BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//InvisionCommunity Events 5.0.18//EN METHOD:PUBLISH CALSCALE:GREGORIAN REFRESH-INTERVAL:PT15M X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT15M X-WR-CALNAME:RMCommunityCalendar NAME:RMCommunityCalendar BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London TZURL:https://tzurl.org/zoneinfo/Europe/London X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/London BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20260329T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=-1SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20261025T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=-1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Economic Corner 32 01/28/2026 DTSTAMP:20260129T043604Z SEQUENCE:0 UID:635-7-c3fe8195a3dde498d013e477e2142422@aalbc.com ORGANIZER;CN="richardmurray":noreply@aalbc.com DESCRIPTION:\n The Trumpaccounts + Trumpcard have begun. \n\n\n\n https ://trumpaccounts.gov/\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n https://trumpcard.gov/\n\n\n\n   \n\n\n\n Trump Accounts\n\n\n\n thinking on it reminds me of the bonds gra ndparents would get their grandkids in the usa in years past. The website says all a parent has to do is put in one thousand dollars for a child and it will grow for said child\, even if said parent doesn't put any more mo ney. But\, five thousand dollars can be placed in as a maximum per year.  \n\n\n\n I see an interesting gap. The website says the money will be inve sted in firms in the usa and parents/guardians can see the valuation of th e investment. They say\, at eighteen a child can extract for a home or col lege.\n\n\n\n The financial questions I have are the following\, what firm s in the usa can guarantee a positive return on investment every year\, no matter what? And\, can the money when the child is eighteen be extracted as raw cash? the website doesn't give important specifics\, but I did noti ce the following.\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n The small text says\, estima tes are for illustration only and are based on an account opening at birth with $1\,000 opening deposit and are derived from historical S&\;P [ s tandard and Poor's] 500 averages. Actual results may differ and are not gu aranteed. \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n So\, while the webpage suggest guarantees\, the disclaimer for lawsuit suggest it isn't guaranteed. Essentially\, thi s whole program is the federal government as a broker. A broker can't guar antee you money but a broker may provide a nice set of profits. But it all assumes\, the broker will do well. I wonder what will choose the firms to invest in. I bet anything a large language model will be used to choose w here the money is invested in... historically\, the usa had a culture that mirrored this modern drive. It was the culture of stock market investment before the crashes before commonly called world war one. What many may no t know is the usa before said war\, had a huge culture of stock investment brewing. The crashes plus the war ended that culture\, and led to the eve ntual Securities and Exchange Commission. \n\n\n\n Well it is a risk\, bu t I gather the larger idea. Many don't know but the United States of Ameri ca demands a citizen pay $2\,350  to revoke their citizenship. \n\n\n\n https://www.usa.gov/renounce-lose-citizenship\n\n\n\n https://travel.state .gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-legal-considerations/us-citizenship/Re linquishing-US-Nationality-Abroad.html\n\n\n\n I argue this serves the rev erse function. Tying people and children to the usa through investment. \ n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n NOTES\n\n\n\n What will the money be invested in?\n\n\n \n Funds will be invested in a diversified portfolio of low-cost index fun ds designed to maximize long-term growth while minimizing risk.\n\n\n\n Wh en can funds be used?\n\n\n\n Funds can be accessed without penalty when t he child turns 18 for qualified expenses like education\, a first home pur chase\, or starting a business. Withdrawals may be subject to restrictions and would be taxed at ordinary income rates.\n\n\n\n Can I contribute to my own account?\n\n\n\n Once you start earning income\, you can make contr ibutions to your own account. This is a great way to develop good savings habits early in life.\n\n\n\n How can corporations participate?\n\n\n\n Em ployers may choose to contribute to the Trump Accounts for their workers o r their workers’ children\, supporting early savings and financial readi ness. Employers may choose to offer employees a salary reduction program u nder a “cafeteria plan” so that employees can make pre-tax contributio ns to Trump Accounts.\n\n\n\n Are corporate contributions tax-deductible?\ n\n\n\n Yes\, corporations can contribute up to $2\,500 to Trump Accounts on behalf of their employees' children. All contributions are tax-deductib le.\n\n\n\n Can philanthropists make donations?\n\n\n\n Yes. Nonprofit org anizations and local governments can contribute to Trump accounts of all c hildren in a state or qualified geographic area.\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n Trump Card\n\n\n\n for individuals\n\n\n\n gold card version- fifteen thousand p rocessing fee plus one million dollars for US residency\n\n\n\n platinum- for foreign nationals\,  fifteen thousand processing fee plus five millio n dollar contribution for the ability to spend up to 270 days in the Unite d States without being subject to U.S. taxes on non-U.S. income.\n\n\n\n f or business\n\n\n\n For a $2 million contribution\, receive U.S. residency in record time with the Trump Corporate Gold Card for your employees. Aft er a $15\,000 DHS processing fee* and background approval\, onboard your p referred candidate. Your Trump Corporate Gold Card allows your business to transfer access from one employee and grant it to another with a small\, 5% transfer fee\, which includes the cost of a DHS background check. A 1% annual maintenance fee will also apply.\n\n\n\n *Additional small fees to the U.S. Department of State may apply depending on the applicant.\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n NOTES\n\n\n\n Can family members apply?\n\n\n\n Yes. If an ind ividual applicant or corporate sponsor wishes for a spouse or unmarried ch ildren (under 21 years old) to join the cardholder in the United States\, then each such family member should be included as part of the initial app lication. This will ensure that these family members receive all of the pr ivileges conferred by the Gold Card Program\, including expedited processi ng. Each family member is subject to an additional $15\,000 DHS processing fee and $1 million gift.\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n How do applicants pay?\n\n\n\n $15\,000 nonrefundable processing fee: Credit Card (U.S. and international)\; ACH debit (U.S. bank accounts only).\n\n\n\n $1 million or $2 million gift payment (depending on type of applicant): Upon receivin g an email after vetting is complete\, applicants or their corporate spons ors should instruct their banks to use an ACH debit or Swift Wire Transfer (U.S. and international bank accounts) according to the instructions prov ided at that time.\n\n\n\n Visa-related fees: The applicant will receive i nformation directly from the U.S. Department of State on how to submit the visa application fee and payments for the required medical examination.\n \n\n\n  \n\n\n\n IN AMENDMENT\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n Both are basically inves tment channels into the usa. the accounts goal is scale\, if they get enou gh accounts they will influence the market\, the same way\, retirement fun ds\, which are collections of individual investments have huge value. the cards goal is for the worlds rich\, they can afford them easily but allows an ease through bureaucracy.\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n On an aside both websites say they are official websites of the united states government.