Warren Buffett's America
Warren Buffett, celebrating his 50th anniversary with Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRKA), was featured in a new special that premiered Monday on the FOX Business Network.
On “Warren Buffett’s America,” the Oracle of Omaha was joined by Charlie Munger, vice chairman of Berkshire, and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) co-founder Bill Gates, a member of Berkshire’s board of directors, for a panel discussion with FBN’s Liz Claman.
The panel touched on a wide range of topics, including Berkshire’s 2015 annual meeting, Silicon Valley, taxes and Buffett’s love of sugar.
“I’ve read a study that the best mortality was among six year olds…so I decided to study their eating habits, and look what it’s done,” said Buffett, whose conglomerate owns ice cream chain Dairy Queen.
Full Coverage: Weekend With Warren
Annual Meeting
Berkshire hosted its annual shareholder meeting Saturday in Omaha, Neb., for more than 40,000 people.
“I love them,” Buffett said of Berkshire’s shareholders. “I always look at these people as partners…and I absolutely prefer small shareholders to big institutional shareholders.”
Tech Growth
Buffett has mostly avoided investing in tech stocks, but not International Business Machines (NYSE:IBM). The Oracle of Omaha has accumulated 79 million IBM shares.
Would Gates, who remains a technology advisor at Microsoft, have advised Buffett to buy into the stock? “No, but I have a bias in that,” he said.
Gates went on to say that Silicon Valley is going strong with new innovations in wearable technology and robotics.
“It’s amazing how well all the top technology companies are doing. Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) doing well. Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) doing well. Microsoft’s doing well. It speaks to the fact that the digital revolution has just begun,” Gates said.
Taxes and the Minimum Wage
Munger said he wouldn’t be against changing the tax code, but he doesn’t consider it a “big, important issue, either.”
“There is no perfect tax system,” Buffett added. “I do believe that people who…have done well in this country should bear the greater burden, and the people who get the short straws should have a fairly light burden.”
On the minimum wage, Buffett said he wouldn’t object to raising it, although hiking the earned income tax credit would be “far more effective in terms of reducing poverty.”