Gates: Businesses Need To Help The Poor

What a friggin hypocrit... Here's a guy that routinely appears before congress and lobbies for increasing the number of visas the US grants to hi-tech foreign workers... Oh, by-the-way, these hi-tech foreigners work for 25-30% less then US hi-tech workers... He's been very successful in convincing our legislators of the need... So much so that apart from increasing the foreign hi-tech workers working in the USA by millions, he succeeded in driving down the wages and benefits of American hi-tech workers in the process... Help the poor?!?! He's working very hard to make middle class hi-tech workers a part of his new cause...

As much as I loath Bill Gates for how he acquired his weath I have to laude him for how he spends it.

Businesses can help the poor by paying their workers in 'developing' nations a lot more than subsistence level wages, extorting huge profit margins from this wage exploitation and exploiting economic differentials between trading nations (called 'competitiveness' in econ speak) and stop paying the people at the top criminal salaries to do this to everyone. But nope Bill would never say that.

Shouldn't that headline be: Gates: OTHER Businesses Need To Help The Poor

The states are scamming the Welfare moms for all they can get. Claiming part of the child support for extras above the normal rents.

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are both pretty good people. They both believe in corporate responsibility, but the guys who run most of the oil companies, banks and arms manufacturers do not. We will have to restrain big business in general, though. The international plutocracy would love to turn the US into just another Latin American dictatorship, but we the people need to stop them. We the people-- and I guess Bill is one of the people. One with a gazillion dollars....

Businesses don't need to help the poor, democracy needs to re-regulate Corporate America.

And the ultrarich need to pay off their national debt.

Bill has to remember who he is talking to--we're not one of those developing nations that he has been devoting his all of his energies to. We are fully aware of our demise at the hands of the corporations, and also fully aware that he has earned his billions of dollars by steam rolling over anyone who tries to get in the way of his amassing a fortune.

He is a real trend setter--but the trends he sets are hurtful, not helpful. Go ahead, Bill, and make us all poor by leading a cause to import foreign labor and export American jobs, and then try to come off like you have "concern for the poor"? You want to make us poor, and then make it easy for us to get credit? You want to train all children on computers so your software become part of the required expenses of living? It's too late now to buy your way out of the mess you have willfully contributed to.

Bill Gates can do us all a favor and keep his sorry *ss out of our affairs altogether. He may be better in math and science than the Americans that he doesn't want to hire, but he is lacking the moral skills necessary for living in a mutually dependent society. I don't think that's something that can be taught in school--what good are brains if you have no conscience?

People wouldn't be poor if businesses paid living wages. The latest unemployment figure, U-6 unadjusted, is at 9.8%. That's about 13,000,000 people looking for work. You and your billionaire brethren are asking Congress for 75,000 H1B visas, you don't think that out of those 13,000,000 you couldn't find enough qualified Americans to fill your needs? Maybe you couldn't find enough to work for half the going rate and no benefits. Maybe with the addition of 75,000 underpaid imports you can keep the pay rates depressed. Wages for the Middle Class haven't risen for 7 years. Another reason for these stagnant wages is the presence of 12,000,000 illegal immigrants. Many bust ass jobs that used to pay three to four times the minimum wage, which is still historically low, pay less than twice the minimum wage. Now these physically demanding jobs go to illegals who are illegal because of their criminal employers. The Bush administration has intentionally not enforced the laws against the hiring of the undocumented. The lame assed Democrats supporting Amnesty would legalize and solidify this fall into poverty for millions.

So Mr. Gates, if you want to actually do something for anyone other than yourself, support fair wages and policies that promote fair wages for the citizens of the Country that allowed you to make your wealth. If you are unwilling to do that, just join Paris Hilton and get stammering drunk so your notoriety will match your character.

ONES LIKE GATES AND BUFFET MAKE ME PROUD TO BE A DEMOCRAT, IMAGINE ANY NEO CON CARING ABOUT THE POOR OR GIVING AWAY MONEY FOR THEIR BENIFIT, HA HA HA HA, GOP MOTTO: I GOT MINE AND TO HECK WITH EVERYONE ELSE!

Oh, GOOD GRIEF.

BubbleBoy speaks.

BubbleBoy deigns to speak of what he does not know.

Ick.

Ugh. Another article/statement from a powerful person implying that marketing to poor people is somehow going to raise them out of poverty....

Hey Bill! What poor are you talking about? The people that you disenfranchise in this country by going to congress to beg for more H1B workers to fill positions that American workers aew perfectly qualified to do? Clue to Bill charity begins at home.

Unfortunately, since Reagan the dominant perspective in this country is just the opposite.
It is more accepted - and promoted by the party most in power for 30 years (the Republicans) - that the rich should help the poor WHEN THEY DEIGN TO. When they magnanimously decide to forgive them for being poor.

Rather as it was in the feudal and phaoranic societies of the past. Forget the Magna Carta and the U.S. Constitiution and the humanist thrust of Western Humanist philosophy and thought since the time of the Greeks.

Ronald Reagan is currently considered a great philosopher and political thinker and his ideas dominate.

If they want to help the poor. the rich should not work so hard for tax breaks for themselves. also, they could support socialized medicine, stop raping impoverished nations (and bombing them), improve schools (lower class sizes) and offer free higher education and/or skilled technical training. gates could probably do most of it by himself if he gave a real damn. he could at least speak out against the horrors of the Iraq War, the use of Blackwater on the streets of New Orleans during Katrina and the 99 cent per load of wash done by Halliburton in Iraq.

Bill Gates, self-made robber baron, wants to be remembered for his good deeds. Good luck with that. A little self-examination, reflection, soul searching, and metamorphosis, might help.

Oh yeah, right Bill or should I say BULLONEY?

You are telling me that business SHOULD be kind to the poor?
What kind of weed are you smoking Bill? Huh?

And you won't hire AMERICAN WORKERS?

When you get to the Pearly Gates Bill, Jesus will ask you...

When I was a POOR AMERICAN WORKER, DID YOU HIRE ME?

Poor Bill, still trying to buy his way into heaven.

Good luck w/ that. First we have to get rid of the corporate welfare mothers, then maybe... Naaaah.

And as the worst monopolist in living memory, Mr. Gates knows a thing or two about poverty.

A brilliant man and visionary. Say what you want about Microsoft and how crappy their products are. The fact remains that they played a huge role in making the PC what it is today.

Exactly!!! And companies must start profit sharing with their employees. The days of golden parachutes for incompetent CEOs while the average employee has little security and is funding the lavish lifestyles of mostly morally bankrupt guys who kicked down and kissed their way up the corporate ladder - needs to end. Why are Bill Gates and Warren Buffet the only two decent billionaires in America?

Dear god, when Bill Gates starts talking about getting into the insurance biz, I know I'm about to have a sleepless night...oye.

The man gave away his entire fortune and his motives are in question? He still has more money than he can possibly spend; he calls on corporations to do the right thing and this bunch of jackals tries to bring him down?

The only explanation I have is that this country has been reduced to a mentality akin to The Lord of The Files by the shrub administration.

1/20/09. It's real. Mark it on your calendar as the day that humanity regains some of its natural compassion.

or retraining workers to work here instead of hiring H1B visa imports.