Charlie Munger
Charlie Munger
Charles Thomas Mungeris an American businessman, lawyer, investor, and philanthropist. He is vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate controlled by Warren Buffett; in this capacity, Buffett describes Charlie Munger as “my partner." Munger served as chairman of Wesco Financial Corporation from 1984 through 2011. He is also the chairman of the Daily Journal Corporation, based in Los Angeles, California, and a director of Costco Wholesale Corporation...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth1 January 1924
CountryUnited States of America
long ruins enough
We have found in a long life that one competitor is frequently enough to ruin a business.
tragedy wealth faster
Someone will always be getting richer faster than you. This is not a tragedy.
yale envy venture-capitalists
Harvard and Yale concentrated with venture capitalists that got the best calls and brainpower. Very few firms made most of the money, and they made it in just a few periods. Everyone else returned between mediocre and lousy. When returns happened, envy rippled through institutional money management. The amount invested in venture capital went up 10 times post-1999. That later money was lost very quickly. It will happen again. I don't know anyone who successfully resists this stuff. It becomes a new orthodoxy.
real people example
While no real money came down, my family gave me a good education and a marvelous example of how people should behave, and in the end that was more valuable than money. Being surrounded by the right values from the beginning is an immense treasure. Warrenhad that. It even has a financial advantage.
commitment thinking people
Failure to handle psychological denial is a common way for people to go broke. You've made an enormous commitment to something.You've poured effort and money in. And the more you put in, the more that the whole consistency principle makes you think.
people promise benefits
The reason we avoid the word 'synergy' is because people generally claim more synergistic benefits than will come. Yes, it exists, but there are so many false promises.Berkshire is full of synergies - we don't avoid synergies, just claims of synergies.
exercise thinking special
I think we have some special talents. That being said, I think it's dangerous to rely on special talents - it's better to own lots of monopolistic businesses with unregulated prices. But that's not the world today. We have made money exercising our talents and will continue to do so.
giving enormous advantage
The tax code gives you an enormous advantage if you can find some things you can just sit with.
envy taxation resentment
Even if you assume that the whole economy would work better had we never had double taxation, having the envy and resentment of the richest paying low or no taxes screams of injustice. You have to have a fair system.
eye years differences
If you're going to buy something which compounds for 30 years at 15% per annum and you pay one 35% tax at the very end, the way that works out is that after taxes, you keep 13.3% per annum. In contrast, if you bought the same investment, but had to pay taxes every year of 35% out of the 15% that you earned, then your return would be 15% minus 35% of 15%-or only 9.75% per year compounded. So the difference there is over 3.5%. And what 3.5% does to the numbers over long holding periods like 30 years is truly eye-opening....
mistake oil people
...in terms of business mistakes that I've seen over a long lifetime, I would say that trying to minimize taxes too much is one of the great standard causes of really dumb mistakes. I see terrible mistakes from people being overly motivated by tax considerations. Warren and I personally don't drill oil wells. We pay our taxes. And we've done pretty well, so far. Anytime somebody offers you a tax shelter from here on in life, my advice would be don't buy it.
mean trying stuff
To atone, I teach and try to set an example...I love spreading this stuff around. Just because it's trite doesn't mean it isn't right. In fact, I like to say, 'If it's trite, it's right.'
teaching independent ethos
I don't have too much interest in teaching other people how to get rich. And that isn't because I fear the competition or anything like that - Warrenhas always been very open about what he's learned, and I share that ethos. My personal behavior model is Lord Keynes: I wanted to get rich so I could be independent, and so I could do other things like give talks on the intersection of psychology and economics. I didn't want to turn it into a total obsession.
reality views want
We only want what success we can get despite encouraging others to share our general views about reality.