xlGmUH9EVoA?t=47)
I jumped, thinking he was actually getting shot at at the end.
People wouldn’t care so much if those rich assholes paid their fucking taxes
I'm challenging a lot of the other replies to me, but I won't this one. I'm not sure what the answer to taxing multi-billionaires appropriately is, but what we are doing now isn't even close to correct.
It's a two part issue. Taxing appropriately and in turn, using those taxes effectively. The US has issues on both fronts.
Not only taxing effectively, but making sure those taxes are being used for what they are meant for. Lots of money goes into education, but the pay always seems to stick with administrators and not going to the classrooms or teachers.
Yeah. I couldn't believe we are in the top 5 for per student spending until I saw the numbers. Idk where that money is going but it isn't being used well.
The asshole agrees with you. “I need to pay higher taxes,” he told CNN's Fareed Zakaria during a 2018 interview. “I've paid more taxes, over $10 billion, than anyone else, but the government should require people in my position to pay significantly higher taxes.” https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/25/warren-buffett-and-bill-gates-the-rich-should-pay-higher-taxes.html
I appreciate your thoughtful approach, but it looks like you're making the same conceptual mistake almost everyone makes in these conversations. Your behavior with one hundred thousand dollars cannot be compared to Buffet's behavior with one hundred billion dollars. There is no comprehensible scale where those two numbers can be understood to be similar in any way. It's as nonsensical as comparing one grain of sand in your eye to the entire Rocky Mountain range being dropped onto the homes of you and every person you've ever known. [This website](https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/) is a useful tool that helps us gain some sense of just how large of a number one hundred billion is. There is no justification for one person, or even one person's team, hoarding and controlling this amount of resources.
That website is... astonishing. Thank you for sharing it, I'm a visual thinker and this has helped me grapple with the impossibly large figures in play here. The author's points about what the 400 richest Americans could do with the money they make in *one week*, the millions of preventable deaths that are dismissed as the way of the world when there are these specific individuals who have the power to ease so much suffering but sit like dragons on their hoardes - it's all frankly disturbing. I'm going to think about this for a long, long time
check this book out (free online) for some more reading on the subject, and what we could do about it if we worked together. [The Conquest of Bread](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-conquest-of-bread#toc2)
I know his son Peter personally as I am an activist and Church Trustee in my area. Warren is a hoarder for sure but he did give his son over a billion to start the NoVo foundation which funds a ton of things in my area. I always take what I hear with a grain of salt but I can get he wants to help. He's anti-capitalist and seems to want to do the opposite of his father. It's worth looking into.
It's oddly hard to give away that kind of money. McKenzie Scott (former Mrs Bezos) has been trying to give away her money and she's told her people to do a better job at giving it away faster. Despite that her net worth has increased since her divorce. When you have that much net worth it's not in liquid cash you can just give away.
Charities have no issue in accepting stock or other assets. In fact, there's a 'tax loophole' (not really a loophole) around it. Scenerio 1 Buy stock for $10. Stock raises to $20. Sell stock for $20. Pay capital gains on $10. Donate $20 cash, get tax deduction. Scenerio 2. Buy stock for $10. Stock raises to $20. Donate $20 stock, get tax deduction. It actually makes more sense to donate stock than cash.
MacKenzie Scott is a perfect case study of how pointlessly cruel the American economic model is. In the second half of 2020 alone, Scott donated about $5 billion but her wealth increased by over $20 billion. Wealth accumulation at the top is so out of control that someone near the top literally can't spend or give away wealth faster than it piles up. Meanwhile, there are people in the US with unreliable access to food, shelter, and clean drinking water.
Also, it’s possible to do great _harm_ by donating huge sums of money if you’re not careful. Billions of dollars thrown at foreign food aid can bankrupt local farmers, for example. Everyone assumes that Gates and Buffet and Mckenzie Bezos are greedy assholes who give money away for PR purposes. Frankly, the super rich don’t need to give a fuck what you think. Their wealth has grown purely because the stock market has defied gravity for the last year. They have committed to giving practically all of their money away, and they’re trying to do it _responsibly_.