\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n and something from warren buffett 1999 nebraska forum\n\n\n\n 0 :03\ntesting one million two million three million that's working okay\n0: 08\ni i'd like to uh talk to you about your financial future and i hope th ose figures become applicable to all of you\n0:15\nas we go along at uh uh and i'd like to start\n0:20\nuh by posing a problem for you and instead i 'm just gonna talk for a couple minutes and we'll do q a because\n0:26\nwh at we want to do is talk about what's on your mind but i'd like you to thi nk about this for just a second\n0:31\nif as we walked out of here today i said i would like to buy\n0:38\nten percent of your financial future i wa s going to write you a check today\n0:44\nand from this day forth you were going to give me 10 percent of everything you\n0:50\nearned how much woul d you want to charge me for that i'm going to buy one tenth of you\n0:57\n and i may take the low bid incidentally so be careful what you uh right no w well i think if you thought\n1:03\nabout that a little while i should yo u can contemplate that for a few minutes you know you're gonna get a check for me today\n1:10\nand you can do anything you want with the money but f rom this day forth you have to give me\n1:15\n10 of what you earn i think it would be very foolish of you any of you if you asked for less\n1:24\nth an say thousand dollars now it's gonna be a few years before you're out ea rning money and so i've got a few years of dead\n1:29\nmoney there but the n i would start getting this royalty on you as you went along so i really think that if you thought about\n1:35\nit you'd most of you would want a f air amount more than that i think you'd be right\n1:41\nfortunately i didn 't make this deal with anybody when i started out so nobody's got a 10 roy alty on me but i\n1:47\nthink that 50 000 would sort of be the absolute mi nimum and if you think about that that means\n1:55\nthat right today you a re worth five hundred thousand because of ten percent of you is worth\n2:0 1\nfifty thousand in cash today your potential\n2:06\nis worth a minimum o n 100 basis of 500 000 that is the big financial\n2:12\nasset you've got i t's way more important what you do with that 500\n2:17\n000 asset that you own today than whether you decide to buy stocks or\n2:24\nbonds or whethe r you put your money in a mutual fund or pick your own stocks or anything of that sort\n2:29\nthe biggest financial asset that you have going for yo u by miles\n2:35\nis the value of your own earning power over the years so that's really what you should focus on if you're focusing on your financi al\n2:42\nfuture that means you should finance focus on you because whethe r you're 10 percent is\n2:48\nworth 50 thousand or a hundred thousand or t hree hundred thousand which would be five hundred thousand or\n2:53\na mil lion or three million for all of you whether it turns out to be one or the \n2:59\nother is really dependent uh in a very large part on what you do i n the next few years\n3:05\nall of you in this room have the brains to do extremely well in life you've all\n3:11\ngot the energy to do extremely we ll in life and then the question is how do you apply it if you've got a 20 0 horsepower\n3:17\nmotor you get 200 horsepower out of it you get your fu ll potential or do you get 100 horsepower\n3:23\nor 50 horsepower now ther e's two things that can hold you back\n3:29\nin getting the full horsepowe r out of your your engine whatever it may be all of you have big enough en gines\n3:35\nand one of those is a lack of education but that probably isn 't going to happen to very many people in this room\n3:40\nif you did have a lack of education if you didn't have a chance to get a decent education in life it wouldn't make any difference what\n3:46\nthat potential was be cause you'd never unlock it but the second most important thing and\n3:52\ nequally as important is in terms of the habits that you develop in terms of what you do with yourself\n3:58\nwhen we hire people we look for three qualities we look for integrity we look for\n4:05\nintelligence and we loo k for energy but if they don't have the first one integrity the other two will kill you because if\n4:12\nyou're hiring somebody without integrity y ou really want to be dumb and lazy don't you i mean you know the last thin g in the world you want forms to be smart energetic so\n4:19\nsmart and en ergetic only goes with integrity but the nice thing about\nIntegrity\n4:26 \nyou know you make your own decision on that you can't change your iq or how far you control football\n4:31\nor how high you can jump or the color of your hair very easily but you can\n4:37\nelect to have integrity that m atches anybody else's and if you match that\n4:42\nwith intelligence which you have and energy which you have uh you will get an extraordinary resul t\n4:48\nand you'd be very foolish to sell me ten percent of yourself for fifty thousand on the other hand if you don't match it with that your\n4:5 3\npotential will in a significant part go unused and i'll give you a litt le\n4:59\nsimple test to apply in terms of thinking about the kind of habi ts you want to develop because you can have any habits you want to be you can be\n5:06\nyou can be lazy you can be prompt you can be you can be late you can be honest you can cut\n5:11\ncorners i mean you have all these ch oices and those are choices for you to make nobody else is going to make t hem\n5:16\nfor you and i would suggest that you play this little game with me too uh think about the person you would most\n5:24\nlike to be in life so maybe it's one of your contemporaries maybe somebody a little older bu t pick\n5:29\nout the person you admire the most the person that you'd cha nge places with it if you could and then\n5:34\nwrite down why you admire them just put it on a piece of paper and then figure out the person that y ou would\n5:40\nleast like to change places with you who really turns you off who do you find repulsive and list the\n5:47\nreasons why that person turns you off so much and put those down on the other side of the\n5:52\np aper and then look at that list and you'll find that everything on the lef t hand side\n5:58\nwhat you admire in other people the qualities they brin g to life cheerfulness you know generosity all\n6:05\nkinds of things you' ll find those are things you can do yourself it's very simple you gotta ap ply yourself but the habits\n6:11\nyou form and doing that early on will c arry you through life and on the other hand you'll find that\n6:17\nthe th ings that make people repulsive selfishness obnoxiousness all these things egotism\n6:22\nare things that no one has to have if you find those in yo urself you can get rid of them as long as you get rid of\n6:28\nthem early so all i suggest is that you write you write down a list of what what you admire what you find uh\n6:35\ncontemptible and decide that you know the ones on the on the\n6:40\nat admired side are ones you're going to acquire for yourself and if you do that when you're young it'll carry you through the rest of your life this\n6:46\ndoesn't work if you do it when you're 5 0 or 60. by then the habits are too well formed\n6:54\nbut if you do it ea rly behavior becomes becomes a habit so if you do that two or three years from\n7:01\nnow if you go through the same exercise you'll find out the pe rson you admire the most is yourself that can be a\n7:07\nlittle dangerous under some circumstances but it uh but it's not it's not a bad thing i me an you want to be somebody you like\n7:14\nand you don't want to be somebo dy that you're that you dislike and and uh form those habits early\n7:21\n you basically can't miss now i'll give you one other small piece of advice that's just a corollary on this\n7:26\nand then we'll get to your questio ns and and that is as a general matters of one piece of\n7:32\nspecific fi nance financial advice i would say you know\n7:37\navoid credit cards just forget about them we're in various businesses that issue credit cards the american public loves\n7:43\ncredit cards but if you start revolving debt on credit cards you're going to be paying 18 or 20 percent and you can't make\n7:52\nprogress in your financial life going around borrowing money a t 18 or 20 percent\n7:58\nyou can make a lot of money by lending it out at 18 or 20 over time you know if you can find anybody that's good that\n8:0 4\nwill borrow from you but you don't want to be on the side of the equati on that's always behind in life\n8:11\nyou know i was lucky i'd saved abou t ten thousand dollars by the time i got out of school that ten thousand d ollars was\n8:18\nreally worth millions i might have earned later on becau se after you get a family and everything the expenses roll in but but thos e were my\n8:24\ntools to work with but it was only because i was ahead of the game if you're behind the game by ten thousand dollars at some point and\n8:30\npaying 18 or 20 interest on it you will never you know you'll n ever get out of it so\n8:36\nthe trick i've got a partner that says all i want to know is where i'm going to die so i'll never go there you know\n8: 42\nand uh and that's true in financial matters as well you want to figure out where you don't want to be\n8:48\nuh ahead of time and avoid that and i get about a dozen letters a day from people who are having terrible\n8: 54\nproblems and there are two reasons why they have terrible problems one is a number of them have had health\n9:00\nproblems of some sort i mean t hey have really been hit