With the Buffett Rule back it’s worth revisiting this profile of the third richest man in the world. In it Buffett acknowledges the enormous value of things beyond our control:
WARREN BUFFET: The womb from which you emerge determines your fate to an enormous degree for most of the seven billion people in the world. Just in my own case I was born in 1930. I had two sisters that have every bit the intelligence I have, every bit the drive but they didn`t have the same opportunities.
REBECCA JARVIS: Because you were a man?
WARREN BUFFET: And– and I was white. So if I had been black, my future would have been entirely different. If I had been a female, my life would have been entirely different.
And the moral obligation to those who are not as well off:
I would say that in a country with fifty thousand dollars of GDP per person that nobody should be hungry. Nobody should lack a good education. Nobody should be worried about medical care. You know, nobody should be worried about their old age. And that doesn`t mean looking for an equality results. I mean, you want great inequality results, you don`t want the Steve Jobs to be working in those garages or the day packers or Bill Gates or you name it. But you do not want anybody going to bed hungry or– or having medical care denied to them, or just the basics of life.