Bill Gates on Global Inequality, Climate Change and Big Tech

bill the gates foundation is zeroing in on inequality is the greatest obstacle to creating a decent life for people in the world's poorest countries why inequality well we take a lot for granted in the united states and other wealthy countries the fact that we have enough to eat the fact that children overwhelmingly survive and their nutrition is such that they're able to be educated and live a full life those things are not yet universal in fact over 5 million children a year die and that shouldn't happen we've made progress it used to be 10 million a year would die but the the things that we think every human should have are are not yet available so inequality is of a more dramatic and stark form uh when we look globally now you're optimistic in part because of the amount of progress that's already been made right that's absolutely right uh because of new vaccines that have been financed so that they can go to all the world's children these death rates have come down quite dramatically and living conditions have improved absolutely uh you know they're not at the level of the u.s and other rich countries but 50 years ago there were poor countries and rich countries today most of people on earth live in middle income countries so the you know mexico china brazil these countries you get you do get enough to eat and you do have a reasonable education system and the girls get a chance to go to high school there still are parts of the low middle income countries and some poor countries where uh anybody who visits will see such stark uh deprivation that they you know feel just from a human uh moral point of view that that the slight amounts we spend to help with that that we ought to maintain or increase that generosity why are gender and geography the two factors most responsible for the inequality that we're talking about that you've observed and gathered data on well the the numbers tell that story uh if you're born in finland uh you're a 50th as likely to die as a child than if you're born in uh nigeria or a lot of uh sub-saharan african countries that factor of 50 you know that shouldn't take place the world is rich enough that the basic medicines nothing fancy nothing super expensive should get to all those children uh likewise in a lot of countries uh girls are still not getting nearly the education uh or the opportunities that men are and it's known that when you do that right it really uplifts everyone and uh so you know be country first you'd hope to be born in a a country that's reasonably well off and second you're going to have more opportunities still if you're a boy you're absolutely right the world is more than rich enough to narrow at the very least the gap in living conditions mortality rates infant mortality rates between the world's wealthiest countries and the world's poorest countries what would you say bill is the single greatest obstacle to progress on that front well if the people whose children were dying or had malnutrition were in your neighborhood then you would immediately you know organize a group and step up and you know make sure the problem is eliminated so the challenge is that people don't get an opportunity to go to these uh countries and and see that deprivation you know we're hoping to get that story to them and the story of progress you know if it's just that you feel guilty uh and you think okay this will never get solved that's less motivating than realizing that when you help buy a bed net that literally is saving a child's life so it's very little money to make these improvements in general uh the kind of foreign aid that enables this is less than one percent of government spending in any country and even as people are turning a little bit inward you know we're hoping to remind them that the moral cause and the benefits of stopping pandemics before they get out of control the benefits of helping these countries is well worth that less than one percent let's talk about that for a moment the economic and political conditions that you need to fight inequality are deteriorating the world appears to be on the verge of a recession and multilateralism is breaking down nationalism is on the rise in many of the world's richest countries what's that going to mean for the efforts you and others are making well i wouldn't say that uh the global economy is actually doing quite well you know china has high growth india has high growth there are very few countries uh that are having gdp go down so the total resources people are richer today than 10 years ago 20 years ago buy a lot and because these lower income countries have risen so quickly actually global inequality has gone down somewhat although it's still very high we also 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 place that i'm concerned is that political atmosphere there's more money there's better science but if people aren't willing to look at the boys and girls who live outside their country boundaries and say you know less than one percent should help lift those countries up maintain stability there and help those countries become self-sufficient so eventually this won't be necessary the focus on that as a positive thing we should be proud of is a little bit less and so you know all the more reason to talk about the success talk about the impact uh to try and and maintain the both moral and uh strong benefit that comes from global engagement how would you describe that political atmosphere today relative to maybe the best place it's been in the past 20 years well the period that the united states raised its help to poor countries the most was under president bush he saw that the aids crisis needed an emergency response on a bipartisan basis a substantial increase in resources went uh to that and that's been amazing it's saving tens of millions of lives and and that's continued uh there have been discussions about cutting that uh from the administration but the congress has said no we want to maintain these things we're very proud of in that if you go to africa it's recognized as the us absolutely at its best i will say that uh you know domestic distraction and not seeing these people far away as you know like us and deserving of a tiny bit of our our help uh that message isn't isn't as common uh and yet it's so worthy that you know we challenge ourselves in terms of our