by some or somebody in their family has been hit by some kind of catastrophic\n9:07\nillness and that is a you know it's a terrible thing to happen to any family and they get in they run up bills t hey\n9:13\ncan't pay and and really only society can solve that one uh uh in terms of protecting people against\n9:20\nthat that's just plain bad lu ck but the other one is from people who run up credit card debt\n9:26\nand uh they're facing bankruptcy or they've been through bankruptcy once befo re and they owe a whole bunch of money and\n9:31\nthey can't they can't ev en pay the interest let alone pay any principal and half of my letters com e from people\n9:36\nlike that and that that that problem is avoidable cat astrophic illness is not but but uh\n9:42\ncredit card debt is something y ou bring on yourself and it's way better it's way easier to stay\n9:48\nou t of trouble than to get out of trouble financially and and i will guarant ee you if you run\n9:53\na big credit card that you will be in trouble uh probably the rest of your life in terms of uh your financial situation\n10 :01\non the other hand if you get ahead of the game uh even it's on a very modest scale so that\n10:07\nmoney is coming in from investing and you're you're people owe you money or equities owe you\n10:14\nownership you'll be way ahead of the game compared to paying it being always being paying y our creditors\n10:20\nevery month so my advice to you is uh if you can't p ay for it don't buy it and get yourself in a\n10:28\nposition where you ca n pay for anything and then we'll be glad to see at borsheims or the nebra ska furniture market\n10:34\nnow let's uh let's have some questions do we have a mic out there that people\n10:39\ncan either go to or that travels around and i can't necessarily see too well\n10:45\nfrom um we're gonna ha ve one mic on each side so just raise your hand and wait for us to come to you\n10:51\nokay we have somebody up front like a mic [Music]\n10:57\nany thing that's on your mind ask about don't don't don't be bashful\nFinancia l Advice\n11:04\nyeah how would you advise people who aren't necessarily g oing into a career field in which you would make a\n11:10\nlarge base sala ry such as like medicine or something like that maybe\n11:16\nperforming a rts or music how would you advise us to keep up financially with the rest of the\n11:23\nworld well it is true that a market system\n11:29\nuh does not pay as well in some in some activities as as\n11:36\nmight seem approp riate for the importance of those activities the society just take teachin g for example i mean\n11:43\nteaching does not pay well and what could be more important i mean you know you've got to be as\n11:48\nas interested i n who you're the teachers of your children are as who your accountant is o r you know\n11:54\nwhatever or who's winning the heavyweight title of the world or that sort of thing but but it doesn't it doesn't pay well and\n12 :00\nand it's a fundamental choice uh whether you're going to go into some thing\n12:06\nthat for many people it'd be a fundamental choice whether yo u're going to go into something you love or something to\n12:12\nto try an d make a lot of money i think that generally it pays to go with what you l ove\n12:18\ni think that it's very hard to find people when they get to be my age who\n12:24\nsay they're on that they've loved what they've done al l their life and feel was very worthwhile uh but they're terribly sad they made\n12:31\nthat choice because they didn't make a lot of money i i don' t think anybody's ever ever said that to me that they wish they'd gone\n12 :36\ninto something else where they were uncomfortable doing it or didn't enjoy it didn't feel very productive but\n12:41\nmade a lot of money so i don't think you'll find that so i would i would i would go to work\n12:47\ ni would go to work in whatever turns you on it may turn out that it'll it 'll be more\n12:52\nprofitable than than you can think but almost everybod y here will make enough money unless they get some terrible\n12:59\nhabits along the way to do reasonably well and and doing reasonably well in this country\n13:04\nreally is is uh is pretty darn good i mean it is it's not necessary to have\n13:12\nuh huge amounts of money in order to enjoy your self i enjoyed myself when i was at my ten thousand dollars and i live in\ n13:18\nthe same house that i lived in when i was making when i had about that i bought it 41 years ago i like the house then i like the house\n13:2 5\nnow i mean if you think about it if you have a reasonable job\n13:31\ny ou'll be eating at mcdonald's and i'll be eating mcdonald's so we're we're to push on on on food i mean you know in fact i\n13:37\nhope it's dairy q ueen actually and maybe and if you come to dairy queen you'll see me and y ou can order anything on the\n13:43\nmenu i can order we both can afford i t uh you know you'll you'll wear the same\n13:48\nclothes i wear i'll pay more for my suits but as soon as i put them on they look cheap on me so we 'll look about the same and um\n13:55\nwe'll both live in the same kind of houses i live in that house from 41 years ago and it's it's it's warm in winter and it's cool in summer and it's\n14:02\ncomfortable and you'll liv e in a house that's that's similar and then and what difference does it ma ke is if you\n14:07\nhave 50 more rooms or you know guest houses or all th at you know it'll probably just bring you problems i mean you have to worr y about\n14:13\nthe about the greenskeeper or something when you get throu gh so i i i have been in the houses of people uh\n14:20\nwhere the houses are worth um oh probably 200 times what my house is\n14:26\nworth and i wo uld not be any happier in those houses at all in fact i'd be less happy i just have one more thing to\n14:32\nto worry about and you know the dozens of people around the place and people quitting and people stealing from\n 14:38\nyou and all kinds of things to hell with it yeah we drive we'll dri ve the same kind of\n14:44\ncar in fact you'll probably drive a better car i drive a car's about eight years old i don't know what it's worth now bu t it gets me around fine i mean i i'm\n14:50\nperfectly happy we'll watch we'll watch the same television you know we'll work on the same computer p retty\n14:56\nmuch the only difference will be how we travel long distance s you know i will fly in a plane that's\n15:04\nmore comfortable than than flying southwest airlines or something which i've got nothing against but \n15:10\nthat's the one real big difference and other than that i do what i like every day i hope you you'll do what you like\n15:15\nevery day to d o and i work with nice people i hope you work with nice people uh and that 's there's 24 hours in the day\n15:22\nand those are where the hours go so great wealth uh\n15:28\nis the tiniest bit different in a real sense than having just a\n15:34\ndecent a decent income and and to trade\n15:39\na d ecent income and something you love doing and something where you feel wor thwhile doing it\n15:45\nfor huge wealth where you trade off a lot of your principles would\n15:51\nbe a terrible mistake\nSuccess\n15:58\nwould you not acknowledge your success more on yourself or from the help and teachi ngs of others\n16:03\nwell i had i had i was very lucky in life uh if you tell me who your heroes are i\n16:10\ni will make a pretty good prediction about how what you're going to do and i i i had the right heroes i was ve ry\n16:17\nlucky in life and my heroes never let me down and started with my dad and then i had others in business and so\n16:24\ni have had great t eachers some formal teachers some that were just\n16:31\ninformal teachers teachers by instinct or example and if i hadn't had those\n16:37\nuh you know my life i'm sure would have been very different if i'd been born anyp lace else when i was i was born in\n16:43\n1930 uh and at the time\n16:48\ none out of 50 births in the world were in the united states so i came in against 50 to 1 odds against being born\n16:54\nin the united states i wou ld have i would have been a disaster you know if i'd been born in afghanis tan or\n17:00\nor peru or some place i mean i was i won i won the lottery the day i was born you know by being born in this country so\n17:06\nhave you uh i mean you you the odds were\n17:11\nprobably 40 to 1 against you b eing born in this country and that were five times more likely to have\n17 :16\nbeen born in in china six times and four or five times more likely yo u've been born in\n17:21\nin in india or some other place where it would n ot have been as easy to exploit the full potential of your\n17:28\ntalents so we've all won the lottery in that respect and and that's just plain lu ck i mean it uh\n17:34\nand i was lucky to be born at this time i mean cap ital allocation is