[producer] Okay, first question.
Are you too rich?
Well, it's a strange thing
to have people worth, you know, a billion, ten billion, a hundred billion.
It's such a mind-blowing amount of money relative to personal needs.
[quirky music playing]
[Gates] I remember when I was young, I looked at that Forbes list,
and it fascinated me just because understanding how society works, you know,
is that real estate fortunes, banking fortunes.
There's all these Wall Street people on there.
Why is that such a source of wealth,
and how much is the wealth very generational?
I remember somebody saying to me,
"Do you think you'll ever be on this list?"
And I thought, "Well,
you know, maybe software, the work I was doing,
would get me onto that list."
I didn't really think so in the early years,
and then later that… that turned out to be wrong.
[reporter 1] with 4.2 billion dollars,
is the second-richest person in the country.
[reporter 2]
[music halts abruptly]
[producer] So is that a "yes" or a "no"?
[inhales]
[opening theme music playing]
[music fades]
[inquisitive music playing]
[Gates] Well, it's kind of wild that we do have billionaires.
You know, it's a huge amount of wealth,
which, you know, if you even tried to consume it,
would be kind of absurd.
You want that money to be given back to society, not just consumed.
In a rich country like the US,
the fact there's still deprivation says that our social safety net
is not funded as well as we'd like it to be,
but I'm not someone who thinks outlawing wealth above a certain size
is the right way to go about it.
But again, I'm…
You know, I'm… I'm biased.
Although, I understand why some people feel that way.
You know, and so it's… it's… it's a good debate.
[man 1] When we see sprawling tent encampments
on the sides of our highway,
nursing uniforms slumping over from exhaustion on the subway,
poor kids visiting food pantries,
and I think the question we have to ask over and over and over again
is, "Who benefits?"
-[upbeat music playing] -[helicopter blades whirring]
[Desmond] In America, there are winners because there are losers,
and no one has won more than the ultrarich.
The richest 1% of Americans own 40% of the nation's wealth.
There are over 38 million Americans who can't afford basic necessities,
so if America's poor founded a country,
that country would be bigger than Australia.
[upbeat music continues]
A billion dollars is a thousand million dollars,
and we have billionaires who have 200 billion.
They have 200,000 million
while we have children who don't have any place to live.
This is insane.
Well, look, in a perfect world, I think billionaires don't exist.
You could easily argue that
the existence of a billionaire is a policy mistake,
especially if you see what most billionaires do with it.
[upbeat music playing]
[toilet flushes]
-[music halts abruptly] -Uh…
But, anyway,
we all know there are so many ways to exercise power with that wealth,
to influence elections, and you name it.
So if you create a society where there's so much wealth
with so few people, then, of course,
at some point, you can't really call that a democracy anymore.
-[upbeat music continues] -[crowd cheering]
[man 2] The people who think that we should just abolish billionaires,
those people are wrong.
Honestly, those transformative changes would probably wreck the economy
because it'd involve building a new economic system
that we don't know how to build.
People imagine that you'd create this egalitarian society,
but when you look at societies that are a lot more egalitarian than us,
they have billionaires,
and sometimes they have quite a lot of billionaires.
You have billionaires in Japan. You have billionaires in France.
You have billionaires in Scandinavia.
There's, you know, how many billionaires in the world?
It's not a big number of people.
And you can say, "Yeah, having a billion dollars, that's kinda crazy,"
but you also have to realize that that's not the problem.
That's a symptom of something amazing.
It's the American dream.
That's what makes America special.
[tiles clack]
[woman 1] I'll just do this, since we're talking about money.
[Gates] All right. [inhales]
I think that's only ten. Is that right?
[tiles clack]
[Gates] You know, our parents had us play lots of games. I…
We're not, like, competitive about
you know, comparing our… our work accomplishments with each other.
-That'd be… That'd be really difficult. -[all laugh]
[Macphee] You win. All right.
But we're competitive in terms of just we play lots of family games.
[Macphee] Remember when he was on top of the 400?
-Isn't it the Forbes 500 now? -[Gates] 400.
