Bill Gates agrees that income inequality is a problem

As the richest man in the USA, he should know...

After he was already a millionaire, he was seen around Redmond at a 7/11 using a $.50 off coupon on Haagen Das.

Believe what you will, Bill. He's got a lot of balls critiquing a system he took full advantage of and advocating one that would have only made him 'equal' to the boys in tha hood. If he really was pissed that he has more tghan me, he is welcome to give some to me. Not to an alleged charity which is basically rich folks like himself, but literally to me. Until then (of course this will never happen) everything he says will be viewed as offensively hypocritical by the working class (who, incidentally, do not complain about the system that worked so well for Bill!)

None of those issues have anything to do with income inequality.

The first has to do with poorly designed incentives that would occur whether or there is income equality. Likewise with number 2. Number 3 doesn't even mean anything - it's just a series of words connected to eac other.

That should be "whether or not there is income equality". Also, it doesn't matter who says these things. Its either correct or it isn't. Gates has said plenty of things that are incorrect before.

How about a $20 billion donation to Hill's campaign Bill?

Much of what is said above I don't disagrees with, but the idea that it is easy to fix or that we even know how to fix it is wrong. Start with idea of fixing the incentives problem (which is the one I doubt exists). We start in colleges. Take some point off the test scores of the students who keep getting the highest grades (and who always end up getting the good jobs and the good money), and the "redistribute" the points to the students who always get the lowest test scores in class (as they are the ones most "in need"). The argument is that the low-scorers currently are "dis-incentivized" to work to get better grades because the A students are so far ahead of them. So this will fix that, as all college students will get Bs and Cs, and so all will have a more equal change to get jobs (then we have to do the same on the work place). Easy, incentives corrected, problem solved, right?

Don't leave out the lobbying.The problem is that those "A" students have rich parents that bribe(lobby) or give favors to the teacher.

If you read Black Swan or any other of Taleb's work, you will see that there can never be inequality in something limited like a test score.

porgressive wrote:

Will the idiots that believe in unregulated, trickle-down economics listen to the knowledgeable people and look at the facts, or will they still be in denial?

Who believes in "unregulated, trickle-down economics"? "Unregulated"? I'm not aware of any notable portion of the world that are anarchists. A fair amount of people believe that things can be "over-regulated", but that's not the same thing as believing that they should be "unregulated". Painting those you disagree with in the extreme is an easy way to depersonalize them and vilify them, but it deals little with reality.

Your analogy is incorrect. Academic high achievers usually come from high socioeconomic families who send their children to better K-12 schools and provide stability and opportunities that the children of working poor do not have. The solution is to improve schools in poor communities and invest in programs like HeadStart.

If I was Bill Gates I would want to stay as far away from equality in money as possible and be quite happy having more than everyone else, like him I would be charitable.

That doesn't sound right.

If everyone in the world had an equal amount of money, everyone would be VERY poor.

Dixie Gnormose wrote:

Believe what you will, Bill. He's got a lot of balls critiquing a system he took full advantage of and advocating one that would have only made him 'equal' to the boys in tha hood. If he really was pissed that he has more tghan me, he is welcome to give some to me. Not to an alleged charity which is basically rich folks like himself, but literally to me. Until then (of course this will never happen) everything he says will be viewed as offensively hypocritical by the working class (who, incidentally, do not complain about the system that worked so well for Bill!)

You're pathetic. Bill Gates was a self made man, he deserved all the money he got and it couldn't have gone to a better person. He knows how to use it and make sure it's used wisely.

Alledged charity to rich folks? Bill Gates has and will do more for the world than you and a billion people combined. Try doing some reasearch, like the billion plus he's donated to fight aids,TB and malaria. And his many other 3rd world country initiatives.

Pre Ronald Regan, most of the highest paid employees in a company were on average paid no more than 20x what the lowest earning employee made.

Post Ronald Regan, the gap quickly accelerated and now there are top earners making upwards of 1000x what the lowest earning employee is making and the gap keeps widening

In the PDX wrote:

Pre Ronald Regan, most of the highest paid employees in a company were on average paid no more than 20x what the lowest earning employee made.

Post Ronald Regan, the gap quickly accelerated and now there are top earners making upwards of 1000x what the lowest earning employee is making and the gap keeps widening

You're right. But what you neglect is that the "low earning employees" were making MORE than they were before. They made lots more money with NO NEGATIVE (actually, positive) impact on the rest.

Liberals don't see it that way, of course. Liberals would rather see everybody with $5,000 than 90% of people with $6,000 and 10% with $50,000. A liberal would rather see you DRAGGED DOWN TO THEIR LEVEL than see you make lots more money than they do, even if it doesn't hurt them.

Work hard, be successful, be happy - best way to annoy a liberal.

Mrr82 wrote:

You're pathetic. Bill Gates was a self made man, he deserved all the money he got and it couldn't have gone to a better person. He knows how to use it and make sure it's used wisely.

Alledged charity to rich folks? Bill Gates has and will do more for the world than you and a billion people combined. Try doing some reasearch, like the billion plus he's donated to fight aids,TB and malaria. And his many other 3rd world country initiatives.

Depends on which billion people. If it is you and your nearest billion relatives I would agree. If it is me and my family of four (plus 999,999,996 players to be named later) then you would be sadly mistaken.