something that pays off extremely\n17:40\nwell in the s ociety now but it doesn't pay off in other societies and it didn't pay off you know many years ago my\n17:46\nmy friend bill gates says that if i wa s been born a few thousand years ago i'd have been some animals lunch\n17: 51\nyou know i i can't run very fast and i can't climb trees and you know i just happen those are talents\n17:58\nnobody asked me to climb trees now but uh there was a time when it might have been important and\n18:03\ninc identally bill would have been some animals breakfast i mean he can't run so fast either but uh in any event uh\n18:10\nyou know we are lucky i mean just imagine being born a couple hundred years ago with exactly the same talents\n18:16\nand how far they would have taken you then you know the av erage person today lives so much better than\n18:21\nthe richest person li ved 100 or 150 years ago so uh i'm lucky in that respect lucky to be\n18:2 9\nborn of terrific parents i was lucky to be raised in omaha in a in a gr eat public\n18:35\nschool system i got a start here in the first eight gra des they gave me a foundation\n18:40\nthat later when i went off the track a few times uh carried me through because i had a terrific grade school e ducation\n18:47\nin right here in omaha rose hill and one of the reasons i had it incidentally is kind of\n18:52\nunfortunate but i had that great e ducation in part because women were being\n18:59\nenormously discriminated against and so a woman at that time could be a teacher she could be a\n19 :04\nsecretary she could be a nurse you know and that was about it so he h ad a half the talent pool in the united\n19:10\nstates limited to just a f ew jobs so you had an abundance of talent\n19:16\nuh in those activities l ike nursing or teaching because uh that talent with males was spread\n19:2 2\nacross every act every form of work activity there was but with women i t was concentrated in a few areas and that\n19:29\nthat benefited me it's kind of sad because it didn't benefit those teachers but but i was very lu cky and i've really\n19:35\nbeen that way all my life and what i do is wha t i do\n19:40\nis important as you know what a good teacher does or a good nurse does or something of the sort you know i think that's quite\n19:46\ nquestionable it pays off enormously well in a market economy like the uni ted states and\n19:51\nbut that's an accident didn't have anything to do w ith any innate ability of mine\nTechnology\n20:00\nmy name is marinatsed a nd i attend omaha central high school good for you fine institution now mr \n20:07\nbuffett technology has been a great factor in um stimulating the world economy\n20:12\nwhat are your predictions for the future of the tech nology industry and what what is its future role in\n20:19\nworld economy and the united states economy yeah well it's there's no question it's turn ing the world upside down it's\n20:25\nit's done done it somewhat already but it will you know it's just beginning but it's\n20:30\nmoving very fast i met gates on july 15 1991 i was out\n20:36\nthere for a fourth of july uh celebration with a friend and\n20:41\nuh who subsequently died in green field with the washington post and she took us down to visit the gates fam ily\n20:47\nand he tried to educate me about high tech and he had better l uck with chimpanzees\n20:53\ni mean i i was i was really a disaster but bu t he's a good teacher but one thing he he told me was that\n21:00\nat the time he said you know you've got this model in your head of the world and your model has\n21:08\ntime and distance as very limiting factors and he s aid they aren't limiting factors anymore he said you know\n21:14\nthe cost of talking to somebody around the world or getting your message in front of\n21:19\nsomebody or publishing is it's going to be zero and they're so close to zero it doesn't make any difference and\n21:25\nyou know that was revolutionary but it's happening already in a in a very very big way and it's just uh what eight\n21:32\nyears later and and it's it's exploding so \n21:38\nhigh-tech information technology whatever you want to call it is changing the world and it's going to\n21:45\nchange it in a very very big way it'll change i mean that's one of the things i think about in business es we buy\n21:50\nuh we announced the purchase uh yesterday of a uh furnit ure retailer in in in\n21:56\nboston in the boston area and you know i thi nk to myself what effect does this new world have in terms\n22:02\nof the internet on furniture retailing i mean you have to think about questions l ike that the changes will be huge i will i played\n22:08\nbridge yesterday uh with people uh all over the country but i played it with people all ov er the\n22:14\nworld i just sit down on my computer and i've got some popc orn there and i'm in khakis and a sweater and i i can have a bridge game i n 30 seconds\n22:20\nwith people all over the world and uh no cost to it b asically you know that's a lot different\n22:26\nthan trying to arrange a game with four people in omaha you know on a day when one guy wants to pla y golf another wants to watch baseball and i\n22:32\nmean it's it it just it changes things in huge way uh we are very fortunate i mean it's\n22:40\ nin the degree to which the united states leads the world in this area i m ean we have a lead it's\n22:46\nhard to think of who's in second place and 15 or so years ago this country had an inferiority complex it'd be hard f or\n22:53\nyou to remember because you weren't old enough to be around the m but in the in the early 80s we were wondering\n22:58\nwhether the german s and the japanese were going to own everything and that they were going t o make all the steel and they were going to make all\n23:03\nthe cars and everything else and the television sets and we were going to flip hamburge rs that was the standard line\n23:10\nand just imagine in a short period l ike 15 years how that's changed around in an important way that's changed\ n23:16\nbecause of this information uh a revolution uh\n23:22\nwhere we li ke i said i don't know who i don't know who you would name as being in sec ond place in the world but here's\n23:27\nthe most important industry in t he world and the united states has this incredible position and we're movi ng all\n23:33\nthe time with that position so i think that argues for a ve ry\n23:39\ni think it argues for a terrific future for the world over time and i think it argues even more for a terrific future for this company a\ n23:45\ncountry what are the best ways for youth to get started now in sec uring their financial\nFinancial Future\n23:52\nfuture for for what to sec ure their financial future\n23:57\nfor you youth oh well it's not it's not very complicated uh it goes back to getting full use out of\n24:06\nyour own talents first i mean the difference between whether you're going to be earning x or 2x or 3x\n24:11\na year uh 20 years from now uh is going to be a function of how well\n24:19\nnot how much talent you have but how how well you use the talents you already have and\n24:24\nuh so that is the y our best financial future is your own ability and and\n24:31\nand your uh a capacity to to use those abilities to their\n24:38\npotential and they c an't take that can't be taken away from you can't they can't even tax\n24: 43\nit i mean you know most things if if you wanna you know a piece of rea l estate if they\n24:49\ndouble the taxes they double the taxes and that c hanges your ownership in the property because now in effect the taxing aut horities own\n24:55\nmore of it because they've got a greater command on t he revenue stream uh the same thing about\n25:00\nalmost any asset you hav e but they they don't tax what's in your head\n25:06\nand they don't tax y our ability to start performing when you when you get to work in the morni ng\n25:12\nand finish in the evening to to your potential one of the thing s that amazes me is how\n25:18\npeople who really do perform well just sor t of jump out at you once you're running a business when i got out of scho ol\n25:24\ni thought you know everybody would behave that way but they don 't most people sort of go go through life in a sleep\n25:31\nwalk and and it if you don't you will stand out so the big the\n25:37\nbiggest thing fo r your financial future is yourself now beyond that it is always being ahe ad of the game rather than getting behind\n25:43\nthe game it's saving a l ittle no matter how you do it i mean i delivered papers i worked at pennie s i sold golf balls i had a pinball machine\n25:49\nround i did a lot of t hings that enabled me to accumulate about ten thousand dollars by the time i got out\n25:55\nof school uh ten thousand doesn't go as far now as it d id then but it\n26:00\nhaving anything so that you're ahead of the game an d not getting