Bill Gates on Global Inequality, Climate Change and Big Tech

bill

the

gates

foundation is focusing on

inequality

is the biggest obstacle to creating a decent life for people in the world's poorest countries why

inequality

well, we take a lot of things for granted in the united states and other rich countries the fact that we have enough to eat the fact that most children survive and their nutrition is such that they can receive an education and live a full life those things are not yet universal, in fact, more than 5 million children die a year and that shouldn't happen, we have made progress. It used to be that 10 million a year would die, but the things we believe every human being should have are not yet available, so the inequality is in a more dramatic and stark form.

When we look

global

ly now you are optimistic in part because "The amount of progress that has already been made is absolutely right, thanks to the new vaccines that have been funded so that they can reach every child in the world, these mortality rates have decreased dramatically and living conditions have absolutely improved, you know. We are not at the level of the United States and other rich countries, but 50 years ago there were poor countries and rich countries. Today, most people on Earth live in middle-income countries, so, you know, Mexico, China, Brazil, in these countries you get enough to eat and they have a reasonable education system and the girls have the opportunity to go to high school.

There are still parts of lower-middle-income countries and some poor countries where anyone who visits will see deprivation so stark that, you know, you feel it. just from a human uh moral point of view, the small amounts that we spend to help with that we should maintain or increase that generosity, why are gender and geography the two factors most responsible for the inequality that we are talking about? I have observed and collected data on the numbers that tell that story. If you are born in Finland, you are 50% more likely to die as a child than if you are born in Nigeria or many countries. -Saharan African countries, that factor of 50, you know, that shouldn't happen, the world is rich enough that basic medicines, nothing sophisticated, nothing super expensive, should reach all those children, in the same way, In many countries, girls are still not around. the education, uh, or the opportunities that men have, and it's known that when you do it well, it really elevates everyone and, uh, so, first of all you know that being a country, you would expect to be born in a country that's reasonably well off and Secondly, you will have more opportunities even if you are a child, you are absolutely right, the world is rich enough to at least reduce the gap in living conditions mortality rates infant mortality rates among the richest countries in the world and the poorest countries in the world what Would you say Bill is the biggest obstacle to progress on that front?

Well, if people whose children were dying or suffering from malnutrition were in your neighborhood, you would immediately organize a group and step forward and ensure that the problem is eliminated. so the challenge is that people don't have the opportunity to go to these countries and see that deprivation, you know, we hope to tell them that story and the story of progress, you know, if it's just that you feel guilty, uh. and you think okay, this will never be solved, that's less motivating than realizing that when you help buy a mosquito net that literally saves a child's life, it's too little money to make these improvements overall, the kind of help outside that allows this is less than one percent of government spending in any country and even as people are turning inward a little, we know we hope to remind them that the moral cause and benefits of stopping pandemics before they get out of hand control are the benefits of helping these. countries are worth less than one percent let's talk about that for a moment the economic and political conditions needed to fight inequality are deteriorating the world appears to be on the verge of a recession and multilateralism is collapsing nationalism is on the rise In many of the richest countries in the world, what is that going to mean for the efforts that you and others are doing well?

I wouldn't say that actually the

global

economy is doing quite well, you know, China has high growth, India has high growth, there are very few. Countries where GDP is declining, so total resources, people are richer today than they were 10 years ago, 20 years ago they buy a lot and because these lower income countries have increased so rapidly, they actually Global inequality has decreased somewhat, although it remains very high. have the benefit of science science can invent new vaccines understand malnutrition and give us tools new tools that are very, very effective so the only thing that worries me is that political atmosphere there is more money there is better science but if people are not willing to do it Look at the boys and girls who live outside the borders of their countries and say that you know that less than one percent should help improve those countries, maintain stability there and help those countries become self-sufficient, so eventually it won't be necessary to focus on that. something positive that we should be proud of is a little bit less, so you know there's more reason to talk about success, to talk about impact, to try to maintain both the moral and strong benefit that comes from global engagement.

You describe that current political atmosphere in relation to perhaps the best place you've been in the last 20 years. Well, the period in which the United States increased its aid to poor countries the most was during the administration of President Bush. He saw that the AIDS crisis needed an emergency response in a bipartisan way, a substantial increase in resources went into that and that has been amazing, it's saving tens of millions of lives and that continues. There have been discussions about removing that from the administration, but Congress has said no, we want to keep these things. We are very proud that if you go to Africa, it is recognized as America at its best.

