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  • ARTHUR BROOKS: Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. I’m Arthur Brooks, president of the American

  • Enterprise Institute. And were delighted to welcome all of you today to this event,

  • entitledPoverty to Prosperity.” So, this is Bill Gates. (Laughter, applause.)

  • BILL GATES: Thank you. MR. BROOKS: With his wife, Melinda, he’s

  • the co-chair and co-founder of America’s largest private foundation: the Bill and Melinda

  • Gates Foundation. They work to reduce poverty and expand health care overseas and to improve

  • education here in the United States among other things. Previously, he was the chairman

  • and CEO of Microsoft, the world’s largest software company, which he co-founded in 1973.

  • Most importantly, like me, he’s a native of Seattle and somewhat of a Seahawks fan,

  • which is good. But that’s not what were here to talk

  • about. Were here to talk about his incredibly important work with the foundation, the work

  • that he’s doing here and around the world. He shares so many of the priorities of the

  • American Enterprise Institute to build a better life for people here and everyplacepeople

  • who suffer from need, people who suffer from disease, people who suffer from tyranny. What

  • can we do about these things? Well, he’s asking the big questions and

  • he’s putting his own resources behind the answers. And were going to hear what he

  • has to say about his latest work. So, welcome to AEI. It’s an honor to have

  • you and to be among all of our friends here. You just issued your annual letter for 2014.

  • I recommend that everybody read it. It’s a very interesting piece of work. It’s detailed,

  • and it explodes a lot of myths about poverty around the world. And you offer an incredibly

  • bold prediction. You say that there will be almost no poor countries remaining by the

  • year 2035. What do you mean by that? MR. GATES: Well, the primary measure, which

  • has all sorts of challenges, is GDP per person. But it’s stillwe don’t have a substitute

  • measure. So just if you take thatWorld Bank classified countries with over 1,200

  • per person per year as moving up into a middle-income bracket, so moving from low income to middle

  • income. And we have today 45 countries that are still in that low-income category.

  • And what I’m saying is that, by 2035, there should be less than 10, and theyll mostly

  • be either places like North Korea, where you have a political system that basically

  • creates poverty, or landlocked African countries where the geography, the disease burden, the

  • disparate ethnicities mean that they haven’t been able to bring together a government that

  • in terms of education, infrastructure, health does even the most minimum things for them.

  • And so were on this rising tide that’s not recognized. It’s overwhelming how prosperity

  • is spread around the world, say from 1960, where there were very few rich countries and

  • a gigantic number of poor countries. Now most countries are middle- income countries, and

  • poor countries are much smaller. Now, just saying that theyll all move up past that

  • threshold doesn’t mean they won’t have poor people within the countries; it doesn’t

  • say their governments will be fantastic, but it will be a lot better on average than it

  • is today. MR. BROOKS: That’s an extraordinary thing.

  • We have a tendency to despair when we look around the world, and we have a tendency to

  • say the world’s not getting better because of the way that we see the news. But youre

  • saying that’s a myth, right? MR. GATES: Yeah. I think that a deep problem

  • in perception is that if you want something to improve, you have a tendency to be bothered

  • by the status quo and to think that it’s much worse than it is. And that can be beneficial

  • because you don’t like, say, the level of violence in the world, the level of poverty,

  • the level ofnumber of kids dying. But if you divorce yourself from the true facts

  • of improvement and look at the exemplars, look at what’s workedif you get sort

  • of a general despair about is the world improving, then you won’t latch on to those examples.

  • The Steven Pinker example, one of my favorite books of all time, is that if you ask people,

  • Is this one of the most violent eras in history?,” they will say yes. Overwhelmingly,

  • Americans say yes. Well, it’s overwhelmingly the least violent era in history. And so what

  • it means is your disgust with violence actually increases, and that’s partly why we take

  • steps and why within our own society and the world at large it’s come down so dramatically.

  • MR. BROOKS: I love your optimism. And so, based on your optimism, given the fact that

  • the world will have only a few poor countries in the year 2035, what’s the Gates Foundation

  • going to be doing in 2036? (Laughter.) MR. GATES: Well, there are a lot of diseases.

  • Over 80 percent of the difference of why a poor child is 20 times more likely to die

  • than a child in a middle-income country, it’s these infectious diseases. It’s diarrhea,

  • pneumonia, malaria. And then there’s a few adult diseases which are way more prevalent

  • in poor countriesTB, HIV. And weve taken on as a central mission

  • it’s a little bit over half of what we doto get rid of those diseases. And

  • so that will remain our priority until were basically done with those. And those are tough

  • enough that I’d expect usit will take us 30 to 40 years to really be done with those.

  • And then we will have a crisis because we will have the problem of success and well

  • have to say, OK, what is the health inequity between

  • well-off countries and poor countries? Is it, you know, obesity, heart disease, and

  • what interventions? And even before 30 years are up, well start to think about this.

  • But right now, were sort of maniacally focused in our health on those poor world

  • conditions because we see that between research and getting things like vaccines and drugs

  • out there, we can basically save a life for about $2,000. But everything we do should

  • be benchmarkedif it’s not that effective, then we shouldn’t do it. So, you know, were

  • pretty specialized in making breakthroughs in those areas.

  • MR. BROOKS: Youve been involved in projects all over the place, from eradicating polio

  • outside the United States to improving schools in cities and even in rural areas around the

  • United States. What do you consider at this point, given all of the resources that you

  • put into these important projects, to be your most important victory or your area of greatest

  • success, and what did you learn from it? MR. GATES: Well, weve had the most success

  • in global health. You know, there’s over six million people alive today that wouldn’t

  • be alive if it wasn’t for the vaccine coverage and new vaccine delivery that weve funded.

  • And so it’s very measurable stuff. And, in fact, if you applied a very tough

  • lens to our work, you can almost say, OK, why are you even involved in U.S. education?

  • Well, we have a reason that you could say is not all that numerical, which is that the

  • success that I had, that Melinda had, came from the U.S. education system. It came from

  • the U.S. system of encouraging innovation and business and, you know, protecting the

  • intellectual property. And so we feel like we need to havetake

  • what we think is the greatest cause of inequity, the greatest challenge to America’s continued

  • leadership in innovation, which is the failures of the education system, that we need to be

  • dedicated to that even though the risk that we might not have a dramatic impact is much

  • higher in that work than it is in any of our health or agricultural or sanitation or financial

  • service work, which focuses on the poor countries. You know, we feel that it’s critical that

  • America get improved education, but that’s very hard work. And, over the last 20 years,

  • where government spending in this area and philanthropic spending, although it’s a

  • tiny percentage, has gone up dramatically, the proof in achievement in terms of reading

  • ability, math ability, dropout rates, you know, kids graduating college, there’s been

  • hardly any improvement at all despite massive resource increases that have gone into the

  • area. So it’s critical, but it’s not easy and there’s no proof that it’s necessarily

  • going to be dramatically better 10 or 20 years from now.