behind the game is enormously important i mean just you\n26: 07\nknow if you're gonna run a hundred hundred yard dash against a bunch o f people in life\n26:12\nif you can figure it out so that when the gun goe s off you're 10 or 15 yards ahead instead of 10 or 15 yards behind it's\n2 6:18\ngoing to make an enormous difference in how that race comes out so h aving having\n26:24\nsome net resources doesn't make much difference wheth er they're in stocks or bonds in my view but uh\n26:30\nand not having deb t when that gun goes off when you get out of school is a huge plus over be ing behind the\n26:37\ngame and uh you know it may come from delivering a paper out in the morning it may come\n26:43\nfrom part-time work someplace but but put aside a few dollars for yourself but uh\n26:49\nso that when the time comes and you enter you enter the workforce uh you're ahead\n26:5 4\nof the game and not behind and then once you get there don't get behind by buying a whole lot of things that you figure you're going to pay for s ome\n27:00\nday while you're paying 20 interest in between students if you could please say your\nEducation\n27:06\nname and school when you ask a q uestion hard for me to see anymore the microphone is but i can\n27:15\nmy name is patrick doherty and i'm from papillion la vista high school i was wondering with the increasing\n27:21\ncosts of education today what can st udents do to deal with their debts once they're out of college\n27:28\nwel l that's a tough one i mean i guess i'd pay it off as fast as i could and i would incur as little debt as\n27:34\nas possible in in before that time came and i would say\n27:40\nthis [Music] in my experience in business\n2 7:49\nthere is very little difference if any between a very high priced bu siness\n27:55\neducation and what's available a lot for a lot less money s o i i\n28:01\ni went to the university of nebraska at lincoln my last year in college i went to wharton for a couple years before\n28:07\nthat uh i learned just as much at the university of nebraska as i did at wharton at uh\n28:13\nand there's nothing against wharton i mean it's just me we had a very good school here i had some terrific professors at lincoln and so i i would not assume\n28:22\nthat if i was paying a few thousand dollars fo r an education uh here in the state for example versus\n28:28\npaying huge amounts elsewhere that it was going to make a lot of difference uh uh mos t of a lot of the education\n28:37\nuh and you need to be prodded in the r ight direction but an awful lot of it is is itself is self-taught uh\n28:4 4\ni mean andrew carnegie did a wonderful thing in this country in terms o f libraries and i used to spend a lot of time\n28:50\nat libraries i think i got locked in at the university of omaha one what was then the universi ty of omaha and they had i couldn't get out for hours and one\n28:56\nnigh t i got so entranced with what i was reading but it there's there's all ki nds of information available now with the\n29:03\ninternet it's so much yo u know easier than it was then so uh it's out there to be taken\n29:09\nan d it isn't necessary to pay 30 or 35 000 a year to go to some big name sch ool\n29:17\nto get the education at all i mean if you're going to learn ac counting if you're going which is probably the most important\n29:22\ncour se you'd take in business if you're going to learn account you can learn a ccounting absolutely as well in my view going to you and always going\n29: 29\nto to harvard i mean i see i i would i'd bet on that and\n29:35\nso i wouldn't run up huge bills in terms of getting a\n29:42\nbusiness educatio n now you know if you're going to get a medical education i mean there's c ertain professions where\n29:47\nthere may not be any way around spending a fair amount of money and getting in debt to some degree\n29:52\nyou've g ot to make that decision yourself but i'd certainly try to minimize it and uh and i would sort of i would have\n29:59\nit figured out how i would ha ndle that debt in say a five year period after i got out of\n30:05\nschool or i would think twice about incurring it there's a question up here if w e can bring a microphone\nYouth Advisory Council\n30:13\nuh my name is kyl e clark i'm here representing the omaha youth advisory council um what adv ice would you have for a\n30:19\nforming non-profit organization for formi ng a non-profit organization well i've always tried to avoid forming\n30:2 5\nnon-profit organizations but uh well that would that would depend\n30:3 1\nentirely on what i wanted to accomplish i mean it you know it'd be one day it was a hospital it could be another thing\n30:36\nuh you know there' s a there's so many types of it so i you know you've got to get people tha t\n30:42\nare that are experienced and involved uh in an entity like that and uh\n30:50\nbut it depends so much on the on the objective uh you're wo rking at uh\n30:58\nyeah i promised this young lady here microphone for a long time\nCivic Involvement\n31:05\nhi my name is kara harbert and i atte nd millard west high school and i understand that you're very civically in volved and i was wondering\n31:11\nhow important of a quality you think th at is for an individual in life and why yeah well i wouldn't say that i am that\n31:17\ni mean i i do certain civic things i think i think your your model as a citizen for example in omaha would be walter scott i mean he\n 31:24\nis far more civically involved than i am and uh incidentally his pr edecessor peter\n31:29\nkiewit was too but walters carried it to new heigh ts so i uh i don't want to take uh on any mantle\n31:36\nfor that myself i do some things uh one of the problems i have is i love\n31:42\nwhat i do so much that that it sort of takes over i mean i'm like a guy that likes t o play a lot of\n31:48\ngolf or something except i like i like the busines s i'm in but uh i've got a family that\n31:53\nparticipates very actively uh some of my children work on almost\n31:59\nanything that comes along in the civic area and you know it's you do in the end people\n32:05\ndo what they want to do to quite a degree and and uh i think\n32:10\ni've never t alked to anybody that that enjoyed working in civic activities that\n32:16 \ndidn't feel was very worthwhile after they've done it i mean they built something and participating in building something is\n32:21\nalways a lot of fun and and actually you have a good time we have this golf tournament for example in\n32:26\nseptember and we raise some money for something but everybody has a good time so nobody's paying any price\n32:31\nby doing i t i'm having a good time the people who come are having a good time and uh we get to show em all off to\n32:37\npeople but you should be enjoying th ings that go along and you will if you work in\n32:42\ncivic activities th at that that interest you and you can do the same thing in politics i mean that\n32:48\nuh you know if you if you get if you find political ideas\n3 2:56\nor politicians who particularly uh you identify when turning on you can get\n33:01\na lot of self satisfaction out of out of working and you'r e doing something worthwhile so i\n33:06\njust just follow your instincts on that that'd be my recommendation\n33:17\n[Music] hi my name is jeremy g raham from millard south high school\nEconomic Problems\n33:24\nwe're prob ably the i guess the elite youth of today and i've questioned\n33:29\nwhat do you see as the problem the biggest economic problem facing the youth o f today going into the future\n33:37\nyeah i i don't think you that you're going to have enormous economic\n33:42\nproblems i think you will live in a society where the average person lives better\n33:50\nby a significant margin than the average one of a generation earlier or two generations ear lier that's been the\n33:56\nhistory of this country it's a marvelous coun try that way i mean it when you think of it we have four and a half percen t of the world's\n34:01\npopulation you know and and what's been accomplis hed here is incredible 53\n34:07\npercent of the of the value of corporati ons that are publicly traded in the world exist in\n34:13\nthe united stat es with four and a half percent of the population this country always has done well uh\n34:19\nthey say in stocks that you should buy stock in a bus iness that's so good that even an idiot can run it\n34:25\nbecause sooner or later one will and and that's not terrible advice well that seems to ha ve been sort of the\n34:30\nhistory of this country from time to time i me an we've had all these problems that have come\n34:35\nalong if you look b ack in the last hundred years and list all the problems those countries ru n into you know you make a very long list and a\n34:41\nlot of people who focused on those problems at the time have missed the bigger picture and t he bigger