Btw, why did Buffett get “ suckered “ into buying dividend paying ibm when he should have been buying back non dividend paying brkb? Remember who pounded that table in real time? Buy brkb not ibm. Watch.

Some people won't listen, but one can always try:

It is not foolish to buy a dividend stock. Nobody ever said it was. Mr Buffett is not a fool.

It is always extremely foolish to buy a poor investment just because it promises a dividend. This is a very common form of foolishness, the suckers that were mentioned earlier.
It's usually foolish to forego a good investment because it has no dividend, since most portfolios are best served by maximizing total return. Emphasis on "usually".

A firm introducing a dividend does not increase the total return for shareholders compared to the status quo, even before tax. (Unless/until all other reasonably foreseeable alternative uses of that capital offer prospective returns below those generally available to investors: it's better to pay it out than to set it on fire)

I presume we can all agree on all of those points and move on.

Reasonable people might have differing opinions about whether Berkshire can find a way to deploy excess cash well enough and soon enough that the real total return will exceed that of the average equity investment in (say) the next 10 years. That's the real determinant of whether they should or should not pay out some of that cash as dividends, not whether some small fraction of shareholders has an irrational phobia of capital gains tax even if paying it makes them richer.

Jim