  • MR. BROOKS: So let me ask you about that intransigent set of problems that we have in U.S. education.

  • And I understand that there are certain problems that you canyou can eradicate the guinea

  • worm. You can’t necessarily eradicate ignorance. Here at

  • AEI were trying to improve the free enterprise system. That doesn’t mean well be done

  • at some point. I mean, that’s just the nature of social enterprise as I understand.

  • Here in Washington, D.C., we talk about public education all the time. This is the capital

  • of the free world. We should have the best education system, and it should be an exemplar

  • to the whole world. I think we shouldwe should agree. Were pumping more than $18,000

  • per kid per year in the system, and 15 percent of eighth graders read at a nationally acceptable

  • standard. So what do we do? MR. GATES: Well, it is phenomenal the variance

  • in how much is spent per student. You know, Utah’s below $6,000 per student per year.

  • A lot of states are in the $7,500 per student per year (range). Youve got some that spend

  • more than D.C. – New Jersey would spend a fair bit morethe Northeast as a whole

  • is where the biggest spending takes place. And yet, there is no correlation between the

  • amount spent and the excellence that comes out, you know. Yes, Massachusetts is good,

  • but if you take the high-spending states as a whole, then you get Pennsylvania, New Jersey,

  • Washington, D.C., mixed into that, and it doesn’t look like there’s any correlation.

  • So it’s a very strange system. Washington, D.C., on a relative basis, actually

  • has improved a fair bit over the last three or four years – a combination of improved

  • personnel policies, shutting some schools, letting the charter schools take a somewhat

  • higher share of the cohort. It’s about the fourth largest of all the districts in the

  • nation, New Orleans being number one in terms of the percentage kids go to charter schools.

  • And the charter schools here on average are quite good. So, you know, there are some things

  • that have gone well, but it’s still an abysmal system.

  • And, you know, the fact that there isn’t more of a consensus on what should we be doing

  • to the personnel system and using innovation to, say, be almost as good as the countries

  • in Asia, it’s got to be a concern both from an equity point of view and from an overall

  • country competitiveness point of view. MR. BROOKS: So if spending more money is not

  • the answer – I mean, it would be great if it were, because as a rich country we can

  • do that. But there are innovation ideas about choice, charters, etc. If it’s the disruptive

  • innovations that are going to make it happen, how do we inject those ideas more systematically

  • into public bureaucracies, not just in schools, but in government in general?

  • MR. GATES: Well, if you look at the education system, the amount of actual research that

  • goes on to understand why some teachers are so extremely good, giving their kids more

  • than two years of math learning in a year, and why the teachers who are at the other

  • extreme, giving less than half a year of learning in a yearwhy were not taking those

  • best practices and at least trying to transfer those into the other teachers by doing observation

  • and feedback, you know, having the schools of education really drive for high-quality

  • teaching, it’s not a personnel system that right now is focused on teacher improvement.

  • Teachers get almost no feedback. They get almost no sense of, OK, I’m good at this

  • and I should share that with other people. I’m not very good at this, and therefore

  • I should learn from other people. It’s very different than most other so-called professions.

  • And, at the same time, technology is coming along in terms of taking the classroom video,

  • and, you know, sharing it, having people commenting on it, delivering personalized learning to

  • your kids so that you can assess where each of them are and tune lessons according to

  • what theyre having the challenge with. The opportunity is there, and that’s what

  • our foundation invests in. It invests in studying the very, very good teachers. We took 20,000

  • hours of video and looked at various measures, you know, what were they doing differently?

  • And we created a lot of model districts where there are so- called peer evaluators who are

  • in the classroom, observing, giving feedback. And, you know, it looks like the results on

  • that are very good. And so there are points of light that if we could get it adopted permanently

  • and scale it up, it would start to move the dropout rate and the math and reading achievement.

  • As you say, it’s tough, though, because when we invented the malaria vaccine, no school

  • board gets to vote to uninvent it, whereas, you know, if you make an advance on personnel

  • systemSenator Alexander, when he was governor of Tennessee in the 1980s did a pretty

  • good system where people got feedback and evaluation, and, you know, it looked like

  • it was starting to work pretty well. And yet, it disappeared.

  • MR. BROOKS: The malaria virus is not unionized. Excuse me. I’m sorry. That’s not my place.

  • Please. (Laughter.) MR. GATES: Yeah. OK. I certainly agree that

  • there are various groups that can stand for the status quo. When you want to come in and

  • change things, they are worried not as much for the students, but for the teachers. So

  • they can defend the status quo. But if it was the case in America that the

  • less unionized places were like Singapore and more unionized places were poor, and if

  • you had some direct thing, and you said, OK, well, here it is, and now we can explain it,

  • that would be one thing. That is not true. Our education is very poor across the entire

  • country, and it does not correlate to unionization. Massachusetts, pretty heavily unionized, they

  • do relatively better. You know, some other places not unionized, likeactually, on

  • an absolute scale, OK, take Arizonait isn’t – there is no single factor you

  • can say that in the 50 states, when that’s been removedfinancial constraints, union

  • constraintsthat something like Asia is taking place.

  • MR. BROOKS: Let’s go back outside the United States just for a minute again. You wrote

  • in your letter that there’s a lot of misunderstanding about U.S. foreign aid. Now, if you read what

  • people are writing about aid, there are a lot of critics who think it’s

  • just hopelessly ineffective. Some think it’s actually positively destructive. What’s

  • the misunderstanding about foreign aid from your point of view?