picture is that every generation\n34:48\nlives better than the o ne before and that's because of uh that's because of\n34:53\nsavings becau se savings enable people to create new tools to do better things as they g o\n34:58\nalong and it's also due to an environment that lets people reali ze their potential to a greater\n35:05\ndegree than most other environment s in the world it's far from perfect i mean it's it's sad how far it is fr om perfect\n35:12\nbut it is better than anything else around i mean in th is country uh you've got you don't\n35:18\nhave some commissar or somethin g running a you know a big business in this country you've got a guy like jack welch\n35:24\nand a fellow like jack welch makes a difference of nigh t and day in terms of the productivity of that\n35:31\nbusiness over a per iod of decades and productivity is what a is what causes the standard of l iving to rise so\n35:37\nanything that a system that throws up the jack we lch's of the world to run businesses is going to have an enormous advantag e\n35:44\nover a society that does it by heredity or that does it by gover nment edict and\n35:49\nwe've got we're closer to that society that i've d escribed than than anything than any other country and\n35:56\nit's it's l ed due to great things and it will continue to lead to great things so i t hink i think you've got the best future uh\n36:03\nyou know you don't face you don't face a war and you've gotta you you've got a a great\n36:09\nuh you've got a better uh future in terms of uh\n36:16\nachieving material r ewards than any generation in history so i wish i could trade you places i might\n36:24\nget taken up on that by a few of you though\n36:37\n[Music] hi i'm ryan wilkins from millard west high school and um i was wondering if you or if you\nY2K\n36:45\ncould uh speak for mr gates were afraid of t he impact of y2k on the economy or\n36:51\nspecifically the stock market y eah well i'm i'm i'm glad you gave me a chance to bring in other people be cause i\n36:56\ni'm the last guy in the world understanding about y2ki you know i don't know why this microphone's working i don't know you\n37:01\n know why likes go on or i i flip on the switch of my television set and pr ay i mean it's all it's all beyond me but i would\n37:09\nsay this the sma rtest people i know in that area uh in large part\n37:14\nthink it's going to be a non-event at uh uh in this country i don't i can't speak\n37:20\n for the rest of the world but uh so i think uh i think you'll wake up on\n 37:26\njanuary first and find the world hasn't changed from december 31st now i would say this you might you might\n37:32\nget a whole bunch of frie nds to write your checks for a billion dollars on december 31st and deposi t them and you know who knows what'll happen can't\n37:38\nlose anything i mean i like to just bounce and if the system gets followed up you know yo u you might find a lot of money in\n37:44\nyour account but i wouldn't cou nt on it there wait we have a we own a company called executive jet\n37:50 \nwe have about 14 or 1500 uh customers who own pieces of airplanes with u s and we so we've got a hundred and\n37:57\nwell we got 160 of their plane s and some of our own flying around it'll be very interesting to me to see \n38:02\nwhat the advance people let us know ahead of time when they want to use it it'll be very interesting to see how many sign up\n38:09\nfor ja nuary 1st at 1201 but it'll uh i it wouldn't bother\n38:14\nme to fly him in the least on january 1st or do anything else on january 1st\n38:21\nide ally i hope the getting prepared to watch the huskers play in the big game \nGood Economics\n38:29\ni'm jamie solis from twin valley and i was wonder ing how do you decide what you'd invest your time and money in\n38:36\nyea h well i i i like to find businesses that have good economics now\n38:42\n what what are good economics well good economics are a business that has s ome kind of a moat around it that\n38:49\nmakes its product or its service or its location or something a little more desirable than to the\n38:55\n customer than any other sort of comparable product uh you know the number one candy bar in\n39:01\nthe last 30 or 40 years has been snickers people don't fool around with different candy bars they fool around with\n39:07\n different length dresses they fool around you know with all kinds of thing s but they don't fool around with candy bars\n39:13\nbecause they figure y ou know they're going to go in and lay out 50 cents or whatever it is and put it in their mouth and they're not going to for 50 cents\n39:19\nand pu tting in your mouth i mean you're not going to say i'll i'll put in i'll l ay out 45 cents and put something else in my mouth so\n39:25\nyou find tha t very stable and we like businesses that we think we can figure out where \n39:31\nthey're going to be in 10 or 15 years i don't know where the info rmation technology businesses are going to be in 10 or 15 years i know whe re snickers\n39:37\nbars are going to be in 10 or 15 years they're going t o be selling just about you know the way they do now i know where wrigley' s gum is going to be in 10\n39:42\nor 15 years p there's not going to be a lot of innovation in in in chewing gum\n39:48\nuh the and people the inte rnet's not going to cause people to quit chewing gum either i mean at leas t i mean gates may think so but i don't\n39:53\nthink so but uh it's it's predictability\n40:00\nregarding the sustainability of a competitive advan tage some something special about a product so we look for those kind of p roducts\n40:07\nand then we look for people that are running the business that are honest and able\n40:12\nand you know that's it's easier to find p eople that are honest and able than it is to find\n40:19\nbusinesses that are going to stay wonderful for a long period of time they're a lot of bus iness that looked\n40:24\nlike they were going to stay wonderful but reall y evaporated over time but that's what we're looking for and\n40:30\nthe n ice thing about is we don't have to find very many if we find one a year t hat's terrific\n40:35\nyou know because you don't you don't need a hundred or a thousand great investment ideas to do well\n40:41\nyou need a couple and uh if we the discipline is the most important\n40:47\nthing we don't need brain power we need discipline that uh you don't need 150 iq to do wh at i do\n40:53\nthank god you know you don't need 140 you know 835 you may need 115 or\n40:59\nsomething like that and and but you do need disciplin e you have to wait\n41:04\nuntil you see the fat pitch to swing at because investing is a no-call strike game you\n41:10\nknow if i were a baseball player and i only like pitches two inches above my navel\n41:15\nyou know some guy could learn that and he could pitch me you know three or four inc hes below that i get called out on strikes because i\n41:21\nnever find a pitch i like you can get call out on strikes in baseball you have to you h ave to swing at pitches\n41:27\nthat you you don't even necessarily like p articularly after the count gets to two strikes in business\n41:34\nyou do n't have to swing at anything you can sit there and the paper says general motors at 68 or it says general electric\n41:39\non 115 or says general d ynamics at 63. and if you don't like those prices you\n41:44\ndon't have t o swing you can wait there day after day after day after day and there are no called strikes now\n41:50\nwhen you swing when you decide to buy somet hing then you know if you swing and miss it's a strike but\n41:56\nit's a marvelous game to be in because there are no called strikes and you can si mply wait for that one time in a month or six\n42:04\nmonths or a year or two or three years when you really know what you're doing where you like t he price or you like the people running the\n42:10\nbusiness and then you swing and you only need a few swings in your lifetime so that's the way we try to pick\n42:15\nbusinesses we try to stay with things we understand i mean there can be all kinds of\n42:20\nwonderful investment opportunities out there that i don't understand i don't know what cocoa beans are going to do next\n42:26\nyear you know maybe you know but i don't know i i don' t know what i don't know what uh crude oil is going to solve for\n42:31\nb ut i don't have to know i just have to know the things i have to know what i know i\n42:37\nhave to know where the limits of my understanding are wh at i call what my circle of confidence is and if\n42:45\ni'm only able to evaluate five percent of the businesses in the world no problem i just sta y within that five percent and\n42:51\ntry and find something uh and that' s most people get in trouble because in investments because they uh well t hey\nDiscipline\n42:59\nget itchy you know they can't discipline themselve