Bill Gates's Plan To Improve Our World 445
An anonymous reader writes "Bill Gates has written an article in Wired outlining his strategy to improve people's lives through philanthropy and investment in technology and the sciences. He says, 'We want to give our wealth back to society in a way that has the most impact, and so we look for opportunities to invest for the largest returns. That means tackling the world's biggest problems and funding the most likely solutions. That's an even greater challenge than it sounds. I don't have a magic formula for prioritizing the world's problems. You could make a good case for poverty, disease, hunger, war, poor education, bad governance, political instability, weak trade, or mistreatment of women. ...I am a devout fan of capitalism. It is the best system ever devised for making self-interest serve the wider interest. This system is responsible for many of the great advances that have improved the lives of billions—from airplanes to air-conditioning to computers. But capitalism alone can't address the needs of the very poor. This means market-driven innovation can actually widen the gap between rich and poor. ... We take a double-pronged approach: (1) Narrow the gap so that advances for the rich world reach the poor world faster, and (2) turn more of the world's IQ toward devising solutions to problems that only people in the poor world face.'"
Re:Philantropy for dummies (Score:4, Informative)
Do you realize that doubling the minimum wage will also result in a net loss of jobs?
For someone who complained about lack of citations and statistics the sentence before, you sure make bold claims with nothing to back them up.
Loss of jobs has been the #1 agenda item for those against... uh, actually pretty much anything that might help the low-income people, be it minimum wage, unions, employee protection laws or really anything else.
Rarely is there any evidence for it. Two recent papers show that there is no significant impact:
http://www.nber.org/papers/w4509 [nber.org]
http://www.irle.berkeley.edu/workingpapers/157-07.pdf [berkeley.edu]
Now pony up your evidence or accept you've fallen for cheap rhetorics.