  • MR. GATES: Well, whenever we give foreign aid, you have to, for any particular grant,

  • say what your goal is for that grant. If you goal is famine relief, then you should measure

  • the grant by whether people have been starved to death. You shouldn’t go in and say, OK,

  • did the GDP go up? If youre trying to have a political friend

  • like, you know, you want Egypt to sign a treaty and be a friend and that is your goal, then

  • you justand youre not measuring the dollars according to human developmentthen

  • don’t come back later and say, oh, their GDP didn’t go up or you didn’t achieve

  • human development. So a lot of foreign aid, things are labeled

  • foreign aid, to take an extreme case like sending money to Mobutu when he was the dictator

  • of Zaire, it was labeled foreign aid but it was just kind of a joke that, you know, people

  • act like, well, yeah, that’s going to help the people in that country. Well, ha, ha,

  • ha. Now, because you don’t have that cold- war imperative, a lot of the aid is actually

  • trying to uplift their health or agriculture, you know, get these countries to self-sufficiency.

  • And so the aid community does a lot more measurement. Weve learned. We have a lot more rich countries.

  • Korea was a huge recipient. Now it’s turned around and is a very significant donor. So

  • you have more rich countries giving to far less poor countriesChina, Brazil, Mexico,

  • Thailand, they were aid recipients in varying degrees. Now theyre no longer aid recipients.

  • India, the aid it needs is very targeted. A very small part of it is GDP. Within 10,

  • 15 years, they won’t need to be an aid recipient. So this is a field that makes advances.

  • And when you label it aid, it seems mysterious. When it comes to inventing the seeds of the

  • green revolution that avoided famine in Asia or the smallpox eradication that was a U.S.-led

  • effort, that a disease that was killing two million people a year hasn’t killed a single

  • person since 1979, when you look at that, you say, well, was that worth it? Well, I

  • guess it was worth it. There are so-called global public goods creating seeds, medicines

  • or – (inaudible) – vaccines for these infectious diseases that the normal market

  • mechanism does not work; that is, it’s not rational for a profit-seeking company to do

  • a malaria vaccine because there iseven though it kills a million children a year,

  • the parents of those children don’t have enough money to justify the research. And

  • so it’s a market failure. Now, markets are extremely good. They work

  • you know, theyre the best mechanism we have. The more you can use them, whenever

  • you can use them, that isyou know, that’s one of the key mechanisms along with science

  • and government that have led us to be so much better off than we arethan we were hundreds

  • of years ago. But for the diseases that we work on, there is nothe R&D would not

  • show up except for government aid and philanthropy. MR. BROOKS: Well, so your philanthropy is

  • working alongside government aid to be sure. And you show that in your letter and weve

  • known that for a long time. But there are a lot of people who believe very strongly

  • that the presence of philanthropy like yours is evidence that the government simply isn’t

  • doing enough to help people. And I’m going to quote Ralph Nader, who

  • once said thatthat’s not a laugh line, you people. There’s a rowdy crowd here.

  • Ralph Nader once said, “A society that has more justice is a society that needs less

  • charity.” What do you say to that? MR. GATES: You don’t want to depend on charity

  • for justice. Charity is small. I mean, the private sector’s like 90 percent, and government’s

  • like 9 percent, and philanthropy is less than 1 percent. There are things in terms of trying

  • out social programs in innovative ways that government isjust because of the way

  • the job incentives worktheyre not going to try out new designs like philanthropy

  • can and theyre not going to have volunteer hours coming in to leverage the resources

  • like philanthropy can. So philanthropy plays a unique role. It is

  • not a substitute for government at all. When you want to give every child in America a

  • good education or make sure theyre not starving, that’s got to be government because

  • philanthropy isn’t there day in and day out serving the entire population. It’s

  • just not of the scale or the design to do that. It’s there to try out things, including

  • funding disease research or, you know, academic studies to see if something is more effective.

  • So I’d agree with that Nader quote. If you want broad justice, you’d better be doing

  • that through government mechanisms. MR. BROOKS: Does that mean that we need less

  • charity, however, if we have enough justice? MR. GATES: Well, I guess if you have perfection,

  • then you don’t need charity anymore. Charity plays a huge role in America. Our

  • universities, one of the reasons that they are world-class is because there’s a tendency

  • of the graduates who do well to give back to those universities. And that is the envy

  • of the world. Every other country is trying to think, OK, how do they get this magic cycle

  • going where they create successful people in their universities and then they help make

  • those universities be a lot stronger? In terms of various scientific ideas, you

  • know, Hughes Medical Foundationthere’s just a whole ton of thingsRockefeller

  • Foundation, if you go back in time, they invented things that the government research projects

  • were not moving into those areas, not doing that work. The March of Dimes invented the

  • polio vaccine. You know, the thing that were using to go out and eradicate, make it the

  • second disease after smallpox that gets eradicated, this is the oral polio vaccine. That’s 10

  • doses, and this thing costs $1.30, so 13 cents per kid. That was philanthropic money, March

  • of Dimes money, that caused both its predecessor called IPV, which

  • was the Salk shot (this is the Sabin oral); they created those things, so philanthropy

  • has, you know, some amazing hits to go along with lots of money that was probably wasted.

  • MR. BROOKS: Now, there’s a related question to my last one, which is the number of people

  • who talk about charity and free enterprise as if they were in conflict. They believe

  • that capitalism, that people who trust capitalism because they don’t believe charity is a

  • good solution to problems, etc. – in other words, there’s an antagonism between markets

  • and nonmarket mechanisms that are philanthropic, and how do you square those? I think I understand,

  • but I’d like to hear your thoughts on that as well, given the fact that youve been

  • involved in one of the most important capitalistic endeavors in the history of our economy as

  • well as the biggest foundation in our country. MR. GATES: Well, once you get past basic research

  • and drawing the boundary of how much is government funded and how do you define is a tricky area.

  • There is a market failure for research as a whole, not just research for the poorest.

  • But, once you get past that, most innovation is driven by private enterprisethe magic

  • of the chip, the optic fiber, software, the magic of new drugs, new vaccines, all of that

  • stuffhow you come up with it, how you make it safe, that’s happening in private

  • enterprise. So, for our foundation, where were trying

  • to help the poorest, our relationship with the pharmaceutical companies has been fantastic.

  • And it’s greatevery time theyre successful, they come up with a new drug,

  • they manage to keep profitable because of that. That’s great for us because it means

  • theyre going to have a little bit more understanding to help us with our issues and

  • a little bit more on the way of resources, all totally voluntary on their part to pitch

  • in. And so the private sectoryou know, weve

  • got to bring private-sector agriculture in all of these countries. That is the ultimate

  • sustainable solution. Charity, as I said, won’t be there all the time. Government

  • aid won’t be there all the time. The question is how do you get them out of the poverty

  • trap? You needyou know, right now 40 percent of their kids don’t – in Africa,

  • don’t develop mentally so that they could ever, say, be fully literate. That is through

  • malnutrition, treatable malaria, a variety of health insults, theyre not achieving

  • anywhere near their cognitive potential. And so do you need to go in and remove that barrier,

  • that friction, in order to get them into a sustainable situation?

