Warren Buffet's Humble Life
And the myth of the common man billionaire.
A few facts you probably know about Warren Buffet from the myriad of puff pieces on him: With a net worth of one hundred and twenty billion dollars, he is the fifth richest man in the world. He visits McDonalds on his drive to his office every morning. He still lives in the same modest suburban Omaha house that he bought in 1958.
If you are to believe these ridiculous media narratives, it would seem miraculous then that nobody has jimmied the fifty-dollar Home Depot lock on Buffet’s front door, or staked out his route to the local Micky D’s, kidnapped him, and held him hostage for a billion-dollar ransom.
I am not advocating for this to happen. I am just curious how a man whose net worth is more than the GDP of most countries can tool around Omaha with this sort of anonymity, free of a security detail of ex-CIA ops strapped with oozies and cyanide darts.
I’m merely pointing out that many aspects of the mainstream media narrative surrounding Buffet’s average joe midwestern life of hotdishes and his favorite pair of slippers is implausible and would mean that this famously down-to-earth man is actually quite reckless with his own safety and very, very lucky.
I mean, would you feel comfortable pulling into a dark parking lot and walking to the front door of The Cheesecake Factory if you had enough money to install a Senator?
Take a look at this photo of Buffet’s house from a Today profile, showing exactly where he lives. That’s someone standing on the street and peering into his window taking a photo. There’s no gate. Mario Lopez’s house probably has a gate for Christ’s sake. No armed guard. No dogs.
I find it strange that zero international terrorists have ever set foot in Omaha and ascertained where he lives by charming the information out a local coffee shop waitress.
In fact, they wouldn’t even have to be that. They could just google it. His address is 310 S. 55th St. Omaha, Nebraska.
I can see a few scenarios here, but none simplistic enough to back up the media profiles of Buffet’s everyman lifestyle.
The first hinges on the assumption that the community of people with the ability to successfully pull off an abduction and ransom heist is insular, and that they share some inside information, including that Buffet suffers from a psychiatric condition, making him obsessively frugal, his fridge is filled with fast food condiment packages, his curtain smell like the elderly, and there is nothing of value inside of his home.
Complicating matters, Buffet has access to some proprietary technology involving encrypted retinal scanners and he has instituted a self-imposed inability to access his own funds, so he is essentially immune to being held for ransom because his financial situation for all intents and purposes is that of a college freshman who forgets his debit card at a bar on a Friday night and is now, although he has money somewhere, in theory, he is a bum until further notice.
It seems much more likely though, given Buffet’s continued business dealings, that he has thought about the target that having more money than two-hundred and fifty million poor Americans combined has put on his back, that his windows are bulletproof, that a few Navy SEALS live in rotation in his attic, and that his house is monitored by satellite and if you are delivering a pizza to the next house over and knock on his door by mistake, you have a fifty percent chance of survival.
My point is that there is nothing normal about being a billionaire, yet the legacy media seems to be on a mission to normalize it, as if any of us can get there through hard work.
We can’t, and for that reason a lot of people are angry about the tax structure, and therefore if you have a hundred billion dollars you have lost your privileges to drive to McDonald’s without being followed by either a kidnapper or a security detail.
If you’re going to publish obvious nonsense, at least do your job, be objective, and show the other side of it.