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S M T P E RS P ECT I V ES A N D P RO S P ECTS All questions and answers were spontaneous, and Buffett addressed them with great insight. Last month, I focused on life lessons. This month, I'm including his comments about the United States, capitalism, and investment. The U.S. Over the years, Mr. Buffett explicitly and repeat- edly stated that one should never bet against the United States. At the meeting, he was asked, "You've long been a strong believer in the Amer- ican tailwind and the resilience of the United States, and history has proven you correct. Today, the U.S. appears to be undergo- ing significant and potentially rev- olutionary changes. Some inves- tors are now questioning the con- cept of American exceptionalism. In your view, are investors overly pessimistic about the U.S. econ- omy, or is the country entering a period of fundamental change that requires a reassessment from a new perspective?" Buffett replied, "We started as an agricultural society with high promises that we didn't deliver on very well. We said all men were created equal, and then we wrote a constitution that counted blacks as three-fifths of a person. In Arti- cle 2, you'll find male pronouns used 20 times and no female pro- nouns. So, it took until 1920, with the 19th Amendment, to finally give women the vote that we had promised back in 1776. We're always in the process of change, and we'll always find all kinds of things to criticize in the country. "But the luckiest day in my life is the day I was born, because I was born in the United States. At that time, about 3% of all births in the world were taking place in the United States. I was just lucky. If you don't think the United States has changed since I was born in 1930, you're not paying attention. We've gone through all kinds of things: great recessions, world wars, the development of 10 SMT007 MAGAZINE I AUGUST 2025