In a recent speech Bill Gates gave to a group of government officials and tech specialists in New Delhi, he criticized US privacy and immigration laws, spoke of his outlook on future technologies, and explained why he got rid of his Facebook page. His criticisms of the US laws took the pretense that health care providers and doctors not being able to share medical information of an individual to other institutions was a stumbling block and that exceptions in strict immigration ought to be made for “smart people” to live and work in high-paying jobs in the US. Gates also mentioned his views of a future with cell phones recognizing people around them or testing for diseases and an Internet being utilized for a broader use than simply web pages and the like. He mentioned that he once had a Facebook page and that it became too much of a time-waster having to sort through ten thousand friend requests periodically.
Bill keeps ranting on and on about not being able to cherry pick from around the globe and bring them to Redmond.
How about investing some money into the US School System and trying to find that talent here as well?
He’s right on the lack of a unified Medical Records System but no one wants Bill Gates/Microsoft to be in charge of providing the software tools to make it happen.
…and certainly not in providing identity cards to citizens of my country!!!
I hope FSF India pushes well for this. I am all with them.
Edited 2009-07-25 05:31 UTC
It would be wise for any nation to cherry-pick the finest talent around the world and entice them to their shores. Guest worker programs enhance the productivity of domestic firms, and guest workers send valuable remittances home.
The value of this mutually beneficial economic arrangement is not limited to the firms and workers. The resulting economic ties and cultural exchange have a far wider positive impact on society.
Yes, public education is important, but it is only in conflict with guest worker programs to the extent the labor market is a zero-sum. On the long term (the only timeframe in which public education matters) it certainly is not.
You mean other than the $1 billion+ that the Gates Foundation has already set aside for improving education in the US?
(You can quibble that the money hasn’t been well-spent, but you can’t say it hasn’t been spent at all)
See http://www.ala.org/ala/alonline/currentnews/newsarchive/1999/februa…
Edited 2009-07-25 07:10 UTC
That investment has just shrunk by over half it’s purported valuation of stock, another BS approach to investment.
He gave them a dividend chunk of his stock to reduce his tax burden.
BFD. That’s not humanitarian.
That’s a write off with no plan.
I’m talking about building a University for advanced fields of research and more that aides Humanity.
The Founder of Dole Pineapple has invested > $5 Billion in Stem Cell research after the death of his beloved wife whose Cancer ate her up and he discovered how archaic the science behind it gave him the rage to fuel a vision to fix it.
Actually Bill Gates has donated plenty of dole (pun intended) into the educational system in the US. Stanford, Harvard and U of W off the top of my head got some serious endowment money from Gates.
Using Dole as an example of anything is silly, most donations are made under a tax-relief framework, and Dole’s donation was fueled by a perfectly selfish humanitarian driving force… only caring about cancer once one of his loved ones got affected. Contrast that with the large amounts of money donated by the Gates Foundation towards things like Malaria vaccination, a disease which is very unlikely to affect any of his loved ones.
So it is silly to use him as an example to diminish Gates’s contributions, which are orders of magnitude larger in both size and scope than Dole’s. In other words, most large donations/endowments receive severe tax breaks. So it is silly to single out Gates for that, when literally every other large donation is done under the same framework.
Besides as far as corporations go, Dole makes Microsoft look like a boy scout troupe when it comes to humanitarian and labor abuses across the globe.
Edited 2009-07-25 18:30 UTC
Bill Gates has made plenty of pleas for increase in investment/quality into the American educational system.
This is not about H1B visas, but to actually make the US immigration system far more “sensical” like Canada does with their point system, which favors the immigration of well educated/prepared professionals.
I have no love for Microsoft, but Bill Gates as a private citizen makes a hell of a lot of sense most of the time.
Edited 2009-07-25 18:23 UTC
Nice to see an article on Gates’ personal side here. Thanks.
The man is no fool.
I think that anyone who gives to people or entities in need, even if they get a tax break doing it, is doing something good.
Doing something good, even if it is not out of the goodness of your heart, does affect someone in a positive way, which is good.