creativity people want to live a moral existence and if if you can get them to actually visit these places they i've never seen a case where somebody isn't drawn in to your point president trump has a different attitude toward multilateralism u.s interests and how and where u.s tax dollars should be spent than his predecessors presidents bush president obama for example president clinton does that pose a risk to what you're trying to do well certainly the executive branch picks the key people to run these programs as yet the programs are continuing to run so it's not the worst case here uh you know do you worry about that oh certainly there's often something that you know will say okay these are foreigners should we help them but when the congress pushes back uh they haven't had to push back very hard and people say okay okay we'll keep doing these things so the us still has a lot to be proud of and you know for the u.s it's uh 0.2 percent uh with government spending uh of in that case gdp we're about a third as generous as the european countries are uh and you know so you know they often look and say okay why doesn't the us do more we're the biggest in absolute because our economy is so much bigger so i i think this is a story because it's far away uh and because the success is not well known we do have to get better at at talking about it to draw people in because these are solvable problems we will get an hiv vaccine we'll get a tb vaccine a malaria vaccine the countries in asia like indonesia vietnam india that used to get a lot of foreign aid have lifted themselves up and so they're becoming rich enough that they are self-sufficient africa is going to take uh you know 20-plus years it's it's a much tougher situation but that's great now we get to focus our our aid dollars on lifting up those countries how long do you think it's going to take before we have an hiv vaccine before we have a tb 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 the scientists doing the work uh you know we've come a long way so i'm sometimes over optimistic but in each case i'd say in in the ten year time frame we will have uh really great vaccines you know the progress on understanding biology is advancing fortunately fortunately some of the work on cancer that is very well funded gives us insights about how to make vaccines as well uh and so that we partner with the companies that work in those areas and they've been very enthusiastic that they can as they pursue the uh cancer that they can also benefit these poor world conditions so uh you know we can expect uh a lot of improvement now if we invent something we do have to get the funding to get it delivered when i came into this field i was done there were a couple vaccines like one for diarrhea that was being given to kids in richard countries whose risk of dying was very low but it wasn't being given in the port countries and so that we helped create this new vaccine fund that that's helped solve that problem why collaborate with the united nations on sustainable development goals it's notoriously bureaucratic and no one would call it efficient well the united nations actually uh isn't even that big i mean yes they fill up that building in new york but you know compared to [Music] 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 about do we care about children dying do we care about uh wars and and stopping wars do we want you know nuclear weapons to not be used is the environment uh what's going on not only with climate change but particularly with climate change is that threaten all of us so we all have to cooperate together and the previous version the so-called millennium development goals those were actually quite successful and you know that finished in 2015 uh and the poverty numbers went down the death numbers went down and so a new set of goals that were somewhat broader like the environmental work was brought in uh was blessed actually unanimously by all these members so that gives it a clear hey this is humanity working on the issues that count and the these aren't very controversial things i mean telling a mother you don't want our children to die there's not like some one of the countries that thinks that should be a lower priority human morality and human values have enough in common you know how we govern ourselves what level of taxes we should have find you know people can disagree about that but the idea of preserving nature uh letting kids be healthy that's really enshrined now there's an ambitious goal the deadline for this one is 2030. uh it's it it'll be hard to reach that but uh there's constant improvement and you know our foundation every year takes the uh time of the general assembly saying okay uh we don't think about the poor countries much this is the one time of year let's see what's going well let's see what's behind let's celebrate the heroes whether it's 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 climate change bill you believe that climate change poses an even greater threat to the people in poor countries than it does to the people in rich countries doesn't it absolutely if you can't afford air conditioning if when your crop fails you don't have a savings account to get past that you know one year and eight and so your children aren't having enough to eat uh if you live near the equator where the absolute temperature is far higher than it is in the temperate zones climate change is caused by middle-income enriched people but the people who suffer by far the most will be the poorest so it's a it's very unjust um even eventually for the wealthy people the the problems will be very very bad but for the you know next 30 40 years most of it will hurt the subsistence farmer why focus your efforts at the foundation on mitigation and adaptation to climate change instead of combating the root problem carbon emissions well mitigation is not an area that the foundation gets involved and that's where you're trying to switch to uh green energy or electric cars or uh meat that is made without cows that's big private sector stuff uh you invest in that i invest you know billions in those things including you know nuclear reactors and all sorts of things uh to help there adaptation which is taking the fact that there will be climate problems and we need to help those who are hurt by it by giving them better seeds that can deal with the drought or that