MANILA, Philippines — The “Sage of Omaha” is at it again – providing a moral compass for the capitalist system in these uncertain times. A multi-millionaire who has benefitted from the system, Buffett believes the wealthy should pay their fair share of taxes, certainly as high a percent of their income as middle class-wage-earners pay. In his State-of-the-Nation Address in January, President Obama cited the Buffett Rule: That anyone making a million dollars or more should pay at least 30% of it in taxes, which Mr. Buffett does. Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, when asked to make his tax payments public, revealed that in the past two years, he has paid no more than 15% of his annual income taxes.

If there is one guiding principle that has shaped Warren Buffett’s life, beside his acute investment sense, it is “fair play.” In a profile in the Economist, he cited two sources for that motivation: His father and his first wife. His father, a grocer who eventually entered Congress, always operated ethically, on the basis of his conscience, according to Buffett, as though he had an “inner score card.”

His first wife, Susie, who died of cancer in 2004, also possessed that same inner score card that dictated her actions. “She was an incredibly wise and good person,” he told his interviewer, “She was just as interested in one person as in another.”

It was Susie who converted Buffett from Republican to Democrat and opened his eyes to the importance of social service. When she took her investor husband to hear social activist Martin Luther King during the segregation conflict in the US, Buffett came away remembering one line that influenced his future commitments: “It may be true that the law can’t change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless.”

Buffett has a track record as a brilliant investor. But he also has a buoyant and optimistic approach to life. “We can rise to any challenge,” he says of the current financial crisis, “but we have to get serious about shared sacrifice.” He wants speculative trading gains taxed at a higher rate and CEOs of companies that have been bailed out to be fined if their company fails. He thinks Washington should stop coddling the super-rich and he has offered to match in contributions to charity the total amount of contributions made by all Republican members of Congress.

“I find the argument that we need to lower taxes to create more jobs mystifying because we’ve had the lowest taxes in this decade and the worst job creation,” he observed.

At 81, the world’s 3rd richest man still drives his own car and lives in the same 5-room house he bought in 1958, and runs his own corporation, Berkshire Hathaway.

Buffett shows reassuring optimism about the faltering US economy. He believes that once the housing market recovers, the American economy will also recover.