Warren Buffett disagrees with 2016 candidates claiming the country’s economic prosperity is a thing of the past.
“America’s economic magic remains alive and well,” Buffett, chairman of the board at Berkshire Hathaway, wrote to shareholders Saturday.
The 85-year-old billionaire said 2016 campaign rhetoric painting a bleak picture of the state of the economy for generations to come is “dead wrong.”
“The babies being born in America today are the luckiest crop in history,” Buffett said. “Today’s politicians need not shed tears for tomorrow’s children.”
Two candidates in particular, Republican front-runner Donald Trump and Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders have defined their campaigns as efforts to undo an American economic breakdown they say has already occured.
Rivals to those candidates, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, are already working to adopt the optimistic tone captured in Buffett’s message and are sure to work harder to do so, if given the chance, in a general election.
“Make America great again,” Trump’s Ronald Reagan-inspired slogan, includes the idea that America is failing. Trump, a billionaire casino developer-turned candidate who has won three of the first four early-voting contests, has repeatedly said “we don’t win anymore.”
Sanders, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist, has stumped for a fairer distribution of wealth and power. The Vermont senator says the removal of campaign finance restrictions has left ultra rich Americans with excessive power over a corrupt political system.
As president, Sanders said he would work to institute far reaching liberal policies that include a government-run federal heatlhcare system and tuition-free college.
Buffett, one of the richest men in the world, wrote while the economic “pie” shared by the next generation, will be the subject of a contentious struggle, the pie itself is “far larger” than it was for previous generations.
“The good news, however, is that even members of the ‘losing’ sides will almost certainly enjoy — as they should — far more goods and services in the future than they have in the past,” Buffett wrote. “The quality of their increased bounty will also dramatically improve. Nothing rivals the market system in producing what people want — nor, even more so, in delivering what people don’t yet know they want.”
“For 240 years it’s been a terrible mistake to bet against America, and now is no time to start,” Buffett wrote. “America’s golden goose of commerce and innovation will continue to lay more and larger eggs. America’s social security promises will be honored and perhaps made more generous. And, yes, America’s kids will live far better than their parents did.”
Buffett has endorsed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton for president.
