Ben Gilbert: observation

Transcript context

…Yes, three, two. I think it's less than three now. I think it's growing slower than the American economy. Maybe not this year, but in recent years. I think let's do the whole totality. The way to do it on a year by year, annualized, or even decade basis would be the same way that we did Berkshire, which is effectively look at their annual growth rate, set some hurdle rate, and then decide what constitutes an A+, what constitutes an F, and do it on a fine grade basis year by year. We're not actually going to do that. Is it a cop out to say that it's an A++ from founding through the '80s and mid-90s, and then it's been a D on exploiting the next big opportunity since then? That's how I feel. It feels weird to roll those into one letter. I think if we were going to break it out into subgrades for eras, I think I would actually do three eras. I would do the Walton era, including the '70s and '80s, A++++. You can't say enough pluses there. Then I think actually the '90s is also an A+.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.