Is Warren Buffett reading my blog? Buffett's letter to his shareholders.

Buffett says, probably a lot more succinctly, what I was posting on yesterday in his annual letter to his shareholders, which I lucked on by way of the New York Times.

So what does the Oracle of Omaha allow?

It’s an election year, and candidates can’t stop speaking about our country’s problems (which, of course, only they can solve). As a result of this negative drumbeat, many Americans now believe that their children will not live as well as they themselves do.

That view is dead wrong: The babies being born in America today are the luckiest crop in history.

American GDP per capita is now about $56,000. As I mentioned last year that –in real terms –is a staggering six times the amount in 1930, the year I was born, a leap far beyond the wildest dreams of my parents or their contemporaries. U.S. citizens are not intrinsically more intelligent today, nor do they work harder than did Americans in 1930. Rather, they work far more efficiently and thereby produce far more. This all-powerful trend is certain to continue: America’s economic magic remains alive and well.

And he goes on:

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.

Though the pie to be shared by the next generation will be far larger than today’s, how it will be divided will remain fiercely contentious. Just as is now the case, there will be struggles for the increased output of goods and services between those people in their productive years and retirees, between the healthy and the infirm, between the inheritors and the Horatio Algers, between investors and workers and, in particular, between those with talents that are valued highly by the marketplace and the equally decent hard-working Americans who lack the skills the market prizes. Clashes of that sort have forever been with us – and will forever continue. Congress will be the battlefield; money and votes will be the weapons. Lobbying will remain a growth industry.

This really touches on the matter of economics, political rage, and perceptions that I touched on yesterday.   And whatever a persons feelings or perceptions are on any of these, Buffett, who is long lived and very experienced, can't easily be dismissed..  I think the reasons for the perceptions are explained below in my post, but the anger out in the voting booth this year can't be disregarded either.  Someone has famously said the medium is the message, but either the messages both ways are confused, or our a general condition that is causing upset isn't generally understood.

From the focus of the blog, however, what Buffet notes is a very real phenomenon.  And just as pointed out below, for the many Americans who have no experience with the world as far back as Buffett, the perceptions about history and current affairs, and even the current state of the culture in relation to past cultures, aren't necessarily easily understood or appreciated.