  • In Africa, and particularly the disease burden, the way the geography works, the split of

  • ethnicities, it’s been given the toughest problem: to create countries that are totally

  • self-supporting, you know, running a middle income or above democratic-type system. Theyll

  • get there, but they, for a variety of reasons will be the lastmost of the lastto

  • achieve that. MR. BROOKS: Philanthropy can stimulate the

  • mechanisms of free enterprise, which will then become self-sustaining and help these

  • people well beyond the scope of your foundation or any bit of government aid?

  • MR. GATES: Yeah. Absolutely. The poor farmers, the real solution for them is to be farmers

  • who are in the marketplace, selling enough of their produce to diversify the diet of

  • their kids, to be able to buy the school uniforms where those are necessary, and even when a

  • tough year comes along to have saved up enough that theyre not starving during the year

  • where weather is working against them. MR. BROOKS: People think a lot about leveraging

  • technology in international development. We hear about that constantly, you know, the

  • big headlines like give every child a laptop, etc. – and these are great ideas. And what

  • I want to know is from your point of view, what’s the most exciting opportunity for

  • technology to change lives today? MR. GATES: Well, I think the greatest injustice

  • in the area of health. And, you know, that’s my bias. That’s the area that I spend time

  • in. And I think a child dying is an injustice no matter where that takes place in the world.

  • And this is another one of those good news stories that’s not well known.

  • In 1960, 20 million children a year under five were dying a year. Now were down below

  • six million, and we have over twice as many people in that age cohort, so the rate reduction

  • is pretty phenomenal. And we can see a pathby working on diarrhea, pneumonia, malaria

  • we can see a path to get that over the next 20 years below three million a year.

  • And, at the same time as you do that, youre not only reducing deaths. Youre taking

  • all these kids who survived and yet don’t survive intactthat is their brain never

  • fully develops; their body never fully develops. And youre reducing that quite dramatically.

  • And so I’d say health is a necessary condition to get a country to have kids who, when they

  • go to school, they can learn to read, and, you know, therefore, it’s the thing weve

  • chosen as the big priority and I think will unlock the potential of these countries.

  • MR. BROOKS: So a lot of us in this room are probably looking at your incredible successes

  • and thinking, you know, if I could construct the world’s largest foundation, I could

  • do a lot of great things. But for the rest of us, who can’t do that, you must have

  • thought about how each one of us can make a difference as well. What kind of advice

  • do you give to everybody who wants to act philanthropically notwithstanding the limits

  • on their own personal resources? MR. GATES: Well, certainly, picking that cause

  • of inequity, whatever it isyou know, pick a local charter school, pick a disease

  • that somebody you know was touched by, go out to a poor country and see what’s going

  • on with the health or education thereyou know, all these problems require volunteer

  • hours, expertise, somebody who’s articulate. And a lot of people get frozen just seeing

  • that the need is infinite and say, OK, when I pick, will it be the best pick? Well, there’s

  • no sort of deeply rational way were going to have time to enumerate all the things you

  • could work on, and, you know, compare all those factors and then jump into

  • that. It’s best wherever you can get your passion engaged to pick something and jump

  • in. For most people, the first philanthropic thing

  • theyll do will be something in their neighborhood where they can go and, you know, put their

  • hands on it, meet the kids at the charter school where theyre volunteering their

  • time, meet the kids that theyre mentoring and see the progress that theyre making.

  • If you could connect up with the poor countries, the marginal impact of your time or even pretty

  • small resources is higher in many cases than anywhere else youre going to look, but

  • it’s harder to access that and figure out how youre going to, you know, stay involved

  • in a sustained way. So as long as youre engaged with something,

  • then throughout your career, maybe more time will be freed up, maybe youll be able to

  • draw your friends into that. And, if youre lucky financially, then you can apply resources

  • against it. And so the diversity – I mean, when de Tocqueville

  • came to the U.S. and saw all these nonprofit things people were doing, he was amazed. And

  • other countries have not to this day gotten the level of civil engagement that weve

  • gotten. There are factors that show that it’s even going down somewhat in America, that

  • were less unique in this respect than weve been, and that’s unfortunate because it

  • is a real strength. MR. BROOKS: So you recommend that each of

  • us given whatever resources that we have do something that we can touch and see with these

  • particular resources, thus giving us a sense of the good that were creating. And I appreciate

  • that advice. I want to turn now to some of our colleagues

  • here and start with one of our colleagues from education. Your foundation has generously

  • made it possible for us to do a lot of reform work on K-12 education and higher ed as well.

  • And so I want to go Mike McShane, who is over here. Mike has got a question that’s been

  • coming up all over Twitter and across our email hoping that we would ask you this question.

  • Mike. MIKE MCSHANE: Thank you so much. Your foundation

  • has been known for supporting the Common Core curriculum standards that have become increasingly

  • controversial. And the question that I have is, why? What promise do you see of the Common

  • Core standards? How do you see them as a lever for improving the American education system?

  • MR. GATES: OK. So what is the Common Core? It’s a very simple thing. It’s a written

  • explanation of what knowledge kids should achieve at very various milestones in their

  • educational career. So it’s writing down in sixth grade which math things should you

  • know, in ninth grade which math things should you know, in twelfth grade which math things

  • should you know. And you might be surprised to learn how poor

  • those – I’ll call those standards, but to be clear, it’s not curriculum. It’s

  • not a textbook. It’s not a way of teaching. It’s just

  • writing down should you know this part of algebra? Should you know trigonometric functions?

  • Should you knowbe able to recognize a graph of this type?

  • And doing that very well is hard because there are certain dependencies: if you teach it

  • in the wrong order; if you try and teach too much at once, too much too early, which the

  • U.S. was doing a lot of that, it can be very, very poor.

  • And if you comparewe have 50 of these things and there was quite a bit of divergence.

  • Some states had trigonometry, some didn’t. Some had pie charts, some didn’t. So, ironically,

  • what had happened was the textbook companies had gone in and told the committees that make

  • these things up that they should add things over time. And so we had math textbooks over

  • double the size of any of the Asian countries. And we had the ordering in almost every one

  • of our 50 – which is strange. You think if you had 50, one of them would randomly

  • be really, really well ordered. (Laughter.) Some were more ambitious than others.