are more productive so you can save more money those things the foundation is very very involved in and most people think about this mitigation of reducing emissions the idea of how you minimize the damage which they call adaptation that gets very little attention and that's why i and a few others uh bang kai moon and uh really great group of people created a commission about this adaptation issue uh that uh later this year uh that it'll make it more clear that there's 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 have a year where the world is cooler than it is today the temperature the globe average global temperature is going to go up a lot and in the next 50 years uh it won't go down now deciding how much goes up does it go up by two degrees or three degrees or four degrees that's in our hands if we ignore the problem you're gonna aim aim ahead to something that's like a four degree scenario which in terms of natural ecosystems you know forest fires days that humans just can't go outside if you live in the near the equator it's pretty extreme case knowing how seriously people are going to take it and what type of innovations will come along will determine where in that two to four degree range we are by the end of the century and you know i certainly hope we don't run the experiment of being higher than two degrees but it will take a lot of commitment and you know a bit of luck on the innovative breakthroughs to be able to get there there are a number of different ways of fighting climate change renewable energy is clearly one of them do you think governments should subsidize renewable energy or should take up be dictated by market forces alone well the cost of wind and solar has come down dramatically and some of that subsidization has helped drive that volume which drives the learning curve the prices come down now they're kind of they're not going to come down much more so the tax benefits there should be shifted into things that are more limiting like energy storage offshore wind which still has a huge premium price lots of places that we need the market to get going the progress in solar and wind is very helpful but the sun doesn't shine 24 hours a day if you're a far away from the equator actually in the winter you you can't get as much and so uh and that's just for the electricity piece that's only 25 percent of emissions so we need a lot of efforts but yes that subsidization that accelerated rollout that's one of the few uh advances we had it's less than 10 percent of all energy generation because you know the global economy has a lot of energy generation but it's it's one of the good things that that has been developed bill some people would ask why should i care about global inequality when he at least here in the united states domestic inequality is such a persistent and growing problem well there's no doubt that over 99 percent of the money in the u.s that the u.s government spend should go to domestic inequality now we should be smart about how we spend that to improve schools to you know perhaps improve income tax credit huge number of things we should be debating uh to use that money well the fact that this way less than one percent should go to help stop uh epidemics to create stability to help those in need you know i think that case can be made nobody's suggesting that you go over one percent in terms of helping those who are the poorest you've told me before that a progressive income tax structure is the best way to fight the inequality problem here in the united states a redistribution of resources if you will and if anything our tax regime should be more progressive you still feel that way right well the government is spending more than it takes in so at some point even for the current safety net and programs you know somebody's going to pay more in taxes and i do think that should be done in a progressive fashion just fixing the taxes alone uh you know is a big help but you also want the impact of that government spending to really learn you know why are kids dropping out of college uh you know it's not the case that affordability is the only problem in us higher education and for some cases it is but i wouldn't even put that at the top of the list now that um so much wealth is concentrated in the hands of so few some people say that a wealth tax not an income tax is the only way to properly tackle the inequality problem could you get behind a wealth tax i wouldn't be against wealth tax the unless you get a lot of nations cooperating and deal with some of the problems like people leaving the country or uh how do you do these uh valuations that can get quite complicated and if you have to do that every year but uh you know if the society got behind a wealth tax yes you can raise money that way not many countries do it in fact europe has less today than it had before partly because if you're a small country the issue of people leaving changing their residence is a fairly big issue in general i'm for way more financial transparency i don't like that you can have trust where nobody knows who owns it you know whenever you talk about all this money that moves around and you know what did it pay taxes is that criminal money uh trans we should have a lot more transparency so i don't i i doubt you know the us will do a wealth tax but i wouldn't be against it the closest thing we have to it is the estate tax and there i've been a huge proponent that uh that should go back to the uh the level uh 55 percent that it was a few decades ago tax refugees are a real issue what would you say to your fellow billionaires and in some cases millionaires who reject the idea of progressive taxation and increasingly are relocating at the very least under the current regime to states where they don't have to pay as much tax yeah so you know the biggest issue about this would be if people are actually leaving the the country all together there you could have something like an exit tax uh certainly for their u.s assets within the u.s there is a fair bit of zero sum competition both for individuals and for businesses where you know if somebody's going to place some jobs then you know gigantic money gets meant to them i think a lot of that the state should sit down and you know sort of declare a truce in terms of how that money gets spent we're never going to totally align the income tax regime uh across the 50 states uh but