s and they hear about other people making money nothing upsets people so m uch as\n43:04\nto hear about their friends making money i mean it's that t hat's very destructive to discipline because they think\n43:09\ni'm smarte r than that guy next door and he just just bought that new car with the mo ney made trading stocks on the internet so why can't i\n43:15\nwell the an swer is you can't over time you will lose money if you trade stocks active ly and uh it's it's hard to exercise the\n43:23\ndiscipline but anytime yo u buy something you should be able to take out a\n43:28\none-page sheet of paper and say i'm buying general motors it's 65 i'm buying general electr ic 150\n43:35\nbecause and you should write down the reasons if you can't if you can't fill out the sheet\n43:41\nif it's because somebody told me a bout it at a cocktail party last night that's not good enough if it's beca use my broker told me about\n43:46\nit that's not good enough you know it' s uh you've got to have a reason\n43:51\nfor thinking that it makes an int elligent investment you do the same thing if you're buying a farm or an ap artment house if you're buying a farm\n43:57\nyou'd say i'm buying this fa rm with a thousand dollars an acre because i think i can earn sixty dollar s an acre on it\n44:02\nif corn sells it such and such and soybean cells a nd such and such and yield as such and such and you'd\n44:07\nfigure it ou t that's the same reason you buy businesses and when you buy stocks you're buying a little piece of a\n44:13\nbusiness and that's probably the most important thing to remember in in investing is that when you're buying a s tock you're buying\n44:19\na little piece of the business and if you are b uying it at an attractive price for the business for the whole business\n4 4:25\nyou're gonna make money and if you aren't you know over time you won 't make money\nMoral Standards\n44:34\nhi my name is cliff mcavoy from elk horn mount michael um reverend jackson jesse jackson talked to us earlier\ n44:40\nhe seemed to believe that the moral standards of today's society w ill eventually affect us in business\n44:45\nhow do you feel this will aff ect us as youth growing up in the united states he said the moral standard s will affect us how like moral decay\n44:53\nin society today will affect us in business by how we feel and how we interact with other people\n44:5 8\nwell i think very difficult to quantify moral standards over time i\n45 :05\nmean that you know you could you could pick out huge weaknesses at an y given time in\n45:11\nterms of how people or the country is behaving and and and huge strengths so i think it's\n45:17\nenormously difficult to qu antify i think by and large we have made progress in\n45:23\nwhat i would call institutionalized moral standards in this country i mean the the the uh you know in terms\n45:31\nof slavery in terms of the uh in terms of i m ean the women women couldn't vote you know a century ago\n45:38\nuh they w ere half the country were second class citizens in that respect in a barri er\n45:43\nand they had much lesser rights in terms of inheritance and all kinds of things\n45:49\nthe income tax didn't exist a hundred years ago s o the\n45:55\nidea of taxing people according to to how much that they ben efited from\n46:00\nsociety and their income uh didn't exist so i think in terms of institutionalized\n46:06\nmoral standards the country has made r eally quite significant progress uh in\n46:13\nthe in the last hundred yea rs i think you know there's an enormous distance to go i think we're going in the right direction\n46:18\nmaybe by fits and starts but i think we're going in the right direction and i think that uh\n46:24\nuh you know it w ill be a it will be a significant plus to\n46:29\neverybody in this room i f they live in a more moral society 40 years from now than a less moral bu t i think the odds\n46:35\nare that they will i think the country moves in that direction very difficult to do it all kinds of interests that work a gainst\n46:41\nit but in the end i think the american people want it and\n 46:47\nyou saw it in civil rights i mean it took television to dramatize w hat was going on and people that weren't near it\n46:53\npreferred not to think about it but it got through to the conscience of the american people \n46:59\nand a lot of progress has been made there and there's a lot left to be made but there it's better than it was and the pace may\n47:07\nseem very slow to those people involved and i can understand that uh the pace you know for\n47:13\nwomen's suffrage i mean that went for decades and dec ades and decades a woman couldn't be on a jury i was\n47:19\nreading the t rial of clarence darrell which took place in california about 19 i don't k now 10 or 11\n47:26\nyou know there were no women on the jury the woman wa sn't allowed to be on a jury they weren't citizens in that sense so\n47:32 \nit's the moral behavior of the country has in my view\n47:38\nimproved b ut it uh you know and it'll continue to improve and i hope you all in this room do your part to\n47:44\nhelp it improve\n47:52\nhi i'm nick george f rom uh central high and uh i was wondering how uh since the stock\n47:59\n market's so high right now if it'd be smart for us to get to get involved now or to wait till\n48:05\nuntil it goes down a little or what yeah i can 't tell you whether or not to buy stocks now generally\n48:11\ni think it' s important that you save money you know and whether whether you put in th e stock market\n48:18\ni don't think is terribly important i think if you' re interested in stocks you should you should buy it you know\n48:24\nand you've got a little capital you should buy a few i mean i don't think ther e's any way of learning about them better than experiencing doing it on\n4 8:30\npaper isn't the same i can guarantee you if you lose money on paper or lose real money it's a different experience and uh uh\n48:38\nand so i i think there i think you'll learn more about yourself uh if you do it tha t way i bought my\n48:45\nfirst stock when i was 11. i was actually i was at rose hill at the time and i bought three shares of city service preferr ed\n48:52\nat uh 38 and it went down to 27 which is something i still reme mber even though i\n48:58\nwas 11 at the time uh and then it went up to 40 and i sold it i made five bucks on my three shares after commissions and\ n49:04\nthen it went to 200 and something so uh you know i i probably reme mber that a little better than if i'd been doing it\n49:10\non paper you k now and i fooled around doing a lot of things between about age 11\n49:16\ nand 19 in the stock market i did charts i did all kinds of technical anal ysis i read every book i\n49:21\ncould get on the subject and i didn't do that well i didn't do terrible but but i did i was really just\n49:28\nflo undering around but by that meant by the age of 19 when i read\n49:33\nben graham's book i was at the university of nebraska in lincoln i went and b ought this book called the intelligent investor just come out\n49:39\nand it had an enormous impact on me now if i hadn't done in the previous eight years if i hadn't\n49:45\nbeen all over the lot i'm not so sure that that book would have had the same impact on me i mean i was by that time i was prepared\n49:51\nto read ben graham's book which changed my life financia lly in an incredible way i mean uh\n49:59\ni wouldn't be up here today if i had read that book but yeah part of life is getting prepared\n50:05\nso that when something does happen that's significant you can grasp the signi ficance of it and\n50:12\nknow what to do with it and i would say that fir st eight years of fooling around even though it produced nothing\n50:17\nf inancially to speak of uh produced a lot in terms of getting my mind prepa red\n50:23\nfor when i really did read something that made sense so i was ready to accept it and i actually went back and went to\n50:29\ncolumbia t o study under the under graham and because of of reading that book and all \n50:36\nkinds of things flowed out of it so i would encourage you if you' re interested in the field\n50:42\nuh to to do a few things i still try an d make\n50:47\nit as intelligent as possible i would try to stick with thi ngs businesses i thought i understood i'd still get out that sheet of pape r\n50:54\nand i'd write i'm doing this because and just test my reasoning then i go back and read it a year later and\n51:00\nand see whether what y ou thought would be true turned out to be true so i would always check mys elf i believe\n51:05\nin grading myself on everything you know doctors hav e post mortems and they they do it because they learn\n51:11\nfrom postmor tems and business people don't like to do postmortems when i'm i'm i can b e on the board of a company\n51:17\nand they get about