Warren Buffett holds a firm belief that women are going to save the US economy.
He recently gave an interview with Melinda Gates on BBC, where the 82-year-old billionaire reiterated that he’s very optimistic that the US is going to survive the fiscal cliff, and that the talents of many women are being underutilized, but when they are used they will help right the economy and America will again thrive.
“Fifty per cent of the talent in the country, we’ve pushed off in the corner for almost 200 years,” said Buffett. “Now that we’re . . . starting to use 100 per cent of our talent, it makes me very optimistic.”
Mister Buffett also added that the US was not quite where it needs to be as far as gender equality is concerned, but there have been incredible gains since he was a little boy with his two sisters during the 1930s.
“The hope was that they would marry well. The hope with me was that I would fulfill my potential, whatever it might be,” Buffett said.
“I saw two human beings with enormous potential and it was just assumed that they could be a nurse, they could be a secretary, they could be a flight attendant . . . What a waste of human talent.”
Melinda Gates is also an advocate of women’s rights, as well as a philanthropist, where she interviewed Warren Buffett as a guest editor on the radio program from the BBC called Today. Warren Buffett is the third richest man in the world, and has also supported an initiative for global access to contraception.
“Women have been subjugated for time immemorial and only recently have they started achieving control over their bodies,” he said. “I think it’s enormously important that a woman have a real say in family planning.”
The Oracle of Omaha, a very wealthy investor as you all know, reiterated that he is confident that a deal would be made with all of the US legislators to avoid the “fiscal cliff” crisis.
“Each party would like to have any decrease in expenditures or increase in taxes blamed on the other party . . . In the end, 535 people in Washington will not thwart the wishes of 312 million Americans.”
He then tells us that the United States has more money than it has ever had, with a GDP per capita of nearly $50,000, but the country has undertaxed and overpromised.
“We’ll be able to overcome this problem. America’s faced a lot tougher problems than this one and we’ll get it solved.”