I will say that you know the domestic distraction and not seeing these people very far away, as you know, like us, and they deserve a little bit of our our help uh that message is not that common uh and yet it is so worthy that you know we challenge ourselves to ourselves in terms of our creativity, people want to live a moral existence and if you can get them to visit these places I have never seen a case where someone is not attracted to your point. President Trump has a different attitude toward multilateralism, American interests and how and where American tax dollars should be spent than his predecessors, Presidents Bush, President Obama, for example, President Clinton. that poses a risk to what you're trying to do right, certainly the executive branch picks the key people to run these programs, but the programs continue to run, so it's not the worst case scenario here, you know?

Do you worry about that? Certainly there's often something that you know will say, "Okay, these are foreigners, we should help them," but when Congress pushes back, they haven't had to push back very hard and people say, "Okay, okay, we'll keep doing these things." so that America still has." There's a lot to be proud of and, you know, for the US it's 0.2 percent, with government spending, in that case, GDP we're about a third as generous as European countries are, and you know , they often look and say, okay, why doesn't the United States do more? We are the biggest at all because our economy is so much bigger.

So I think this is a story because it is very far away and since success is not well known, we have to improve. By talking about it to attract people because these are problems that have solutions, we will get an HIV vaccine, we will get a tuberculosis vaccine, a malaria vaccine, the countries in Asia like Indonesia, Vietnam, India, which used to receive a lot of outside help, they have risen. Africa is going to take, you know, more than 20 years, it's a much more difficult situation, but that's great, now we can focus our aid dollars on making those countries better.

How long do you think it will be before we have an HIV vaccine before we have a tuberculosis vaccine before we have a malaria vaccine? Well, in each of those areas the Gates Foundation is investing hundreds of millions a year and you know, I love scientists. doing the work, you know, we've come a long way, so sometimes I'm overly optimistic, but in every case I would say that within a ten year period we will have really great vaccines, you know, progress in understanding biology en Fortunately, advancing some of the very well-funded work on cancer also gives us information about how to make vaccines, so we partnered with companies that work in those areas and have been very excited to be able to do that. chasing cancer that can also benefit these poor world conditions so you know we can expect a lot of improvements now if we invent something we have to get the funds to deliver it when I got into this field I was already done.

There were a couple of vaccines, like one for diarrhea, that were being given to children in Richard's countries whose risk of dying was very low, but they weren't being given in the port countries, so we helped create this new fund of vaccines that he helped solve. that problem, why collaborate with the united nations on the sustainable development goals? It is notoriously bureaucratic and no one would call it efficient. Well, the united nations really isn't even that big. I mean, yes, they fill that building in New York, but you know, compared to nation state governments their budget the number of people is actually quite small, but there really should be a place where the world comes together and says : okay, what do we care?

Do we care about children who die? Do we care about wars and stopping wars? We want you to know that nuclear weapons should not be used on the environment. What is happening not only with

climate

change

but particularly with

climate

change

is that it threatens all of us, so we all have to cooperate together and the previous version, the so-called millennium development. those goals were actually quite successful and you know, they ended in 2015 and the poverty numbers went down, the death numbers went down, so a new set of goals were introduced that were somewhat broader, like environmental work, it was blessed in fact unanimously by all.

These members, that makes it clear, hey, this is humanity working on the issues that matter and these are not very controversial things, that is, telling a mother that you do not want our children to die, is not like in some of the countries that think that it should be a lower priority human morality and human values ​​have quite a bit in common, you know how we govern ourselves, what level of taxes we should have, you know, people may not agree with that, but the idea of preserve nature, let children be healthy, that's really consecrated now there's an ambitious goal, the deadline for this is 2030. uh, it's like that, it's going to be difficult to achieve that, but uh there's constant improvement and you know that our foundation Every year it takes the time of the general assembly to say: "ok, we don't do it." Don't think too much about poor countries, this is the only time of year, let's see what's going well, see what's behind it, let's celebrate the heroes, whether they're scientists with new tools or people in the field, and really give some visibility to what is the report card. for humanity let's talk about the climate change

bill

you believe that climate change poses an even greater threat to people in poor countries than to people in rich countries, is that not the case at all? if you can't afford air conditioning if when your crop fails, you don't have a savings account to get you through that, you know a year and eight, so your kids don't have enough to eat, uh, if you live near the equator, where the absolute temperature is much higher than in the temperate zone. areas climate change is caused by rich middle income people, but the people who will suffer the most will be by far the poorest, so it is very unfair, even eventually for rich people the problems will be very, very serious, but for them, you know.

The next 30 or 40 years will mostly hurt subsistence farmers. Why focus your foundation's efforts on mitigating and adapting to climate change instead of combating the problem at its roots? Carbon emissions. Well, mitigation is not an area that the foundation gets involved in and that's where you. We're trying to shift to green energy or electric cars or meat made without cows, that's something important for the private sector. You invest in that, I invest, you know, billions in those things, including nuclear reactors and all kinds of things to help. There is adaptation that implies the fact that there will be climate problems and we need to helpto those who are disadvantaged by giving them better seeds that can withstand drought or are more productive so that they can save more money.