you know the the if they would move towards the middle in some way you know that uh that would be helpful there are jurisdictions that are getting to a point where it really does become uh uh that they're not helping themselves by raising the rate we're talking about places like perhaps new jersey or connecticut the ones where yeah i know most people seem to be fleeing yeah i don't keep track of who's got the very highest rate now you know there are states whose balance sheet uh is very troublesome in terms of the the liabilities they have and it's too bad we're not really facing up to those and saying okay what is the plan for new jersey or illinois you know over the next several decades to get out of the financial difficulty there and puerto rico's 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 as you well know there's a big difference between good or effective philanthropy and bad or ineffective philanthropy of the billionaires you know and they happen to the people who tend to give away in aggregate the most money how many would you say are doing a good job of that um you know i i don't know all the different philanthropy that different people are doing we do have this group called the giving pledge where uh now a couple hundred people have committed to giving the majority of their money away and there are regular meetings one annual meeting to talk broadly about the topic and then through the course of the year lots of meetings that are focused on giving to science giving education giving to the environment and i know people are learning a lot from each other there are some very sophisticated givers and they the heterogeneity is such that you'll never have a single score i mean you know george soros did brilliant work helping the eastern european uh countries you know build up a civil society uh you know that was kind of amazing hard to measure uh you know people like uh rich kinder and his wife are giving in houston and you know creating these parks and it's you know fantastic there are uh i'd say in the giving pledge there are at least 30 philanthropists that i've learned a lot from you know starting with people like eli broad who've been at it uh for many decades you know michael bloomberg who's you know incredible in what he does i i hate if i start by mentioning you know leaving various people out but i've learned from uh uh these people and that's partly why i look forward on to that event you know so the big givers should be very careful they should put the same care into it that they put into creating the wealth no one would accuse you and melinda of not giving away enough money but one of the reasons you've been able to be so generous is by investing well and i wonder at this stage of the game are you and melinda and your investment chief michael larson um as focused as you have been on generating returns so that the foundation has more money to give away and and for that matter um you know your your private investments or is now a time to think more about capital preservation well i'm bullish uh on the you know u.s businesses and uh global businesses so we're not you know in some defensive posture where we're mostly in cash or anything like that uh you know our the strategy that's been used on the investments is to be over 60 percent in equities and uh that's still the case no that's still the case and and you know even after a 10-year bull run well yeah you can well calling uh market turns is a a very tough thing to do you can make the case that the yields aren't very high but that's true across all asset classes i mean uh you know t bills tenure you know well less than two percent uh so there's no you know obvious thing to beat other investors out there and there's reasons to think absolute returns for the next decade will be less than they have been for the last several decades the government has opened up an antitrust review of big tech facebook amazon google and apple do you still believe it's better to regulate these companies than to break them up and if so why well breakup uh i don't know the last time a company was broken up it's a a i think quite a long time ago and you have to really think is that the best uh thing if there's a way the company's behaving that you want to get rid of then you know you should just say okay that's a banned behavior stop splitting the company in two and having two people doing the bad thing uh you know that doesn't seem like a uh a solution so it's a pretty narrow set of things that i think breakup is the right answer to um you know these companies are very big very important companies the fact that governments are uh thinking about these things that's not not a surprise you know i was naive about this but that was a long time ago and i didn't realize that as microsoft gets successful we'd come under scrutiny and we went through our uh uh thing back in the 90s and that's you know made us more thoughtful about this kind of activity do you share the government's concerns that any one of these companies or all of them perhaps are doing things abusing their power and influence in such a way that it undermines either the political system and we've heard about that or perhaps the consumer economy and we've heard about that too i think these companies are behaving totally legally they're doing a lot of innovative things you know the fact that the tax rules inc incent you to uh structure in a certain way and you to minimize your taxes people should look if they want to change that going forward uh you know that's real question social media nobody had a crystal ball that in some ways that would be a way of sort of radicalizing people or splitting them into different groups what exactly the solution that to that should be to you know have us more reading a common front page not being pulled to extremes uh you know i don't think you can rely completely on the tech industry to worry about that enough come up with the solutions i do think government really needs to talk about what those rules should be so it's not you know you could say i'm biased but i see these as well-meaning you know highly innovative uh companies that it's up to society to make sure that their innovation doesn't have negative side effects

Channel: Bloomberg Technology

Views: 120,366

Keywords: Bloomberg

Id: EagrIPTCqrg

Length: 31min 39sec (1899 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 17 2019