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Buffett: This is better than raising minimum wage

Doing the math on minimum wage
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Doing the math on minimum wage

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett, in commentary for The Wall Street Journal, said expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a smarter alternative to raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Buffett said a "major and carefully crafted expansion" of the EITC is a better answer to leveling the growing wealth gap in the U.S., wherein millions of employees are working, though just scraping by, as the rich get richer. But the wealth gap, Buffett wrote in the Journal, is not to be blamed on any sort of "conspiracy."

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"The poor are most definitely not poor because the rich are rich. Nor are the rich undeserving," he said.

The chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway calls on American innovators like Henry Ford, Steve Jobs and Sam Walton; Americans who achieved the attainable and promising American Dream. Buffett then notes many citizens are living the "American Nightmare - behaving well and working hard but barely getting by."

Buffett writes the widening wealth gap is an "inevitable consequence of an advanced market-based economy." But he does not deny the issue: "In recent decades, our country's rising tide has not lifted the boats of the poor."