Those things, the foundation. is very involved and most people think about this emissions reduction mitigation, the idea of ​​how to minimize the harm that they call adaptation, gets very little attention and that's why myself and some others, uh bang kai moon, and uh, a really great group of people created a commission on this adaptation issue, uh, uh, later this year, uh, that will make it clearer that there is work to be done there. Do you think climate change is stoppable or maybe even reversible at some point? Well, we're not going to do it. have a year in which the world is colder than it is today the temperature the average global temperature is going to rise a lot and in the next 50 years it will not fall now deciding how much it rises, it rises by two degrees another degrees or four degrees that is in our hands if we ignore the problem you're going to target, aim for something that's like a four degree scenario that in terms of natural ecosystems, you know, wildfires, days where humans just can't go out if they live near the Ecuador is a fairly extreme case.

Knowing how seriously people are going to take it and what kind of innovations are coming will determine where we are in that two to four degree range by the end of the century, and you know, I certainly hope that we don't do the experiment of being more two degrees, but it will take a lot of commitment and, you know, a little bit of luck in innovative advancements to get there. There are several different ways to fight climate change. Renewable energy is clearly one of them. Do you think governments should subsidize renewable energy or should they embrace it?

Well, the cost of wind and solar energy has dropped dramatically and some of those subsidies have helped drive the volume that drives learning. curve, prices are going down now, they're not going to go down much further, so the tax benefits should shift to things that are more limiting, like offshore wind energy storage, which is still at a huge price premium in many places. That we need the market to kick-start progress in solar and wind energy is very helpful but the sun doesn't shine 24 hours a day if you are very far from the equator, in fact in winter you can't get as much and that's just for the part of electricity that represents only 25 percent of emissions, so we need a lot of efforts, but yes, that subsidy that accelerated the launch is one of the few advances we had, it is less than 10 percent of all generation of energy because I know that the global economy has a lot of energy generation, but it is one of the good things that has developed.

Some people would ask why I should care about global inequality when, at least here in the United States, domestic inequality is so persistent. and a growing problem, well there's no question that over 99 percent of the money the US government spends should go to internal inequality, now we should be smart about how we spend that to improve schools, you know , perhaps improve the income tax credit by a large amount. of things that we should be debating, using that money well, the fact that this way less than one percent should go to help stop epidemics, create stability and help those in need, you know, I think you can argue, nobody is suggesting that you go. more than one percent in terms of helping the poorest.

You've told me before that a progressive income tax structure is the best way to fight the problem of inequality here in the United States. A redistribution of resources, so to speak, and, in any case, of our taxes. The regime should be more progressive, you still feel like, well, the government is spending more than it takes in, so at some point, even for the safety net and the current programs, you know that someone is going to pay more taxes and I think that should be done. progressively just fixing the taxes alone, you know, it's a big help, but you also want the impact of that government spending to really learn, you know, why kids drop out of college, you know, it's not true that affordability is the only option. problem in higher education in America and in some cases it is, but I wouldn't even put it at the top of the list now that so much wealth is concentrated in the hands of so few, some people say that a wealth tax, no an income tax.

It is the only way to adequately address the problem of inequality. Could you support a wealth tax? I wouldn't be against the wealth tax unless it gets a lot of nations to cooperate and address some of the problems like people leaving the country or what? you do these valuations which can get quite complicated and if you have to do that every year, but you know, if society supported a wealth tax, yes, you can raise money that way, not many countries do, in fact, Europe has less today than it had before, partly because if you are a small country, the problem of people leaving and changing residences is a pretty big problem in general.

I am in favor of much more financial transparency. I don't like that you can have trust where no one knows who the owner is. You know, every time you talk about all this money moving around and you know why it paid taxes, it's that criminal money, uh trans, we should have a lot more transparency, so I don't doubt that you know that the United States will apply a wealth tax . but I wouldn't be against that, the closest thing we have is the estate tax and I've been a big advocate that that should go back to the 55 percent level it was a few decades ago.

Refugees are a real problem: what would you say to your fellow billionaires and, in some cases, millionaires who reject the idea of ​​progressive taxes and are increasingly relocating, at least under the current regime, to states where they don't have to pay so many taxes? Yeah, so you know the biggest problem about this would be that if people actually leave the country all together, there you could have something like an exit tax. Certainly, for their assets in the US, within the US there is quite a bit of zero-sum competition both for individuals and companies where you know that if someone is going to create some jobs, then you know that a gigantic money is going to they.