Then it was kinda this funny thing when it'd come out every year,
"Is he still at the top? Is he still at the top? Is he still at the top? Oh."
It was a matter of interest, and then it was, you know…
That… That competitive nature that's in all of us was part of that too.
-Like, "Okay, good. Still at the top." -[Blake laughs]
Well, then I gave away enough money to avoid that problem.
-He kept trying to get off the top. -[Macphee] You didn't like it.
[Gates] Mm-mm.
Yeah. It was part of the ethos of our family.
I remember, Mom, as soon as you moved back to Seattle with Microsoft,
one of the very early conversations she had with you was about,
"Okay. How are you gonna give back to the community?"
[Gates] I mean, yeah, at the…
-What's it called? The bridal lunch. -[Blake] Yeah.
Uh, you know, said to…
Quoted, the, you know,
"To whom much is given, much is expected," so…
[contemplative music playing]
[producer] You've talked a bit about how you wanna get off the billionaire's list.
No, I… I'm not saying it's like some awful thing to be on the list.
I'm just making it clear it's not a positive thing.
I think the world would be better
if billionaires voluntarily chose to give more money away.
You know, if I'd never given any money away,
I would have a lot more money than I have today.
I've always thought of myself as a student trying to get to the bottom of things.
[inquisitive music playing]
[Gates] In the 1990s,
as I was moving to be unbelievably wealthy,
I was studying the great foundations.
You know, what did Rockefeller do?
You know, Carnegie talked about "To die rich is to die disgraced."
It was in the year 2000 that I made the first gigantic 20-billion-dollar gift.
You know, the foundation, as you walk in, says, "All lives have equal value,"
as the driving set of values for the work we do.
Our biggest thing in the US will be education,
you know, better curriculum, better teacher training.
We also work in global health.
They're very complex issues,
but, you know, we were energized to take that over a billion a year
and make sure it was… was well spent.
I'm a big proponent that the wealthy should give back to reducing inequity,
both in this country and in the entire world.
We have enough wealth that we could do dramatically better.
[cars passing by]
[Gates] Well, I think we're both proud of the fact that
the US bills itself as the land of equal opportunity,
but as capitalism has developed,
that equality hasn't been as strong as we might like to see.
So I'm curious,
how should the US be striving to reduce inequality?
Well, I… I think, unfortunately, Bill, we are moving in the wrong direction.
We have the obscene situation
where there are three people, you being one of them,
who own more wealth than the bottom half of America.
You know, it reminds me, maybe 150 years ago,
where the Czar of Russia or the kings of Europe
had all this wealth and power
because of the divine right of,
"God said that you can own everything and have all the power."
"God said that." And I don't see a, uh, throne on your head, right?
-You're not King Bill. -All right. You got me on that one.
[both laugh]
But would you go so far as to have laws
that would stop there from being billionaires?
-How would you deal with that? -Yeah, I would.
-Okay. [chuckles] -Yeah, I would.
You are, just saying you personally, a very innovative guy.
Do you deserve financial reward for that? You do.
How much do you deserve?
All right. Can you make it on a billion?
Think you could feed the family? Probably.
Pay the rent? Maybe.
-Again, I don't mean to be picking on you. -Sure.
But all over the world, we have multi-billionaires,
and with that wealth goes incredible power.
Do I think that's acceptable? No, I don't.
So if you're asking me, "Do I think we should eliminate
the concept of billionaires?" Yeah, I do. I do.
You know, I have real concerns about what I would call uber-capitalism,
and that is that incredible concentration of wealth and power
in the hands of the few, and what it means to our whole society.
Is the system working, in your judgment?
Is it working?
What do you think?
I am a huge believer that capitalism is the… the right part of the solution.
Capitalism creates all this freedom for innovation and mobility,
and in a country like the US, because we don't believe in aristocracy,
we pride ourselves on the idea of income mobility.
It's the idea of creating that equal opportunity
so that people are mobile
and not stuck based on whatever their parents' outcome was.
[inquisitive music playing]
[Gates] You know, when I was growing up, I was a healthy white male
in an upper-middle-class family who had access to an incredible education,
which enabled me to go to a really great college and start a business.
