ParisLemon (Posts tagged money)

Kristen Bellstrom reporting on Warren Buffett’s comments at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women summit in Washington, D.C.:

And what about Silicon Valley and the startup world—does Buffett want a piece of a unicorn? “I don’t bring anything to that game at all,” he said, noting that the valuations of many tech startups are “nose-bleed” by Berkshire’s standards. While technology is certainly one of the hottest sectors going, Buffett says he’ll leave it to the VCs: “It’s just a game that doesn’t appeal to me.”

Certainly one of the strongest examples of “sticking with what you know,” which, of course, Buffett is famous for – and undoubtedly famously rich for.

Ed Caesar on a large estate in London which has been shrouded in mystery for years as it undergoes massive renovations:

When the refurbishment is complete, Witanhurst will have about ninety thousand square feet of interior space, making it the second-largest mansion in the city, after Buckingham Palace. It will likely become the most expensive house in London. In 2006, the Qatari royal family bought Dudley House, on Park Lane, for about forty million pounds; after a renovation, its estimated resale value is two hundred and fifty million pounds. Real-estate agents expect that the completed Witanhurst will be worth three hundred million pounds—about four hundred and fifty million dollars.

Absolute insanity. While no one is absolute sure of the owner, all the clues point to a Russian oligarch. But which one…

Also crazy, much of the work on this mansion is happening underground:

Adam, a raffish man in his sixties, is a classical architect who can recite the exact proportions of a Corinthian column. I observed that there was a vogue for digging out enormous basements beneath London properties—creating so-called “iceberg houses”—and asked him if he approved. “I don’t have a problem with people digging a big hole in the ground and living in it,” he said. He could even summon a classical rationale for underground living spaces: “The Romans did it. They had a thing called the cryptoporticus, so you could keep cool in the summer.”

Possible Jay Gatsby owns it?

Buffett arguing against the currently hyped minimum wage increases:

In my mind, the country’s economic policies should have two main objectives. First, we should wish, in our rich society, for every person who is willing to work to receive income that will provide him or her a decent lifestyle. Second, any plan to do that should not distort our market system, the key element required for growth and prosperity.

That second goal crumbles in the face of any plan to sizably increase the minimum wage. I may wish to have all jobs pay at least $15 an hour. But that minimum would almost certainly reduce employment in a major way, crushing many workers possessing only basic skills. Smaller increases, though obviously welcome, will still leave many hardworking Americans mired in poverty.

We’ll see how this works in the cities that have enacted it, but it sure seems like rather than paying people a lot more, many businesses will just hire fewer people (or, at least, fewer people who would normally be paid minimum wage). Buffett’s proposed solution is an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Sorkin: As an undergraduate at Duke, you majored in psychology. Do you use what you learned there when you invest?

Gross: You don’t need a degree in psychology to understand human nature. There was an old dude, Jesse Livermore, who wrote a great book that said the most important thing in investing was to know yourself — your weaknesses, your flaws and your strengths.

The Economist with some important elements of time and work to remember as we break for this holiday season:

The problem, then, is less how much time people have than how they see it. Ever since a clock was first used to synchronise labour in the 18th century, time has been understood in relation to money. Once hours are financially quantified, people worry more about wasting, saving or using them profitably. When economies grow and incomes rise, everyone’s time becomes more valuable. And the more valuable something becomes, the scarcer it seems.

And:

That economic prosperity would create feelings of time poverty looked a little odd in the 1960s, given all those new time-saving blenders and lawnmowers. But there is a distinct correlation between privilege and pressure. In part, this is a conundrum of wealth: though people may be earning more money to spend, they are not simultaneously earning more time to spend it in. This makes time—that frustratingly finite, unrenewable resource—feel more precious.

And:

So being busy can make you rich, but being rich makes you feel busier still. Staffan Linder, a Swedish economist, diagnosed this problem in 1970. Like Becker, he saw that heady increases in the productivity of work-time compelled people to maximise the utility of their leisure time. The most direct way to do this would be for people to consume more goods within a given unit of time. To indulge in such “simultaneous consumption”, he wrote, a chap “may find himself drinking Brazilian coffee, smoking a Dutch cigar, sipping a French cognac, reading the New York Times, listening to a Brandenburg Concerto and entertaining his Swedish wife—all at the same time, with varying degrees of success.” Leisure time would inevitably feel less leisurely, he surmised, particularly for those who seemed best placed to enjoy it all. The unexpected product of economic progress, according to Linder, was a “harried leisure class”.

And finally:

New technologies such as e-mail and smartphones exacerbate this impatience and anxiety. E-mail etiquette often necessitates a response within 24 hours, with the general understanding that sooner is better. Managing this constant and mounting demand often involves switching tasks or multi-tasking, and the job never quite feels done. “Multi-tasking is what makes us feel pressed for time,” says Elizabeth Dunn, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. “No matter what people are doing, people feel better when they are focused on that activity,” she adds.

When discussing time management and happiness in our modern age, it always comes back to email.