I think to a large extent the state should sit down and, you know, declare a truce in terms of how that money is spent. We're never going to fully align the income tax regime in all 50 states, but you know, if they were to move toward the middle somehow, you know that would be helpful, there are jurisdictions that are getting to a point. where it really becomes uh uh that they're not helping themselves by raising the rate, we're talking about places like maybe new jersey or connecticut, those where yeah, I know most people seem to be running away, yeah, I don't make a tracking Who has the highest rate?

Now you know there are states whose balance sheets are very problematic in terms of the liabilities that they have and it's a shame that we don't confront them and say, what's the plan for New Jersey? or Illinois, you know, over the next few decades to get out of the financial difficulties there and Puerto Rico is the most extreme. I want to ask you about philanthropy as a matter of principle. Most people would agree that more philanthropy is a good thing, but like you, too. I know there's a big difference between good or effective philanthropy and bad or ineffective philanthropy from the billionaires you know, and it happens to the people who tend to donate the most money overall.

How many would you say are doing a good job in that? I know, I don't know all the different philanthropic activities that different people are doing. We have this group called Give Promised where now a couple hundred people have pledged to donate most of their money and there are regular meetings, an annual meeting to I talk widely about the topic and then throughout the year there are many meetings that focus on giving to science, giving to education, giving to the environment and I know that people are learning a lot from each other, there are some very sophisticated givers and heterogeneity.

It's such that you'll never have a single score. I mean, you know, George Soros did a brilliant job helping Eastern European countries, you know, build a civil society, you know, that was incredibly difficult to measure, you know, people like Rich. Kinder and his wife are giving in Houston and you know creating these parks and it's great that there are uh I would say in the giving pledge there are at least 30 philanthropists that I've learned a lot from, you know, starting with the people. like Eli Broad, who's been at this for many decades, you know Michael Bloomberg, who you know, he's amazing at what he does.

I hate if I start mentioning, you know, leaving out several people, but I've learned from uh uh these people and that's part of why I'm looking forward to that event, you know, big donors should be very careful, they should put the same care they put into creating wealth. No one would accuse you and Melinda of not donating enough money, but one of the reasons you've been able to be so generous is because you're investing well and I'm wondering at this point in the game, are you, Melinda and your chief investment officer, Michael Larson, as focused as you have been on generating returns so that the foundation has more? money to give away and actually you know your private investments or now is the time to think more about capital preservation, well I'm bullish on US companies and global companies so we're not. in some defensive posture where we are primarily in cash or something like that, you know, the strategy that has been used in investments is to be above 60 percent in stocks and, that is still the case, no, that is still the case , And you know. even after a 10 year bull run, well yes it is possible to predict changes in the market, it is a very difficult thing to do, you can argue that the returns are not very high, but that is true in all asset classes , I mean, you know.

The holding of the notes, as you know, is less than two percent, so there is nothing obvious to beat other investors and there is reason to think that the absolute returns over the next decade will be less than those of the last decades that the government has opened. An Antitrust Review of Big Tech Companies Facebook Amazon Google and Apple Do you still think it's better to regulate these companies than break them up? If so, why? Well, breakup. I don't know the last time a company was dissolved, it's one, I think. It's been quite a while and you really have to think is that the best thing, if there's a way the company behaves that you want to get rid of, then you know you should say "okay", that's prohibited behavior, stop breaking up the company in two and having two people doing the wrong thing, you know, that doesn't seem like a solution, so it's a pretty limited set of things that I think breaking up is the right answer for, you know, these companies are very big, very important, The fact that governments are thinking about these things, that's not a surprise, you know, I was naive about it, but that was a long time ago and I didn't realize that as Microsoft became successful, we would be under scrutiny and go through our uh.

Eh, something back in the 90s and that made us think more about this type of activity. Do you share the government's concerns that any or all of these companies are perhaps doing things abusing their power and influence in such a way that it undermines the political system and we've heard about that or maybe the consumer economy and we've also heard about it. I think these companies are behaving completely legally and doing a lot of innovative things, you know, the fact that the tax rules incentivize you to structure yourself in a certain way and minimize your taxes.

People should look at whether they want to change that in the future. You know, that's a real question. Social media, no one had a crystal ball that would somehow be a way to radicalize people or divide them into different groups what exactly should be the solution to that, you know, make us read more of a common cover and not take us to extremes, you know, I don't think you can completely trust

tech

nology. I think the government really needs to talk about what those rules should be, so not that you know you could say I'm biased, but I see them as well-intentioned, you know, very innovative. companies that it is up to society to ensure that their innovation does not have negative side effects