  • So, for example, being high; that is, having the twelfth grade expectation be high, there

  • were a few like Massachusetts that were quite good in that respect. And so when kids from

  • Massachusetts take international tests or the SAT, anything, they do better, better

  • than the rest of the country. And so often, when you see those country rankings, theyll

  • take Massachusetts and show you where it would be if it was a separate country. And it’s

  • way past the U.S., that now is virtually at the bottom of any of the well-off countries,

  • with the Asian countries totally dominating the top six slots now. Finland had a brief

  • time where they were up high, and now theyre not even the European leader anymore.

  • So a bunch of governors said, hey, you know, why are we buying these expensive textbooks?

  • Why are they getting so thick? You know, are standards high enough or quality enough? And

  • I think it was the National Governors Association that said we ought to get together on this.

  • A bunch of teachers met with a bunch of experts, and so in reading and writing and math, these

  • knowledge levels were written down. And at some point 46 states had adopted that curriculum,

  • a variety of competitive curriculum, now that small companies can get into it because it’s

  • not just doing a book for Florida, and so the sort of barrier to entry that was created

  • by the large firms there goes away. The idea that youthose committees rig it so you

  • can’t use the old textbooks, you know, that idea will go away because in math, this can

  • have real durability. Changing your math standards is not like some

  • new form of math that’s being invented. And there has been in a sense a national expectation.

  • When you take the SAT test, it has trigonometry on it, so if youre in a state that doesn’t

  • have that, youre going to get a low score. And they use a certain notation in the way

  • they do math and certain states were different than that, so youre screwed. If you move

  • from state to stateMR. BROOKS: In the vernacular.

  • MR. GATES: – you experience discontinuity because of this. And it’s made it very hard

  • to compare things. And this is an era where we have things like Khan Academy that are

  • trying to be a national resource and yet theyyou sit down, it will tell you, are you

  • up to the sixth grade level? Are you up to the ninth grade level? Are you ready to graduate

  • from high school? And so this Common Core was put together.

  • If somebodyand states will decide this thing. Nobody is suggesting that the federal

  • government will, even in this area, which is not curriculum, dictate these things. States

  • can opt in. They can opt out. As they do that, they should look at this

  • status quo, which is poor. They should look and find something that’s high achievement,

  • that’s got quality. And if they can find something that’s that, if they have two

  • theyre comparing, they ought to probably pick something in common, because to some

  • degree, this is an area where if you do have commonalityit’s like an electrical

  • plugyou get more free market competition. Scale is good for free market competition.

  • Individual state regulatory capture is not good for competition.

  • And so this thing, in terms of driving innovation, you’d think that sort of pro- capitalistic

  • market-driven people would be in favor of it, but, you know, somehow, it’s gotten

  • to be controversial. And, you know, states will decide. Whatever they want to decide

  • is fine. But, at the end of the day, it does affect the quality of your teaching, does

  • affect when your kids go to take what are national-level tests, whether they are going

  • to do well or not do well. MR. BROOKS: Speaking of competition, let’s

  • go to competition outside of the United States and the extent to which it helps people who

  • are poor. And I want to turn to Paul Wolfowitz now.

  • PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Thanks very much for coming. It’s terrific to have you here. I have a

  • quick comment and then the question. The question is about trade. But the comment is about this

  • issue of waste in foreign aid. The amazing work that youre doing in the

  • foundation, that the U.S. government is doing with PEPFAR, other things demonstrate that

  • there are lots of ways to spend foreign aid that are the opposite of wasteful; theyre

  • accountable, theyre measurable; they make a huge difference in people’s lives. But

  • I would submit that there is a lot of waste. And I’ll give you just an example. If you

  • give $100 million to a government that is so tyrannical that you really have no idea

  • what’s happened to that money, by your numbers, that’s $100 million that could have saved

  • 50,000 lives. And I think youll have a stronger case for foreign aid if you go after

  • the things that are wasteful as well as the things that are good.

  • But here’s my question. In talking about foreign aid, you correctly say, we spend less

  • than 1 percent. We could afford to spend more. In fact, we spend more in agricultural subsidies.

  • Well, the agricultural subsidies aren’t just a waste of money. They are making it

  • harder for poor countries to export the very products that their competitive natural advantages

  • would lead them to, which is in agriculture. I wonder what you think about our agricultural

  • subsidy systems and what its impact is on the poor countries that you visit in terms

  • of their trade opportunities. MR. GATES: Well, we certainly distorted the

  • market in agriculture prices. There are some cases where it’s fairly extreme, like sugar.

  • And there are some cases where it’s more modest, like the bigthe big cereal crops.

  • In Africathere’s a few things like cotton, horticulture, where you can make a

  • clear case that the sort of dumping out of the rich countries because of strange subsidies

  • actually is affecting their income. Theyre not yet as competitive in the big-value crops

  • as they need to be. So we have a lot of work to do in Africa.

  • Africa right now can barely feed itself. So the huge rise in productivityit’s called

  • the green revolution, that was more than a factor of two increase in Asian cereal crops

  • that never happened in Africa because it has a unique ecosystem, so even maize and

  • wheat in Africa are very low productivity. That’s very fixable, both with conventional

  • breeding and with GMO-type breeding to give much, much better seeds.

  • And so the effect of trade barriers once we fix African agriculture, the impact of trade

  • barriers, then the numbers will get very, very large. And, you know, it’s just too

  • bad that both Europe and the U.S. sort ofand Japancompete to distort those

  • markets. And, you know, it doesn’t look like there’s going to be any change in that.

  • Now it’s called mispriced insurance instead of price supports, but it’s still money.

  • And, as you say, it reduces some level of efficiency in terms of who should be providing

  • which products. MR. BROOKS: One of the most striking statistics

  • that I’ve seen as an economist comes from a Catalan economist, his name is Xavier Sala-i-Martin

  • at Columbia University, who notes that since you and I were kids, the percentage of the

  • world’s population living on $1 a day or less has declined by 80 percent.

  • It’s just amazing. This question is related to that and it comes from our economist Michael

  • Strain, who says that the spread of free enterprise has dramatically reduced the share of the

  • world living on $1 a day or less, this standard that weve had since we were kids. Is that

  • the right standard? Youre looking at 2035 to wipe out at least average poverty across

  • all but maybe 10 countries in the world. What should the standard be? What kind of measurements

  • are you using, and how should we be thinking about it to update those measures?

