It's Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letter day! Many of you know that Warren Buffett pens an annual note to shareholders about the company, the economy and... life. Here's the section everyone will be talking about:
America’s population is growing about .8% per year (.5% from births minus deaths and .3% from net migration). Thus 2% of overall growth produces about 1.2% of per capita growth. That may not sound impressive. But in a single generation of, say, 25 years, that rate of growth leads to a gain of 34.4% in real GDP per capita. (Compounding’s effects produce the excess over the percentage that would result by simply multiplying 25 x 1.2%.) In turn, that 34.4% gain will produce a staggering $19,000 increase in real GDP per capita for the next generation. Were that to be distributed equally, the gain would be $76,000 annually for a family of four. Today’s politicians need not shed tears for tomorrow’s children.
Indeed, most of today’s children are doing well. All families in my upper middle-class neighborhood regularly enjoy a living standard better than that achieved by John D. Rockefeller Sr. at the time of my birth. His unparalleled fortune couldn’t buy what we now take for granted, whether the field is – to name just a few – transportation, entertainment, communication or medical services. Rockefeller certainly had power and fame; he could not, however, live as well as my neighbors now do.
Warren Buffett, Annual Shareholder Letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders
As for the rest of the business, I've been leveling up my own railway building skills. Do you think this qualifies me as a railroad baron?
Click to View in Glorious Detail
Links We Liked!
- Do you get a healthy amount of sleep? Yeah, me neither - the CDC released a study on the sleep habits of Americans in 2014 with details on our peers. (Can it be a calculator? Maybe!)
- A couple of good ones from Political Calculations this week. When you refer to minimum wage - which one are you referring to? Many states have a higher rate. They're also tracking predicted earnings - when will we see the next uptick?
- Some nice links to research on deep poverty from Matt Breunig, who was tracking the rates since Welfare reform during the Clinton years. (We have done similar things, but it falls short with just CPS data, you need to account for underreporting)
- We got a note from Modest Money about a new stock lookup tool they'll be improving over the next few months. It looks very slick; they're off to a great start!
- Kanye West is $53 Million in debt? How is that possible? Vanity Fair takes some guesses.
- The internet is becoming more and more of a need, leaving the want category - here's the New York Times on families who don't have internet at home.
- Nice post from Josh Brown the Reformed Broker on how the dominant theme in the economy right now is abundance. Time to shake out some liquidity?
- An interesting post on the melting pot that is North America from Sherry at Save. Spend. Splurge.
- Our friend Steve is finally using slugs in URLs instead of dates and random numbers - and he had a nice post this week on doing things that are simple. Simple that is, not easy.
- Hey, another gaming the lottery piece, this time from MIT! Maybe we'll have to revise our beating the lottery piece? (And why is it so popular?)
- Feeling bearish (me too, to a reasonable degree)? Apparently so are hedge funds. Business Insider has the details on risk and their positions.
- Interesting in producing content on the internet? Read Paula Pant's epic post on everything she knows about blogging. She knows a lot more than me, take it from me.