I mean, the US environment and the timing was kind of unbelievably lucky.
[reporter 3] who co-founded a software company
with a boyhood friend when he was only 19 years old.
This is the richest man on Earth.
[Gates] I believed in a certain frugalness,
but I did buy myself a Porsche car when I was 19.
-[tires screech] -[engine revs]
-[engine accelerates] -[siren wails]
[laughs]
[inquisitive music playing]
[Gates] So for somebody in my position, the mobility,
the opportunity to pick a profession and do well, was incredibly high,
but for women,
people who had health conditions,
people who weren't white,
you know, some of those opportunities really weren't there,
and we've made progress on these issues
but nowhere near to the level that the American dream is aspirational of.
[inquisitive music playing]
[woman 2] Then it starts with paying our young people livable wages.
-Yeah! -[all applauding]
Today we're done.
1.2 million workers have walked off the job, out of this industry,
saying enough is enough. We will not come back unless…
-[woman 3] That's right. -Yes!
[reporter 4] could be on the cusp of a big pay raise.
Right now they are paid nine dollars an hour plus tips,
but the city council could make employers pay them what others make,
nearly 16 an hour.
In the United States, there are two tiers, at least, of wages.
There's an overall federal minimum wage of seven dollars and twenty-five cents,
and then there's a sub-minimum wage for tipped workers.
That sub-minimum wage varies depending on the state.
At the federal level, it's two dollars and thirteen cents an hour.
This is a population that actually is overwhelmingly still to this day women,
disproportionately women of color.
We have the highest rates of single moms of any occupation,
struggling with three times the poverty rate of other workers.
-Using food stamps at double the rate. -We want a fair wage…
[Jayaraman] But for the last 15, 20 years,
there have been an incredible group of Black women leaders of One Fair Wage
in Chicago who are fighting to get a full minimum wage with tips on top.
The money is not sustainable.
[woman 4] The tips are not always the same.
Some mornings when I go home,
I can take home anywhere from 80 to 150 dollars.
Now some days I'll go home with just 40 dollars.
You've told me that you earn about 15,000 dollars a year.
[Gibson] A year.
-That is why-- -[Gibson] With my public assistance.
You have to get on public assistance.
And how often did you get to see your kid?
[exhales] Just when I woke him up and sent him to school.
That would be my only mommy time, and that went on for like two years.
Good morning, everyone and Mayor.
Today, tip workers are mostly women like me, forced to live on tips.
Living on tips means we never know how much we will get day after day.
So if we can have a real-life wage, that would be good.
Thank you, thank you, and that's all I have to say, Mayor. I'm good.
[crowd applauding and cheering]
But at the end of the day, we're dealing with capitalism, okay?
The higher-ups, they need us.
Every year, the cost of living goes up, and we gotta stay in the industry,
and we gotta get up on our feet, and then still rely on public assistance too,
so it isn't fair,
but they need to pay us and pay us right,
and if they don't, they're gonna lose.
[inquisitive music playing]
[Gates] In America, we'd like for everyone to have certain basics.
That is, you know, health care, decent education, decent housing,
and so how do we design the right systems
so we can raise that basic level that everybody has available?
-[Gates] Hi, Senator. -Bill, how are you?
-[Gates] Thanks for doing this. -Of course. Nice to see you.
So this whole thing of the role of government,
the role of private sector, you've had to think about that your whole life,
and, you know, the US is the richest country
but still short of the ideal that we'd like.
[Romney] Yeah, no question about that.
Uh, our free-enterprise system, capitalism, if you will,
has generated extraordinary wealth.
It's not perfect. It just happens to be better than any alternatives
that we've seen around the world.
There had been a lot of people who've been living in poverty
under socialism, communism, for hundreds of years.
They finally adopted free enterprise of a sort.
China, for instance, did so, and interestingly,
hundreds of millions of people came out of poverty.
And when you look at the trade-offs the US makes,
maybe versus Europe, where they have a less dynamic economy,
but, you know, some people would prefer us to be more like Europe.
How do you see the trade-off there?
I think if you compare the vitality and growth
that exists in the United States relative to that in Europe,
you'd have to say, "Gosh, the United States seems to have things,
uh, in a better place."
[Gates] Mmm.
There's no question but that the most innovative people in the world,
if they're thinking about starting an enterprise,
think the place to do so is the United States.
If you look at the billion-dollar enterprises,
they're almost all here in the US.
The so-called unicorns are all American enterprises.
And why is that? I mean, we have similar brains.
I happen to believe that the risk tolerance here is greater.
Our bankruptcy laws, our financial system,
the options that entrepreneurs are able to obtain,
these things create an environment of risk-taking and innovation
which has led to all sorts of successes, and by the way,
if you want people to come out of the realms of poverty
and have better opportunity,
there's almost nothing more powerful as an elixir than growth.
If your economy's growing,
if there are new businesses starting and hiring more people,
why, that creates opportunity for people to come out of poverty.
[inquisitive music playing]
Well, socialism was a fantastic system to make people equally poor.
Um, uh, capitalism makes people unequally rich.
In the history of all mankind,
the countries that thrived are those that have the most flows.
[inquisitive music playing]
[Friedman] Flows of ideas, flows of capital,
-flows of people… -[crowd cheering]
[Friedman] …and flows of power.
Can we just please remember why economies grow?
Whether it's Henry Ford with the Model T
or Bill Gates with Microsoft,
anything that creates good jobs
helps the little guy as well as the big guy.
What it does is it raises the floor.
It also raises the ceiling, and where government policy should come in
is maybe shrinking the gap between that rising floor and that rising ceiling
by investing more in public goods.
Mass transportation, public parks, public schools
that undergird any healthy democratic capitalist society.
[inquisitive music plays]
-[music fades] -[birds tweeting]
[indistinct chatter]
-[woman 5] Hello. -[all] Hi.
Hi.
-[woman 6] Hi. -Good to meet you.
-This is Connor Maxwell. -[Ariana] Hey.
[Maxwell] Let's just get into it.
One of the topics we're very interested in at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
is the challenge of economic mobility,
but at the same time, I've found that to… to really understand these challenges,
it's helpful to speak to people who have developed expertise
through their own lived experiences.
Michael, Ariana, Lashana, you three have developed expertise
from job training to reentry and entrepreneurship.
All three of you have faced major challenges during your upbringings
that affected your opportunities,
so I think we'd like to hear from you all a bit about your journeys.
-Um, how does that sound? -[Gates chuckles]
Cool? Uh, Michael, could we start with you?
[Michael] Uh, yeah.
Growing up for me, it was, uh… it was kind of rough.
I had both my parents, losing them both to incarceration at an early age,
and, you know, myself being incarcerated at a young age as well.
I was incarcerated when I was 15.
Fifteen? Wow.
Uh, I wasn't released until I was 28.
[Gates] Twenty-eight?
-Twenty-eight, yes. [chuckles] -[Gates] Wow.
So that was… that was an important moment, you know, of my life,
so, uh, upon release,
there wasn't really too much as far as reentry programs
or help to get jobs,
or, you know, even the simplest help with, you know, making up a resume.
When you were leaving, what did they give you or provide
to help you with the next step?
Uh, two hundred dollars out the gate.
[laughs]
-[Gates chuckles] -[Michael] That's it.
Someone else I was incarcerated with was like, "You should try driving trucks,"
but what really sparked it was my son overheard it,
and he was like, "Oh, that'd be cool. You should do it."
-All right. [chuckles] -[Michael laughs]
He's pretty stoked. He can't wait to go on the summer road trip.
[all laugh]
Great. Um, Ariana, do you want to share a bit about your background?
Yeah. Um, so I am an,
uh, one of the over… older siblings of four.
Grew up in an abusive home, um, at the time.
Around six or seven, the resources dried up,
and so we moved to deep East Oakland,
and it's not, um,
the most well-resourced area.
[somber music playing]
[Ariana] Poverty is oftentimes linked with the dollars and cents,
and we don't talk about that mental toll that it can take on a person.
My mom was constantly hustling.
She would work multiple jobs.
Having a lack of resources, particularly money,
it affects your every move.
Like, it affects where you live
and whether you have access to grocery stores
and whether you have access to a car, schools.
It permeates through every single aspect of your life.
That in itself creates a traumatic response.
What ends up happening is you're in this constant state of survival.
You're not able to look further out and… and plan for the future
because you're… you're worried about dinner.
And so when you're in that survival mindset,
your mind is constantly going.
You don't have time to plan for the future.
You don't have space to dream.
[clipper thuds]
[Gates] Inequality is very difficult because
it's not just purely an income thing
but their quality of life.
Where I know where my next meal is coming from.
I know that I'll have shelter tonight.
I have a chance to have my children be educated.
You know, we want to be a land where people start their own businesses
and feel a sense of achievement and not, you know, caught
in a system where they…
are deprived.
[woman 7] I like the word "inequality"
because I find, ironically, that it's an inclusive word.
[inquisitive music playing]
[Elliott] It evokes a relationship
between people at the top and those who are struggling to survive.
We are all on this shared spectrum
that also includes billionaires,
and it's one nation.
What does it take to close the gap between what you have and what you need
in order to not just survive but advance in America?
And increasingly, that gap is very wide,
but however we talk about this problem, whether it's as inequality or social--
[faint whirring]
Is that a…?
That's probably a BLADE helicopter going to the Hamptons.
-I'm serious. -[producer] It is Friday.
Oh my God.
[inquisitive music continues]
[man 3] One of the reasons people think this is an intractable problem
is the fact that there are so many aspects to it.
You know, we could look at this as a problem of health care.
Roughly a third of the country don't have regular access to medical care.
It's a problem of education
and the caliber of the education you are eligible to receive,
and it's a problem of income.
I think we have to zoom out as well,
and then we see that the differences are just astounding.
If you have a median wage
in a country like the Netherlands, or from the US,
then you're already part of the richest 5% in the world.
More than half of the world population lives on less than seven dollars a day.
But also there's inequality within the inequality.
Very often there's a gender divide.
Very often those communities are Black and brown.
The problems of race and the problems of class are not the same,
but they do overlap.
We can see that time and time again
that these ideologies are so braided together.
The success of labor unions
and relatively high wages in the middle third of the 20th century,
but segregation prevents Black people from having access to that.
Currently, the median white household has about ten times the wealth
of the median Black household.
One of the more notable things we saw in the midst of the pandemic
was that the same communities were being disproportionately affected
by disparate mortality rates,
police violence at a disproportionate level,
and so there's a racial correlation to these dynamics
that further exacerbates
the overall problem of inequality in the society.
I don't think we've really come up with a good way of sort of addressing this,
but the United States did a pretty good job.
We had the New Deal.
We implemented Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, things like that,
and so we cobbled together a social democratic state in America,
and people who imagine the United States as some hyper-capitalist wasteland,
those people are wrong,
but making a more egalitarian society with a basic sort of level of subsistence,
a lot of countries have done really well in this.
We've done less well, and we need to do better.
[helicopter blades whirring]
[Gates] Maybe it's just my optimism, but in… in our lifetimes,
the progress on the overall wealth, the safety net, education,
we did get through a lot of tough challenges.
Do you think over time we can continue to make progress on that?
Today there are these culture battles
and demonization of people across the aisle.
And so policy, uh, the kinds of things that help people come out of poverty,
has taken a back seat.
I do think that our political parties are casting around a bit.
They don't quite know where to go.
So my party, for instance,
now is almost two-thirds made up of individuals without college education.
And these are people who, I presume, would like to see a higher minimum wage,
but our orthodoxy in the Republican Party for a long time has been
"Don't raise the minimum wage." That's what business has been saying.
Well, what are we gonna do?
And that confusion has been, to a certain degree, responsible
for the lack of actual progress on dealing with some of the challenges we have,
so we have got to tackle this issue.
Does it mean some changes in tax policy?
Absolutely. I think there are some anomalies in our tax policy
that I think ought to be adjusted.
Does it mean some things we're spending on we need to cut back on? Absolutely.
[upbeat music playing]
[Bregman] This is one of the wonderful things about history.
It gives you a little bit of perspective about what's possible
because sometimes people say,
"Oh, higher taxes, surely that's impossible."
"That's never been done."
Well, actually… [laughs]
…in the '50s and the '60s,
taxation rates were as high as 80, 90% for the very rich.
It turns out that economic growth was never as high as in the '50s and the '60s.
There was an enormous amount of innovation,
and there was actually a slowdown in innovation in the '80s and the '90s.
[Desmond] We need these deeper investments in the public good.
That's democracy, right?
Taxes are our collective investment in the public good.
Well, it's weird that in the US, you know, the trend has been to reduce taxation,
but I'm amazed that the rich aren't taxed substantially more than they are.
If you raise taxes a fair bit,
there should be enough to somewhat raise the safety net,
which is not as well-funded as I would make it…
Other people might go even further than I would, but…
[Gates inhales]
One thing I think you and I would agree on is that the tax system is a key tool
to moderate what capitalism does,
where you have these extreme winners like myself,
and so, you know, under the tax system I would go for,
the wealthy would have, say, a third as much.
Well, needless to say, I would go a lot further.
And I think, you know…
Your friend Warren Buffett makes the point
that his effective tax rate is lower than his secretary's.
And that is not what the American people wanna see.
They do wanna see the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes,
but you have a political system
which, unfortunately, represents the needs of the wealthy
much more than the needs of ordinary Americans.
You know, they do these happiness questionnaires.
-Have you seen that? -Oh yeah.
What they find is countries where people have that economic security,
as in Scandinavia, usually Denmark or Finland or somebody, ranks at the top.
Why is that?
I think it's because people don't have to deal with the stress
about how they're gonna feed their kids or provide health care or childcare.
If you take that level of economic stress,
if I say to somebody,
"You're never gonna have to worry about whether you're gonna feed your family,
whether your kid'll have health care."
[breathes deeply] Thank you.
Is it gonna make their life perfect? No.
Will it ease their stress level, bring more happiness, security?
I think it will.
I recently tweeted that I was paying a whole lot in taxes,
and I was proud of that.
[inquisitive music playing]
One of the most patriotic things that you can do as an American
is go out, and get filthy, stinkin' rich, create a ton of jobs,
invest in your company and others,
and then pay your taxes.
Look, I'm the luckiest motherfucker in the world,
and when I write that check to the IRS
for all those hundreds of millions of dollars,
it's not that I like it,
but I am proud of it
because, you know, the roads, the military, the police,
teachers, Medicaid, Medicare,
that's a big part of where our taxpayer dollars go,
and I feel like I've given something back.
[metal clanks]
[Elliott] People love to say that there is no silver bullet
when it comes to solving inequality.
I'd like to challenge that idea.
I think there is, in a very broad sense, a silver bullet, relief.
[dramatic music playing]
[Elliott] These are things ranging from universal pre-K
to supportive housing
to livable wage,
even things like a universal basic income.
We have to have an income floor. We can get rid of poverty in our country.
[Elliott] Whenever there is talk of such interventions,
the response is, "That costs too much."
Stunning amount the US spent last year on welfare programs.
[Elliott] The problem with that line of thinking is that
it presumes that by not investing in these costly programs,
we are saving money,
and the fact is, we aren't.
We're paying for poverty every day
in reduced productivity in the labor market,
in terms of increased costs related to crime and health.
Sociologist Mark Rank estimates that the cost of child poverty in America
is about $1 trillion a year.
Another problem we face is there are a lot of programs
that are very important and helpful to a lot of people who need them,
but we don't make it easy.
In fact, we make it very difficult to get any benefits.
Even those that are there, by law, for you.
So, Bill, you know about the Earned Income Tax Credit.
It's not easy to get.
This is the two-page 1040,
and this is the hundred-plus page instruction manual
that goes along with this two-page form.
[Rippel] And so we are going to see if you could help a person
apply for the Earned Income Tax Credit.
[all laugh]
Bill, I think I might hand you a pencil just in case.
[all continue laughing]
The Earned Income Tax Credit is the most important tax credit
that is available to low and moderate-income households.
It can be in the sum of thousands of dollars.
It is considered the largest anti-poverty program in the country.
So it's incredibly important to calculate this correctly.
We're gonna start with an example. And that is Maria Johnson.
-[Gates] I like her photo. -[Pilarski] Yeah.
[all chuckle]
[Pilarski] She is a single parent of two children.
She works two jobs. So, multiple jobs, multiple kids.
[Maxwell] If you have any questions…
[Desmond] In the Earned Income Tax Credit,
if you add up the amount of money unclaimed each year,
they leave about 17 billion dollars a year on the table.
"Church employee, clergy--" Oh my God, "Combat Pay."
[Desmond] And if you add up the total in unused aid, every year,
over 140 billion dollars in poverty aid goes unclaimed.
We've saddled these programs with administrative burden.
And I think it should be just as easy
for someone to apply for unemployment insurance or food stamps
as it is for me to take out my phone and order like,
birdseed or whatever, and get it delivered to me the next day.
-[Rippel] The answer is "no." [laughs] -Okay. Wow, that's a doozy.
How confident are you that you filled it out correctly?
There's a lot of money, as you saw, on the line here.
-I'm 80% sure that I got that thing right. -[Maxwell chuckles]
[Pilarski] I'll hand you the sheet, so you can compare it with what you came up with.
[Gates] So, I was off by 5,000 dollars.
Whoops.
[all laughing]
I'm used to these forms, but these are complicated forms.
-I mean, you're skipping around… -Right.
…and reading definitions.
-Right. -Oh my God.
[Maxwell] On top of working your two jobs and raising two children.
-[Ariana] Raising twins. -[Rippel] Raising your twins.
[Gates] The complexity of how a poor person has to deal
with state-level programs, federal programs,
it's super complicated.
And many of those programs, the people who are eligible,
less than nearly half are actually able to take advantage of it.
In some ways, you could say that's the half that is the most in need of it.
It's hard, particularly when they're facing a crisis, to get what's needed.
-[Blake chuckling] -[Macphee] "Thus."
I've never once spoken to my brother about taxes. Not one time.
-[Gates] I've talked to Kristi a bit. -I hope so.
Kristi actually did my taxes.
So, what do we got?
Uh, 82, 97 and 93.
-[Gates] Wow. -You're ahead.
I have all vowels at this point.
[Blake chuckles]
You're the one who's been keeping 'em. [chuckles]
[Gates] Yeah, Kristi and I are a lot alike.
One difference between us is,
you know, I've kind of been spoiled, gotten lucky in so many things,
but, you know, I always had kind of an optimistic outlook.
I think for an entrepreneur, that's how you get successful.
[Gates] No, it's very helpful.
Then, particularly if it goes well, it… it gets reinforced even more.
[all laugh]
-So where are you on that? -I'm in between you two somewhere.
-Yeah. -[Macphee] Yeah.
But, you know, I don't think, without his optimism,
how does he kind of keep going with all this philanthropy, you know,
'cause it… it… it feels daunting.
But the way his brain works, he's probably, in his mind,
he's kind of got an idea of how these things might be resolved.
Um, so, when the rest of us are thinking things are hopeless, he has a… a plan.
[Gates breathes deeply]
This past summer, Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates
announced their idea of the Giving Pledge.
They're asking America's billionaires
to join them to give at least half their wealth away.
[Gates] Well, Warren and Melinda and I got together
with people who were substantial philanthropists
and just had some dinners where we talked about,
"How did you pick your causes?" "Why are you so engaged?"
"Why do you think many others are not?"
And it became clear that in philanthropy, you're… you're kind of isolated.
It forces you to think about your death, your will, and all these topics
that are often easier to just ignore and think about dealing with later.
When they sign, what does it mean?
That they're gonna give most of their money away?
-Or some-- -The majority.
And of the people who belong, you know, a lot are going to give 99% away.
[Gates] You know, asking wealthy people to give away at least half,
you know, I'm surprised how well it's worked.
It became clear that there's quite a few who view their fortune as dynastic,
so they want, you know, to pass it on to their children.
And then there's a lot of people
who just haven't faced the issues of who's gonna give it away.
But the people who've joined the pledge have learned from each other,
inspired each other, and we'd hoped we'd get dozens,
and now we're up over 300 people.
[Elliott] By giving away his wealth,
Bill Gates is essentially imposing
an income and wealth tax on himself.
And I think what he's doing raises a really interesting question, which is,
should he be able to decide what to do with his money rather than the government?
And you can see arguments on both sides.
The problem, though,
is that many billionaires don't act like Bill Gates.
They either hoard their money or, if they give it up,
it's to things that aren't necessarily for the public good.
Some people say, "Well, the billionaires, they give a lot back."
[exhales]
I am super unimpressed.
I mean, most billionaire philanthropy is basically about putting your name
on some fancy university building or a museum. It's just vanity.
Of course, charity has an ego-reputation element in it,
and yet, at the end of the day, you have to ask,
"Does it really improve society?"
[producer] What about a billionaire like Bill Gates?
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has saved millions and millions of lives.
I… I don't think anyone can deny that,
but on the other hand,
I would much rather move to a world where properly funded governments
do the work that these rare philanthropies do.
[reporter 5] cutting-edge and experimental ventures
that government agencies, which are beholden to taxpayers, may not.
[Gates] India is a very important place for our foundation work.
We've been able to work together with the government,
because they share the goal of reducing the inequality and lifting people up.
It was clear that we could pick the people
who were already devoting their lives to these issues
and fund them aggressively and set ambitious goals.
[man 4] Bill, as we've looked at the inequality question in India,
women aren't afforded the same access to opportunities.
So, one of the key programs that the government has rolled out
is the self-help groups.
These are groups of 10 to 20 women at the village.
Things that mobilize information, expands their access to markets,
access to banking services.
We see many women then start a small business.
Today, we have 90 million women organized.
They together have saved 6 billion dollars.
[woman 8 in Hindi] Why did you take the loan?
For my farm.
[Krishna in English] We believe if we can continue to grow this kind of enterprise,
we can actually create 50 to 75 million jobs
in rural India in the near future.
-[in Hindi] We are the women of India. -We are the women of India.
-We're not flowers but sparks of fire. -We're not flowers but sparks of fire.
[inspiring music playing]
[Gates in English] You know, you have to be able to say
there's still a lot of awful inequality
and we've made mind-blowing progress on this issue.
Our awareness of the bad stuff is high enough
that people are often confused into thinking that the world is getting worse.
So I sometimes find myself saying,
"Hey, wait a minute. Let's learn from the cases where we have done well
and the incredible progress that we've made."
[audience cheering]
Today marks the start of the end for sub-minimum wages in Chicago.
[reporter 6]
[reporter 7]
the city council voted to abolish that system.
[reporter 8]
[Jayaraman] That was the first time in my 22 years of organizing
we saw the majority of legislators say,
"No, we actually have to stand with workers."
The bill in Chicago is going to mean that these workers can support themselves,
public assistance usage is gonna go down.
That is what is so historic about this moment.
And it is at every level,
from the highly paid actors to the lowest paid restaurant workers.
[indistinct chanting]
[Jayaraman] People are standing up and demanding more.
What does this mean?
This could be the end of low-wage work as we know it right now.
[inquisitive music playing]
[Cobb] When you look at the long span of these questions…
what you actually see is that inequality is not static.
[Desmond] In 1964,
when the Johnson administration launched the war on poverty,
ten years after, the poverty line was half of what it was in 1960.
It made a big difference.
And if so much was accomplished despite the odds, one big reason
was because normal, everyday Americans
put pressure on their lawmakers,
raised this issue with the American public.
That means the best road we have to ending poverty
is to bind ourselves together and demand this.
[Elliott] It needs and demands the attention
of the smartest people around and the most powerful people around.
Not just activists on the ground, but billionaires like Bill Gates.
[Gates] I'm excited about our next 20 years,
which is when we'll spend all this money.
You know, there are so many innovations coming in the future,
and there's nothing that has to be just for the elite.
[inquisitive music playing]
[inquisitive music continues]
[music fades]