  • MR. GATES: Well, any single measure isn’t going to capture what needs to go on. The

  • extreme poverty line now s $1.25 a day, and the poverty line is $2 a day. And you can

  • certainly argue that they should be a bit higher than that. Also the way that GDP is

  • measured in poor countries is extremely randomnot random. It’s inaccurate. The errors

  • bars are gigantic. There’s a book by Jerven calledPoor

  • Numbersthat just talks aboutyou know, for example, for a subsistence farmer, what

  • are you putting into that GDP number, you don’t have some market transaction. And

  • there’s a book by Charles Kenny, theGetting Betterbook, that talks about the fact

  • that GDP misses a lot of things. If something comes in, like a measles vaccine or increased

  • literacy, that improvement in human condition doesn’t necessarily show up in GDP at all.

  • In fact, there were radical advances in health and literacy in Africa during a 30-year period

  • that its GDP per person moved not at all, zero.

  • And so you want to put into a human development index; you want to put in GDP; you want to

  • put in some health, maybe under-five mortality, maternal mortality. You’d want to put in

  • something about education, something about freedom. And people like Mo Ibrahim have a

  • variety of, in his case, mostly governance measures that I think are throwing light on

  • these things. There’s still some work to be done to capture this.

  • GDP, if you have to pick one single thing, I’d still say it isit is the measure.

  • Even within rich countries, you do have relative poverty. And so the idea of do you worry about

  • getting enough to eat; if you have a medical condition, can you expect to get treatment;

  • there are things like that that even if the economics kind of look OK, you know, then

  • you shouldn’t be satisfied. And so the field of economists giving themselves a hard time

  • about how weak these measures are, I think over the next decade, there can be a real

  • contribution to how we look at well-being beyond GDP.

  • MR. BROOKS: Let’s talk about poverty right here in the United States a little bit more.

  • And I want to turn to my colleague, Robert Doar.

  • ROBERT DOAR: Thank you very much for coming, and thank you for all that you do for people

  • around the world. Poverty in the United States is often related to employment and economic

  • growth. And I wanted to test your optimism a little bit and ask whether you thought we

  • could get back to a 4 percent annual GDP growth in the United States, and if so, how? What

  • would be the key things to make that happen? MR. GATES: Yeah. You know, I’m not a fan

  • of the way time-series adjustment for comparing GDP between various points in time is done.

  • I think it meaningfully understates the rate of progress.

  • If you take, say, how you get news, your ability to get news, as far as the GDP is concerned,

  • the news business is down. It’s employing less people. It’s gathering less money.

  • And are you impoverished in terms of your ability to search and read articles today

  • versus, say, 30 years ago? Probably not. You know, buying encyclopedias, you know,

  • I bought itmy parents bought a World Book. I read it. You know, I had to learn

  • the world alphabetically. Very weird way to learn things. You know, now, every kid who

  • has Internet access has Wikipedia. And so whether it’s in the area of technology

  • or medicine or various things, yourethere’s a lot of a qualitative nature that’s not

  • captured in those things. So whether the gross number goes up or not, the rate of improvement

  • in livelihood, you know, I think will be very rapid in the future.

  • I do think tax structures will have to move away from taxing payroll because society has

  • a desire to have employment. Of all the inputs, you know, wood, coal plastic, cement, there’s

  • one that plays a special purpose, which is labor. And the fact that weve been able

  • to tax labor as opposed to capital or consumption, you know, just shows that demand for labor

  • was good relative to other things. Well, technology in general will make capital more attractive

  • than labor over time. Software substitution, you know, whether it’s for drivers or waiters

  • or nurses or even, you know, whatever it is you do – (laughter).

  • MR. BROOKS: We wonder that too sometimes. (Laughter.)

  • MR. GATES: It’s progressing. And that’s going to force us to rethink how these tax

  • structures work in order to maximize employment, you know, given that, you know, capitalism

  • in general, over time, will create more inequality and technology, over time, will reduce demand

  • for jobs particularly at the lower end of the skill set.

  • And so, you know, we have to adjust, and these things are coming fast. Twenty years from

  • now, labor demand for lots of skill sets will be substantially lower, and I don’t think

  • people have that in their mental model. MR. BROOKS: So aligning the incentives in

  • our economy to move away from taxing labor, moving to something like a progressive consumption

  • tax is just a smart thing to do to stimulateto have an economy that’s better aligned?

  • MR. GATES: Well, I think economists would have said that a progressive consumption tax

  • is a better construct, you know, at any point in history. What I’m saying is that it’s

  • even more important as we go forward because itthe distortion – I want to distort

  • in the favor of labor. And so not only will we not tax labor, things like the earned income

  • tax credit, you know, when people say we should raise the minimum wage, I think, boy, you

  • know, I know some economists disagree. But I think, boy, I worry about what that does

  • to job creation. The idea that through the income tax credit

  • you would end up with a certain minimum wage that you’d receive, that I understand better

  • than potentially damping demand in the part of the labor spectrum that I’m most worried

  • about. MR. BROOKS: So something like a guaranteed

  • minimum income for people who are working full time through an expansion on the EITC

  • or a wage subsidy seems like the right way to go.

  • MR. GATES: Yeah, one of my favorite AEI papers – I didn’t get time to look it up last

  • nightMR. BROOKS: He’s going to give us his top

  • 10 list here. (Laughter.) MR. GATES: No, it’s thelooking at consumption

  • instead of the income. Because income’s complicated. If I’m a student who’s, you

  • know, making no income, but I’m investing in my capabilitiesOK, my income looks

  • funny. If I’m a trader who had a bad year, my income looks funny. Consumption really

  • is what you care about. So when people say, hey, Mr. Gates, you should feel guilty because

  • you have so much money; well, it’s not that I have money. It’s my consumption I should

  • you know, if I’m supposed to feel guilty, it’s my consumption. (Laughter.)

  • The part that is going to philanthropy really is in a sense in the pocket of the poorest,

  • assuming that were smart about getting it to benefit them. And the idea that consumption

  • should be progressively taxed, I think that makes a lot of sense. People have tried to

  • do that by doing particular taxes on luxury goods, some things like that. That’s very

  • not very effective. It’s sort of picking favorites type things. But yes, consumption

  • should be progressively taxed. And we should understand the consumption.

  • Inequality of consumption is more an injustice than a number in a book is.

  • MR. BROOKS: So inequality of consumption is the real inequality we should be worried about.