owners building pla nts or buying companies and they never wanted two years later to\n51:23\nr un a check on how that decision turned out because it it can be unpleasant uh but you learn\n51:29\nfrom postmortems and you don't want to learn it' s way better learn from other people's mistakes than your own but you got to\n51:35\nlearn from a few of your own too and the time to do it is when you're young\n51:41\nwe can do maybe one more and then we wrap this up at one dewey or maybe maybe two more\n51:48\nmy name is pete walsh i'm from c reighton prep and my question is to what extent do you\n51:54\nfeel that t he government with the the current policies of welfare and social security \n51:59\nis it financially competent and fiscally prepared for the future well\n52:06\ni i think that the country as a whole is quite quite well pre pared for the\n52:12\nfuture that doesn't mean that adopt would adopt ever y policy they have but but\n52:18\nuh i think a we have an enormously rich society enormously rich society and it'll get\n52:24\nricher everyone isn 't going to participate in that some will won't participate because\n52:29 \nof physical disabilities others because of mental disabilities other bec ause of shortcomings in the education they\n52:35\nreceived when they were growing up all kinds of reasons we have a prosperous enough society to\n5 2:41\nbe able to take care of of those people and we should take care of t hem and how we do it\n52:46\nso that they feel most useful in life and how we do it so that we continue to encourage people to be more productive th emselves and all that\n52:52\ni mean those are not easy questions but but that shouldn't take our eye off the ball of\n52:58\nfeeling we should do s omething about it that um i often i i pose this problem\n53:03\nsometimes to people i say let's assume that it's 24 hours before you're born and all of you can take this test 24\n53:09\nhours before you're born and a genie comes to you and the genie\n53:15\nsays what was your name again out ther e whatever\n53:20\nwe'll call you joe and the genie says joe says you look pretty promising to me i\n53:26\nthink you've got kind of a sense of fair play and and a good mind and so i'm going to let you have an\n53:32\nextr aordinary opportunity i'm going to let you design the world\n53:37\ninto w hich you're going to be born in 24 hours it's yours you pick out the polit ical\n53:43\nrules you pick out the economic rules you pick out the social rules you design the world and when you're\n53:50\nborn in 24 hours you'r e going to be born into that world and that's the world that's going to\n5 3:55\nexist for your lifetime for your children's lifetime for your grandc hildren's lifetime\n54:01\nand you having heard of some of these genie jok es in the past would say what's the catch the genie says well\n54:07\nit's a very slight catch i said when when you're born in 24 hours\n54:12\nyou' re going to emerge in this world you designed but what you don't know is w hether\n54:18\nyou're going to be born black or white male or female\n54:2 3\nrich or poor brighter able-bodied or infirm in the united\n54:29\nstate s or afghanistan all you know is that you're going to reach into this\n54: 36\nbarrel which now has six billion balls as we know representing one per son every person in the world and you're\n54:42\ngoing to participate in w hat i call the ovarian lottery you're going to take one ball out of that b arrel and you're never going to\n54:47\nget another ball that's you you're going to get one ball and now you're going to emerge now what kind of\n54 :52\nrules do you want to have for that society not knowing which ball you 're going to get\n54:59\nnow that i put to you is the way i think people s hould think about social policy and if you're born if\n55:05\nyou're lucky enough to be born in this country you've won the lottery already but we s hould have a system in my view\n55:12\nthat encourages the jack welch's an d the bill gates and all of that to work far beyond the time when it has a ny\n55:18\neconomic significance to them we want people commanding those r esources who are extremely able to command them that's\n55:24\nhow that's how the standard of living moves forward so we should want you know we sho uld want tom osborne\n55:30\ncoaching in nebraska we should want we should want bill gates designing software and we don't want to mix up those two\ n55:36\nwe don't want to we don't we don't want to get bill coaching in ne braska uh so you want you want people you want\n55:42\na system that direc ts gets people to their potential and and puts them\n55:47\nin the positio n where they can do the most good for society but you also want a system f or the people get the wrong ball i mean\n55:53\nsomebody's going to get th e ball you know that says 80 iq somebody's going to get the ball\n55:58\nt hat says this disease or that disease early in life that cripples them and we've got a rich enough society\n56:05\nthat we can we can take care of t hose people and i think that to get back to your question i think\n56:10\n that this society will move more and more in that direction it has the cap ability of moving more and more in\n56:15\nthat direction as our resources and our output increases and i think that\n56:21\nit has the will to do t hat in a general way although like i say there have always been lots of hi ts and starts so there is no shortage in the united\n56:29\nstates of reso urces there's no shortage of output you have to have a system that\n56:35\ nencourages people to behave to the limit of their abilities and puts them in the right\n56:41\nplace but then you have to make sure that everybody gets taken care of too now we can do one more and then we will\n56:47\nbre ak thing i'll let the fellow with the microphone and woman here make the d ecision\n56:56\nhi my name is ben gold i go to bruno talbot and i wanted t o know how do you think the media affects the world economically today\n57 :04\nwell it's a small question [Music] well what it obviously does simply \n57:10\nbecause it's it's moved so far technologically as it's brought it together in a big way i\n57:16\nmean i was over in china a few years ago and i was right after the time of the women's conference in in in beijing and i was reading\n57:24\nthe chinese coverage uh of that conference and o f course it it\n57:30\nhad nothing to do with what was taking place but th e internet was coming in and and you know you can you can access\n57:38\nt he washington post or the new york times or i get the washington post at 9 30 here at night\n57:43\nin effect i never could get it the next day on o n through through uh physical delivery\n57:48\nbut i buy electronic delive ry i can read it uh you know probably earlier than most of people in washi ngton are reading it\n57:54\nso the ability to communicate and the degree to which the world can\n58:00\nhave awareness of what's going on every pla ce in the world it's just you know it's been a quantum leap\n58:07\nyou kn ow that will have there are a lot of things that come out of that and uh n et they're a plus over time but\n58:14\nthe they i mean they the the abili ty of information to be available to everyone worldwide almost\n58:21\nins tant instantaneously it's it's it's a can be huge advances in things like medicine\n58:26\nfor example just to pick one uh so it it's a net plus it has a it has a big\n58:34\neffect and the definition of media has now been expanded\n58:40\nenormously i mean there were three television networks i n in the 19 and you know in the early\n58:45\n1960s and that was it there were three highways information traveled electronically and if the three p ieces\n58:52\nof information where i love lucy you know something else and something else those were the three choices of information or\n58:57\nent ertainment that you had for tens and tens of millions of people sitting th ere looking at a tube\n59:02\nnow it's unlimited and that's only what thre e or so decades so it's just exploded and it'll continue to\n59:08\nexplod e and net i think it's a plus and i think it's one o'clock i want to thank you all i i wish you\n59:14\nwell you're gonna do terrific thanks [Applau se]\n59:29\nthank you\n\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n POST URL\n\n https://aalbc.com/ tc/topic/12375-do-you-think-black-parents-black-one-percent-need-to-invest -in-schrumpts/\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n PRIOR EDITION\n\n\n\n https://aalbc.com/ tc/events/event/632-economic-corner-31-01222026/\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n NEXT E DITION\n\n https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/637-economic-corner-33-012920 26/\n\n\n\n  \n\n DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20260128 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR