2016: What are the risks to Berkshire if Trump wins?

ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: Thank you, Warren. This from a shareholder who asked to remain anonymous.

“If Donald Trump becomes the president of the United States, and recognizing your public criticism of him and your public support for Hillary Clinton, what specific risks, regulatory, policy, or otherwise, do you foresee for Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio of businesses?

WARREN BUFFETT: That won’t be the main problem. (Laughter and applause)

Well. Government, you know, is a very big factor in our business and in all businesses. I mean, there’s the very broad policies that affect practically everybody, and sometimes there can be some pretty specific policies.

But, I will predict that if Don — either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton becomes president — and one of them is likely to be — very likely to be — I think Berkshire will continue to do fine.

Charlie?

CHARLIE MUNGER: I’m afraid to get into this area. (Laughter)

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. We’ve operated under all — I mean, we’ve operated under price controls. I mean, there —

We’ve had 52 percent federal taxes applied to our earnings for many years. Even high — I mean, they were higher at other times — but there — you know, we’ve had regulations come along and, in the end, business in this country has done extraordinarily well for a couple of hundred years, and it was adapted to the society and the society has adapted to business.

This is a remarkably attractive place in which to conduct a business. Imagine, in a world of practically zero interest rates, you know, American business earning terrific returns on tangible cap — equity. I mean, those are the assets that were actually employed in the business. The numbers are staggering.

And, you know, people who have had their money in savings accounts or something like that get destroyed.

But owners of business, if you look at returns on tangible equity, just check them out some time, and they have not suffered even as people who own fixed-interest — fixed-income — instruments have suffered enormously.

And, you know, farm prices are down now. Farmer income has fallen off a lot in the last couple of years.

But business has managed to take care of itself. And for a good reason, because it contributes to, and has been the engine of, our market economy that’s delivered output that is staggering by the imagination of anyone that might have existed 100 years ago.

In my lifetime, the GDP per capita, in real terms, of the United States, has gone up six-for-one. Can you imagine a society where in one person’s lifetime, overall, people have six times the real output that they had at the beginning.

It’s — you know, the system works very well in terms of aggregate output. In terms of distribution of that output, sometimes it can fall very short, in my view. But, it’ll keep working. You don’t have to worry about that.

Twenty years from now, they’ll be far more output per capita in the United States, in real terms, than there is now. In 50 years, it will be far more. It’ll — and the quality will get better.

And no presidential candidate or president is going to end that. They can shape it in ways that are good or bad, but they can’t end it.

Now Charlie, give something pessimistic here to balance me out.

CHARLIE MUNGER: No, I want to say something optimistic.

I think that the GDP figures greatly understate the real advantage that our system has given our citizens. It underweighs a lot of huge achievements because they don’t translate right into money in a certain way that the economists can easily handle.

But the real achievements over the last century, say, are way higher than are indicated by the GDP figures, and the GDP figures are good.

I don’t think the future is necessarily going to be quite as a good as the past. But it doesn’t have to be.

WARREN BUFFETT: There’s no one you’ll run into, at least in my experience, that says, “With my same talents, I wish I’d lived 50 years ago instead.” Born 50 years earlier.

But a majority of the American public thinks that it’s a bad time to be born today compared to when they were born. They think their children will not — they’re wrong. I mean, it’s — the pace of innovation — just think how different you’re living compared to 20 years ago, in terms of what you do with your time.

Now, a lot of people may condemn it, or something of the sort, but you’re making free choices that were not available to you 20 years ago and you’re making them in a different direction than —

I’m still staying with the landline, but you people are way ahead of me. (Laughs).