  • I suppose you’d also say that inequality of opportunity is that which is the greatest

  • affront to dignity. I think I’m sort of paraphrasing

  • MR. GATES: Yeah, no, I agree with that. MR. BROOKS: Is that fair to say?

  • MR. GATES: Yeah, absolutely. Both measures, we should understand inequality of opportunity

  • and inequality of consumption way better than we do today.

  • MR. BROOKS: Right. Weve been doing a lotweve had a lot of interactions with

  • dignitaries from India. We just had the Dalai Lama here a couple of weeks ago. And were

  • going to have Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, who is a very prominent guru, who has many, many

  • millions of followers here. And were talking about Indian issues, in particular, of late.

  • Sadanand Dhume is our scholar in Indian studies. And he has a question about that country.

  • SADANAND DHUME: Thank you very much. I have a broad question about India. When you look

  • at your engagement with the country, what do you think it’s done well, and where do

  • you think it needs to do the most work? MR. GATES: Well, India has a lot of very socialistic

  • policies having to do with labor and land andthe fact that it has not risen as

  • a manufacturing power is an indictment of its government policies. That is, as China’s

  • incomes went up, the place that the world should have moved to next, as the manufacturing

  • hub of the world absolutely should be India. And that’s only happening to a very, very

  • tiny extent. And it has to do with, you know, regulatory complexities, infrastructure quality.

  • Now, you know, I’m optimistic about India. Weve put more into India than any country

  • in the world. India benefits from a funny form of competition, which is competition

  • between the states. And so, you know, when one state really gets its act together, the

  • other states tend to feel jealous and they, you know, are kind of looking at what policies

  • led to that. The states in the north that were particularly focused on, Bihar, Uttar

  • Pradesh should lead in every human development number, as well as income. But the improvements

  • and we have a big partnership with Nitish Kumar, who’s chief minister in Bihar. The

  • new chief minister in Uttar Pradesh decided that these health things that we care about

  • he’d get very involved with. And so were seeing a very fast rate of

  • improvement there. Vaccination coveragewe got polio. The last polio case there was three

  • years ago, which is an amazing triumph. Weve taken the polio quality audit group and weve

  • turned it into a primary health care audit group that’s looking at where do workers

  • not show up? Where does supply chain not work? Why don’t people go? India’s health is

  • very complicated because they have a lot of these – a private sector that’s very low

  • quality. And the government hasn’t figured out how to get the private sector to be high

  • quality. And yet, they haven’t built the capacity in the public sector.

  • But you know, thingstime is on our side in India. It’s just frustrating, you know,

  • they haven’t adopted a few new vaccines. That betweenthere’s two new vaccines

  • that will save over 400,000 lives per year in just India alone. And theyre being quite

  • slow on that issue. So India’s great. And in 15 years, you know,

  • well probably be out of India because its budget will get bigger and itll allocate

  • more of it to health. MR. BROOKS: Why did thewhat resultthe

  • delays and actually the permitting and what owes to that? I suppose the virus has been

  • unionized there. MR. GATES: The suspicion ofthe bureaucrats

  • really like the status quo. The way their career system works, youre much better

  • off not to change things. And so getting somebody to say, “Yes, we’d like to spend more

  • money on a new vaccine,” knowing that there’s a crowd that’s going to come in and attack

  • that. There’s a little bit of conservatism. And there’s an election coming

  • up, hopefullyyou knowif you get close to an election, you get particular paralysis

  • in the bureaucracy. Post the election, there’s a lot of optimism that things will, both in

  • terms of deregulation and taking on new health initiatives, that things will be even more

  • aggressive. MR. BROOKS: Your work all over the world is

  • in so many facets and so many different areas. And I asked you to survey the sample of things

  • that youve done to talk about the things you were proudest of, the greatest successes,

  • what youve learned from that. I suppose I should ask you also what was, you think,

  • in your view, your greatest failure and what you learned from that?

  • MR. GATES: Well, we fail all the time because we back scientific approaches for creating

  • vaccines and drugs that fail. We did a thing in education, which was changing the high

  • school size to be more like 400 than 1,500. That actuallywhere we created a community,

  • where the adults and all the kids, they had an expectation of what the kids were doing.

  • That actually had good results. It raised attendance. It lowered violence. It actually

  • raised completion rate about 15 percent. What it didn’t do on any meaningful level

  • was raise the educational level of the kids who graduated. And so we called it college

  • readiness. But we had a view of what sort of the reading, writing, math skills you’d

  • have on graduation. It hardly moved that at all.

  • And so when our goal was to get more kids to have the income uplift that a four- year

  • degree provides you, it didn’t look like we werewe weren’t going to get to what

  • we wanted to at all. And so we step back and say no. We have to get involved with helping

  • teachers be more effective. Weve got to learn about why the teachers in this country

  • are not being more effective. And so that was a big change of strategy.

  • Some people call it a failure. It’s a failure in the sense that our high goals for four-year

  • completion were not going to be achieved. The kids were all better off in the smaller

  • schools, measurably better off than they had been in the gigantic high schools.

  • MR. BROOKS: Now, the reason that that’s an encouraging lesson is that you learned

  • something and you didn’t adhere dogmatically to what you wished worked, but rather what

  • did work. Are you able to take this lesson to public policymakers who tend to stay with

  • the public policies that they wish worked, but manifestly don’t?

  • MR. GATES: Well, public policywe need more people examining effective ways to achieve

  • public policy goals. And it’s unfortunate that, a little bit, the idea of making things

  • more effective and getting rid of things, those are, you know, separate issues. So there

  • should be a, you know, a class of people willing to say, OK, in terms of helping with deprivation

  • in America, could we, by having less vertical programs, maybe achieve that foryou know,

  • even be neutral aboutfor the same amount of money we spend today?

  • And then, as a separate question, OK, you know, is thatare we spending too little

  • or too much? Because the complexity of improvement is highgathering data, trying different

  • things out, and political dialogue isn’t very good at very complex things, a lot of

  • the airtime, instead of being about relative approach, is about more or less, more or less.

  • You know, take health care costs. Left, right, centershow me your best ideas for bending

  • the health cost curve. Just getting rid of something, OK, is that going to bend the health

  • care cost curve? What is the, you know, supply-demand equation, the nature of the professional rules,

  • the nature of the innovation pipeline and the incentives in the innovation pipeline?

  • I think there’s a dearth of ideas that are being really discussed that relate to what

  • other than education may be the biggest, you know, government budget issue we face, which

  • is are those health care costs going to crowd out every other government function.

