It's easy to feel broke when groceries are up, rent is wild, and your phone battery's dying faster than your motivation. But according to Warren Buffett, if you live in America, even at the very bottom of the income ladder, you're living better than the richest man in the world once did. Not figuratively — literally.
In a 2022 interview with journalist Charlie Rose, Buffett made the case that "more people, a greater percentage of the American population, are having more income now than they've ever had." He was quick to clarify: "That doesn't mean everybody's wealthy." But it does mean the country, in aggregate, is richer than ever.
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And to drive that home, he pointed to one man — John D. Rockefeller.
"Right today… you live in an environment where the bottom 2% in terms of income in the United States, the bottom 5%, and for sure the top 1%, all live better than John D. Rockefeller was living."
Yes, that Rockefeller — the man who built Standard Oil into a monopoly so massive the U.S. Supreme Court had to bust it up. The one whose fortune, adjusted for share of GDP, is estimated to be worth between $400 and $500 billion in today's dollars.
So how could the poorest 2% possibly "live better" than that?
Buffett broke it down in the simplest terms: "Today you can get better medicine, better education, better entertainment, better transportation — you can do everything better than he could… It's astounding."
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He wasn't being glib. Rockefeller had staff, yachts, and railroads — but he didn't have antibiotics. He couldn't fly coast to coast. He couldn't get a filling without pain. "When I was born," Buffett said, "the dentist didn't use novocaine." Something as routine as a cavity could be agony, no matter how rich you were.
Lifestyle comparisons tell the same story. Rockefeller could commission private railcars. Today, Buffett noted, nearly everyone has access to travel and digital entertainment. "Maybe everybody doesn't have a screen as big as mine, but damn near everybody has a screen, or an iPhone, or a computer, or access to one."
Buffett acknowledged that Rockefeller's work had massive value — not just to himself, but to millions. "Henry Ford, by 1922 or '23, was turning out 2 million cars a year. Now how many could the Ford family use? Thirty, forty? I don't know. So two million people are getting the benefit of what he's doing."
He continued, "When Thomas Edison did all the things he did… he made some money. But we're better. We're using it. It belongs to us."
In Buffett's view, that's how capitalism distributes value over time. Even if a small number of people accumulate enormous wealth, the byproducts — cars, lights, medicine, technology — reach everyone. He described money as a set of "claim checks on future output" and made clear that, for someone like him, accumulating more has little personal meaning.
"I have everything I want in life, you know, everything."
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His message isn't that poverty feels good or that everyone has equal opportunity. It is that the floor of American life has risen dramatically. Rockefeller's era did not have modern medicine, antibiotics, air conditioning, smartphones, safety regulations, or instant access to global communication. Money could not buy what technology had not yet invented.
Buffett sees that as progress worth recognizing. "It's astounding what has happened" in just one lifetime, he said. And he believes it will continue. "Business moves forward. Government moves forward. More important, people move forward."
The richest American in history could not watch a replay of a football game, could not hop on a plane, and could not numb his mouth at the dentist. Today, the poorest 2% can. That is Buffett's point.
Feeling stretched thin and frustrated by prices is real. But so is the world of capability surrounding even those with the smallest incomes in the U.S. Buffett wants people to see that the modern definition of wealth is not just money in the bank. It is access, comfort, convenience, and life itself — things even Rockefeller could never buy.
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