Warren Buffet on Choosing a Career, the Relative Value of Wealth, and Social Security

Asked at 11:00 how he would advise people that aren’t necessarily going into high paying fields Buffet recommends people do what they love. He makes a few notable observations:

• A market system does not pay as well in some activities as might seem appropriate given the value of those activities to society
• Many people make a fundamental choice between doing something they love or doing something to make money
• He can’t recall speaking with someone who spent their whole life doing something they loved and wished in old age they’d made more money instead
• The day-to-day reality of how he lives his life really isn’t that different from how most people in the United States live, except for the notable example of traveling by private jet (listen to him explain it because he’s more convincing on this point that I expected)

Asked about Welfare and Social Security at 51:51 (2nd to last question), Buffet challenges the students to think of the world as a lottery they’re born into and to think about what rules it might be worth having in place to take care of the people who draw an unlucky ticket.

Watch the full lecture and Q&A on YouTube