Day with a Difference - Dec 19, 2006

Today's Inspirational Quote:

The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.- Pearl S. Buck

Warren Edward Buffett (b. August 30, 1930, Omaha, Nebraska) is an American investor, businessman and philanthropist.

Nicknamed the "Oracle of Omaha" or the "Sage of Omaha", Buffett has amassed an enormous fortune from astute investments, particularly through the company Berkshire Hathaway, of which he is the largest shareholder and CEO. With an estimated current net worth of around US$46 billion, he is ranked by Forbes as the second-richest person in the world, behind only Microsoft chairman Bill Gates.

In June 2006, he made a commitment to give away his fortune to charity, with 85% of it going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation ([3]). Buffett's donation was the largest act of charitable giving in United States history ([4]).

Despite his immense wealth, Buffett is famous for his unpretentious and frugal lifestyle. His children will not inherit a significant proportion of his wealth. The following two quotations from 1995 and 1988, respectively, highlight Warren Buffett's thoughts on his wealth and why he long planned to reallocate it:

"I personally think that society is responsible for a very significant percentage of what I've earned. If you stick me down in the middle of Bangladesh or Peru or someplace, you find out how much this talent is going to produce in the wrong kind of soil... I work in a market system that happens to reward what I do very well - disproportionately well. Mike Tyson, too. If you can knock a guy out in 10 seconds and earn $10 million for it, this world will pay a lot for that. If you can bat .360, this world will pay a lot for that. If you're a marvelous teacher, this world won't pay a lot for it. If you are a terrific nurse, this world will not pay a lot for it. Now, am I going to try to come up with some comparable worth system that somehow (re)distributes that. No, I don't think you can do that. But I do think that when you're treated enormously well by this market system, where in effect the market system showers the ability to buy goods and services on you because of some peculiar talent - maybe your adenoids are a certain way, so you can sing and everybody will pay you enormous sums to be on television or whatever -I think society has a big claim on that." (Lowe 1997:164-165)

"I don't have a problem with guilt about money. The way I see it is that my money represents an enormous number of claim checks on society. It's like I have these little pieces of paper that I can turn into consumption. If I wanted to, I could hire 10,000 people to do nothing but paint my picture every day for the rest of my life. And the GNP would go up. But the utility of the product would be zilch, and I would be keeping those 10,000 people from doing AIDS research, or teaching, or nursing. I don't do that though. I don't use very many of those claim checks. There's nothing material I want very much. And I'm going to give virtually all of those claim checks to charity when my wife and I die."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett

Expand your knowledge base

What does each word in each group have in common?

Group A

A baby
A cow
A shoe

Group B

A duck
A restaurant goer
Congress

Group C

A river
A cave
A face























Answer

Group A- a tongue
Group B- a bill
Group C- a mouth

Have a memorable day!
Priya