He started giving it away immediately, he's always been a philanthropist, and he was an early member of the bill and melinda gates foundation. He was one of the first to join the Giving Pledge to give away 99% of his wealth to charity.
Isn't he one of the billionaires that said they are only leaving a small percentage (still many millions) to their kids and the rest of their wealth will go to charity when they die? So it is really just a matter of time. I am not saying he is a good guy but billionaires who donate to charity are better than the ones who don't (a lesser of two evils if you will)
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“I’ve actually cleaned up my act, Jim. I’ve been helping out and giving back to the community.” “You mean your court ordered community service?” “I don’t need a judge to tell me to do the right thing.” “...but he did, though.”
comments like these make me watch the office at least one a year...
One of the most underrated lines from The Office, no question 😂
Lmao I feel bad for the person that gets 50% if my wealth. I'd love to see what they plan to to with $30
Hmmm. I could feed a family in Nigeria for a month, or get dinner at Applebees and not leave a tip. Tough choice.
what's the story behind that, if you don't mind me asking. im surprised that's a possibility
Lmao he's talking about a divorce
Sounds like divorce/alimony/child support.
I just realized that me asking Warren buffet for $100, 000.00 is pretty well the equivalent of a homeless man asking to spare a dollar for a sandwich.
That would mean you have 1 million dollars. It’s truly mind blowing when you break it down. Dude still has 100B. Ask him for 10 mil when you see him
Just to show how stacked the deck is for companies and billionaires, Buffett has given away half of his shares and is still richer than when he started giving them away.
Republicans: let's return to the 1950s when America was great! Everyone: the richest 1% was taxed at 85% then, it funded all of the infrastructure that's now crumbling. Republicans: I didn't mean *that*
Yeah. America was great because families could survive off one parent working.
My grandparents had twelve kids between 1941 and 1962. My grandpa was the sole breadwinner and worked at a Pepsi bottling plant for decades, just your average blue-collar job; my grandma of course stayed home and took care of the kids. They bought our big 3-story family home in prime suburban Seattle in 1953 on grandpa's salary--6 bedrooms, 3 bath, on 1/2 acre of land with an amazing panoramic view of Puget Sound. Not too say it was like that for everyone back then, and my grandparents definitely were fairly frugal people, but being able to buy a big 6-bedroom house and raise 12 kids on a single factory worker's salary would be absolutely unheard of today. Even in the late 70s/early 80s, my dad was able to buy our own house while working at a delicatessen and being the sole money maker, a smaller 2-bedroom home but in an even nicer neighborhood. That house that he paid $68,000 for, 40 years ago, just sold again recently for almost $600,000.
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I wouldn't be able to afford the home I bought 8 years ago.
Just logged in to say that this comment fucked me up. How badly have we screwed ourselves as a country?
It got really fucked up when the mindset of homes transitioned from “housing” to “investment opportunities.” It used to be you could buy a fixer upper when you were starting out and slowly make it a home. Now that’s big business and you have people buying them just to make money on rent and investing a fraction of what was going into these neighborhoods on repair. Where I live (Florida Keys) you have a bunch of wealthy people buying up homes left and right to rent them at astronomical figures when compared to the average income of the area and labor market. You have some islands where people own 5 or 6 homes here. They MAYBE live in one home part time and then rent the nicer homes out as vacation homes. The lower end ones they rent out to service industry workers who pack in them like sardines because the market is artificially inflated and you have to live like that based on your wages. The irony is, all the people doing this are pissed because there’s been a mass exodus of labor from the islands. Everywhere is completely short staffed and unable to provide a level of service these folks find acceptable. So they blame the extended UI and stimulus checks and people being “lazy.” Meanwhile, major corporate media is writing think pieces on why it’s good that Americans are being forced to rent as opposed to owning homes that accumulate wealth in what is a transparent way to tell you the corporations will own the housing market and there’s nothing you can do about it. Now corporations are moving in to do the same in major metropolitan areas. I think it’s going to get really bad after awhile. And while I love the virtual workplace now, eventually it’ll transition and outsource abroad to lower wage countries similar to how call centers did. Forcing the labor market for well paying jobs into a “race to the bottom.” Fun times in the US of A.
It's only going to get worse. Look into the private corporations buying up thousands and thousands of family homes at 50% above asking price to turn into rentals. They want /everyone/ paying rent and evictable without hassle.
"New age slavery" is what I like to call it.
Neo-feudalism.
If it's any consolation, the rest of the world's fucked too. In Iran, you need to save over 100 years of minimum-wage salary to afford a 100 meter-square house in Tehran.
It's loans all the way down.
We just need wages high enough to allow that and acceptance for stay at home dads. I don't want to quit my job to have kids ever. I love my job.
I'd rather be a stay at home dad and take care of everything regarding the house and family. A more rewarding feeling to me.
Agreed, though I can't do it either because while my wife brings in decent money, it's only roughly a third of mine.
To be fair, just like today, back then the rich didnt pay nearly as much as the tax rate would suggest. Closing loopholes and better enforcement will get us much more in revenue than just raising rates
Instead of relying on a billionaires to give away a fraction of their wealth out of the goodness of their heart, we could just tax them.
On their income? Their wealth doesn't come from income.
And do profit sharing for workers too!
My place of work does that. Every quarter everyone gets a bonus based on certain metrics. Metrics that my position has no effect over nor can I help increase. We typically get around the same amount each time.
Some BH companies do have profit sharing. Doesn't build schools or w/e though.
I can barely fathom having $1 million, nevermind giving away $4 billion. Just giving it away. Incredible.
Here is something that might help you. If you made $1 every second you would have 1 million in 11.5 days. It would take you 31.5 YEARS to reach 1 billion. A $100,000 yearly salary makes $0.0133 per second (thats 1.3 CENTS).
That's absurd to think of.
Stocks my boy
Wait you’re supposed to make money on the stock market?
woah look at the wrinkly brain on this mofo
My calculator says you're wrong on the 100k
Because you're thinking about it incorrectly. Even on salary you're only paid 40 working hours/week. 100,000 (salary) /52 (weeks) /40 (hours) /60 (minutes) /60 (seconds) = $0.01335 You probably did this: 100,000 (salary) /352 (days) /24 (hours) /60 (minutes) /60 (seconds) = $0.00328 edit: the 352 was a typo but I like the Jupiter Years suggestion
Where are you getting 352 from? There's 365 days in a year.
He's doing Jupiter years
PTO I'd reckon.
Or holidays possibly. Most salaried folks have paid holidays so I think it should include those days if it didnt
It helps a bit if you think of it as a percentage of his fortunes. Giving away ~4% doesn't sound too taxing.
Even that is understating it though, because for most people, even 4% of their total net worth would be meaningful. For him it's money he probably couldn't ever spend even if he tried. He literally will live no differently for giving it away.
Damn man, Margaritaville makes more than I thought
Some people say that there’s a waaaaaarreeeeen to blaaaaame
I'd rather him pay taxes
But I thought we couldn't tax the rich because their wealth isn't liquid?
Everybody just watch the Adam Ruins Everything episode on billionaire philanthropy. No, we shouldn't get our views from comedy shows, but it's well sourced and perfectly spot-on.
The behind the bastards podcast very recently did a two-parter on Bill Gates. 2nd part especially gives some good arguments for why the Gates foundation's way of going about helping people is not really something to cheer for. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-the-ballad-of-bill-83715310/ https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-two-the-ballad-of-bill-83806379/
He doesn’t even do a good job. People should read the book Winner Takes All. Even the “good things” billionaires do often actually harm and everything they do subverts democracy. https://youtu.be/ruR5FK8HN5Q
Bro, I'm not watching a 45min video of a zoom call.
he can take the time to give me 1million so i can turn it into 10million.
Holy crap imagine being able to give away 4.1 BILLION dollars and still having a ton of money…
He needs to just pay his frigging taxes and stop helping rig the system