# Warren’s blog

By [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com) · 2016-03-02

annual-letter, architect-this-city, atc, athiscity, berkshire-hathaway, blog, business, finance, gdp-per-capita, investing, shareholder, shareholder-letter, uncategorized, warren-buffet, woody-allen

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I just finished reading Warren Buffet’s [2015 annual letter](http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2015ltr.pdf) to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. If you haven’t yet read [one of his letters](http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html) and you’re at all interested in business and investing, I would encourage you to check them out. (By going to their website you’ll also get a reminder of what the web looked like circa 1995.)

When I read them I feel as if I’m reading a giant blog post from Warren Buffet – albeit one that only gets published once a year. They’re well-written and easy to read. They’re personal. They’re light and humorous. (He drops [Tinder](https://www.gotinder.com/), the mobile dating app, in this year’s letter.) And they’re packed full of invaluable information and insights.

To give you a sample, here are two snippets that I liked:

> _“Our flexibility in capital allocation – our willingness to invest large sums passively in non-controlled businesses – gives us a significant edge over companies that limit themselves to acquisitions they will operate. Woody Allen once explained that the advantage of being bi-sexual is that it doubles your chance of finding a date on Saturday night. In like manner – well, not exactly like manner – our appetite for either operating businesses or passive investments doubles our chances of finding sensible uses for Berkshire’s endless gusher of cash.”  
> _
> 
> _“America’s population is growing about .8% per year (.5% from births minus deaths and .3% from net migration). Thus 2% of overall growth produces about 1.2% of per capita growth. That may not sound impressive. But in a single generation of, say, 25 years, that rate of growth leads to a gain of 34.4% in real GDP per capita. (Compounding’s effects produce the excess over the percentage that would result by simply multiplying 25 x 1.2%.) In turn, that 34.4% gain will produce a staggering $19,000 increase in real GDP per capita for the next generation.”_

Overall, he remains, and rightly so I’d say, very bullish on the United States: “For 240 years it’s been a terrible mistake to bet against America, and now is no time to start.”

What do you think?

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*Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com/warrens-blog)*