  • MR. BROOKS: This is submitted from one of our friends by email. The Gates Foundation

  • divides its attention between philanthropic priorities here in the United States and overseas.

  • There’s a real need and there’s a lot of inequality, opportunity inequality and

  • consumption inequality, as you and I’ve discussed, here at home. So howand this

  • is, I guess, a question about the execution of philanthropyhow do you decide how

  • youre going to allocate the resources between these competing needs here in the United States

  • and overseas? MR. GATES: Well, Melinda and I picked two

  • things. We picked what we thought was the greatest inequity in the country that had

  • created the conditions that allowed us to have this outside success. And that was education,

  • both K-12 and higher ed. And then we decided what’s the greatest inequity globally. And

  • there we started. And the core work is around global health. And that’s expanded a bit.

  • Now, it’s got sanitation, agriculture, financial services, three or four additional things

  • that are there to help uplift the poor. So weyou know, weve got two centers

  • of activity. And you do have to specialize. And so far education has been our big domestic

  • we did a few other things. We put computers on libraries. We do a fair bit of things locally

  • in the Seattle area, Washington State. But the big thing has been education.

  • MR. BROOKS: I want to turn now to my colleague John Makin.

  • JOHN MAKIN: Do I ask a question? (Laughter.) MR. BROOKS: If you could, put your statement

  • in the form of a question. MR. MAKIN: Yes, I would. (Laughter.) Well,

  • we have two things in common. We both spent a lot of time in Seattle, I teaching at UW,

  • while you were revolutionizing the world. And we also think a lot about economics.

  • But my question really has to do with the relationship between the Gates Foundation

  • and the World Bank. When I started to think about questions for

  • you, I looked at the World Bank’s budget and I saw that they – I believe they lay

  • out around between $40 and $60 billion a year on a wide range of topics. So when you entered

  • this field, did you feeldid you believeyou probably didbut how did you think

  • about approaching it? Would you be catalytic with respect to the World Bank? In other words,

  • get them to do things thator do things yourself that theyre not doing? For example,

  • the reduction in infant mortality, which is certainly a big success story, really was

  • not underway for a lot of the time that the World Bank had substantial resources.

  • Was that something that attracted you? Do you think that you can be more flexible than

  • the World Bank in terms of moving from one priority to another? Really, how do you mesh

  • with the World Bank? Thanks. MR. GATES: Yeah, we do a lot with the World

  • Bank. I had dinner with Jim Kim – a long dinnerlast night, because we overlap

  • a lot in health and agriculture, and even areas we don’t overlap. We don’t do roads,

  • but our agricultural programs work a lot better when there’s a road. (Laughter.) You want

  • to get the inputs in and the outputs out. A road is a very clever way to do that. (Laughter.)

  • And you know, it’s tragic. Africa, both in terms of power infrastructure that we need

  • and roads is way, way behind. And theyreand Africa really is bumping up on GDP

  • levels that won’t go up unless they solve those infrastructure problems. Theyve got

  • to solve the health problems. Theyve got to solve the agriculture productivity. You

  • know, unfortunately economic advance requires a lot of ends, a lot of things that come together,

  • including education and governance as well. The World Bank numbers, though, you can’t

  • really compare them directly to our numbers because those are loan numbers. And so you

  • have IBRD loans that are market rate loans. And you know, they tendyou know LIBOR

  • they tend to be pretty competitive. But it’s the IDA piece and sort of the forgiveness

  • part of that loan portfolio that is the really significant overlap with what our foundation

  • does. And therere a number of actors out there.

  • UNICEF, in the childhood space. The agency that did the most for child mortality was

  • a guy named Jim Grant during the 1980s, where he convinced countries they needed to raise

  • vaccination rates. And they were below 30 percent when he started. And they went up

  • to over 70 percent within that decade. So he probably saved more children’s lives

  • than anyone. Now, there’s various inventors of vaccines.

  • There’s Deng Xiaoping. There’s various people who did things that saved a lot of

  • children’s lives. But he’d be certainly high on the list.

  • Wethere’s an area we operate that World Bank doesn’t operate in, which is upstream

  • research. So the invention of the malaria vaccine, World Bank does not put any money

  • into that. They don’t have people who know about that. The onlythe other big funder

  • of that is the National Institutes of Health, particularly the National Institute for Allergy

  • and Infectious Diseases, Tony Fauci’s part of NIH. They and over 80 percent of the infectious

  • disease research funding comes either from us or from them. So they are a deep collaborator

  • there. With World Bank, the thing that were super

  • excited aboutthere’s two things were super excited about doing together. One is

  • fixing primary health care because some African governments have done it well, a lot have

  • not. And it’s basically a personnel system. And were doing a report card, like the

  • World Bank Doing Business report card. And were going to do that in the agricultural

  • space, which is really about how do you turn your agricultural sector intoto make

  • it as market driven as possible. Are you taking the latest seeds? Are you educating your farmers?

  • Are your pricing policy, storage policies such that your farmers are being uplifted

  • that the productivity and incomes are going up?

  • So we have some ambitious goals of things we want to do with the Bank. We actually – a

  • lot of funding we do is through the Bank. It shows up because we createlike our

  • polio account gets graded through the Bank. So they ended up facilitating things.

  • They have a lot of IQ. And Jim Kim has stated the goal that he wants to unlock that IQ in

  • a more technical advice way, not just connected to the loans. Now, that’s an ambitious goal.

  • That goal’s been stated before. So you know, now, he’s trying to drive that even further.

  • So theyre a very good partner. WHO, UNICEF, the CG ag research group. There’s a lot

  • of partnering involved in this, the development world.

  • MR. BROOKS: Were out of time. Before we finish, I just want to say it’s an honor

  • toon behalf of all of my colleagues at AEIto share an objective of a better

  • world, particularly on behalf of those who can’t fight for themselves and that aren’t

  • here represented today, but we are their intellectual and action representatives. What youre

  • doing is truly important. We endorse it, and we appreciate it very much.

  • Before Mr. Gates leaves, I would like to ask that you all stay seated, so that he can get

  • out. But of course, join me in thanking him for joining us. (Applause.)

  • MR. GATES: Thank you. (Applause.) (END)

ARTHUR BROOKS: Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. I’m Arthur Brooks, president of the American

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ビル・ゲイツ貧困と繁栄についての会話 (Bill Gates: A conversation on poverty and prosperity)

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    Emily に公開 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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