World's poor headed for better lives in 2030: Gates

[Sopkoviak]

Source: AFP/Yahoo

New York (AFP) - The lives of the poor will improve faster in the next 15 years than at any time in history, billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates and his wife Melinda say.

In their annual letter released Thursday, the couple laid out their upbeat vision for a technology-driven wave of change that will lift hundreds of millions out of poverty by 2030.

The major breakthroughs will be most noticeable in health, but also in agriculture, digital banking and online education, where the Gates Foundation is planning to pour in resources.

"Our big bet is that in the next 15 years, the lives of the poor are going to improve more than at any time in the history of the world," Melinda Gates told AFP in an interview.

Child deaths are predicted to be cut by half, polio will be wiped out while the fight against malaria, a major killer in Africa, will make strides with vaccines and a single-dose cure.

Africa can achieve food security by 2030 with access to innovation in agriculture to help farmers, the Gates said in their letter, a vision statement that has been released annually since 2009.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/worlds-poor-headed-better-lives-2030-gates-042202519.html

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So there ya go. Problems solved.

[marym625]

1. wonderful. can they end war while they're at it?

I do think the money and resources they put out for education helps a great many people. As far as the 1% goes, they're better than most.

[McCamy Taylor]

5. Nope. There will be no end to war and with war, all the public health infrastructure in the world is

useless. With war, you can have plenty of (bio-engineered) food and still have famine. You can have vaccines to prevent and medicines to treat disease and still have deaths from those disease. You can plunge people who were raised in warm supportive environments into despair and apathy. You can squander all your resources and have nothing left for the poor.

Bill Gates probably does not realize how many people in the world live under the threat of war. And the number one reason for wars nowadays is over wealth--I.e. one country wants another's natural resources (world's longest running war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example) or a company wants to artificially inflate the price of its product (oil industry) or find a buyer for its services (Halliburton). So, Bill Gates, unless you want to personally dismantle the Military Industrial Complex and hire all those retired generals at Micro-Serf and then pay all those oil executives NOT to sell oil--including the Kochs who are already being paid by the US not to sell oil---and find other work for Halliburton you had better give up this silly notion of the ideal world in which every school child will have enough money to buy Disney merchandise and have his or her own PC.

Actually, if Gates AND the Mouse were to join forces, maybe we could end war. Disney is a force to be reckoned with---and their propaganda is better than anyone else's.

[marym625]

6. wouldn't that be something!

If we're going to dream, we might as well dream big.

[jwirr]

13. It is a ficious circle. Poverty results in War and War brings about more Poverty. I hope some of

this Gates money actually helps.

[Recursion]

2. Well, probably not "solved", but much of the world will be much better off

Pretty much an extension of what's happened over the past 20 years

[arcane1]

3. I hope they do a better job that we did!

[Fearless]

4. Really are you getting your stupid ass out of our education system??!?

[hibbing]

7. Call me a cynic call me what you will

I'm glad they are donating a ton of money and that's great. But will the fundamental realities of global capitalism and a corrupt ruling class really help the poor? I find it laughable.

Peace

[JDPriestly]

8. I like the fact that Melinda Gates appreciates the importance of government's role in dealing

with poverty and improving people's lives.

Active in more than 100 countries, the foundation has more than $42 billion in endowments to fund projects and innovations, but the Gates said their work also focused on shaping policy with governments.

Non-governmental organizations can "show points of lights" when it comes to fighting poverty, but "it takes governments to scale those up."

http://news.yahoo.com/worlds-poor-headed-better-lives-2030-gates-042202519.html

In one of my many professional reincarnations, I worked for a homeless project primarily writing grants. We got some money from private foundations and funders, but they were reluctant or maybe I should say not very generous to a project that mostly helped homeless black men. It just seems like that wasn't a really feel-good charity, not something they could brag about to the elite social crowd they ran with. But who needs help more than homeless black men? Maybe homeless children? Cancer victims?

Certainly not a lot of the fun projects that private foundations like to fund.

Anyway, most of our money came from government grants. And it was the government funding agencies that carefully read our reports to them on our use of the money. It was the government funding agencies that checked to make sure that our applications were honest and not hyping our results. Government agencies in my many years of experience in writing and managing grants were far better than private agencies in determining whether our projects deserved funding, were really accomplishing what we claimed they were. So private grants are great but they do not monitor for results as well as do government funders.

I'm happy to see that the Gates are working well with the local governments. It's so important.

But whether technology will help the poor in the future depends on whether the poor get access to it, and that depends on whether they have the resources, especially the money, to afford the technology and to afford to use the technology on a day-to-day basis.

i'd like to see technology used to make sure people have clean water, a place to sleep, food and most important job opportunities here in America as well as in Africa.

[heaven05]

9. really billy????????

[bemildred]

10. Derp. nt

[raccoon]

11. What in the sam hill does he know about it? His prediction is no better than anybody else's,

probably not as good, since he doesn't live in the same reality as the ordinary American, the 99%.

edited for spelling.

[GreatGazoo]

12. "Windows 8 "is key to where personal computing is going." - B. Gates 2012

"This (Windows 8 ) is the big time for us," Gates said. "unbelievably great."

14 months later....

Did Microsoft just admit Windows 8 is its worst operating system ever?

Reports say that Microsoft will abandon the Windows 8 Start screen interface for traditional computers in the next version of Windows, code-named Threshold. That's a pretty drastic step. Does it mean that Microsoft recognizes that Windows 8 was the biggest operating system bust in its history?
...
The change is essentially Microsoft's admission that Windows 8 has been a failure. It's the biggest turnaround that Microsoft has ever made when it comes to operating systems, nearly the equivalent of if the company had reverted back to DOS after the release of Windows.
...
Is Windows 8 the worst operating system Microsoft has ever released? There are some bombs it has to compete against. Windows ME was laughably bad, and lasted only a little more than a year before Windows XP was released. But Windows ME's badness was nothing compared to the awfulness that was Windows Vista, a bug-ridden, hardware-unfriendly operating system with high-end system requirements and annoying features such as overly intrusive User Account Control.

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2476464/microsoft-windows/did-microsoft-just-admit-windows-8-is-its-worst-operating-system-ever-.html

Gates can't predict 10 months out in his own industry -- why would he be accurate about poverty 15 years from now ?!

[Recursion]

17. It largely is; Canonical, Red Hat, and Mac are moving in that direction

I say this as a dyed-in-the-wool UNIX user, but Windows 8 has (for once) led the way towards the "computers everywhere" model.

That said, as much as I hate Microsoft software, Gates has for the past 2 decades been very clear that the kids in Lagos and Kolkata don't need laptops, they need clean water, and he's done an amazing amount of work to make that happen.

[jwirr]

14. Interested in the on-line education. The young man my family are supporting in Tanzania is learning

English and how to use the computer. That would be great.

[FLPanhandle]

15. Says the man who offshored US jobs...

and funded politicians to increase H1B visas because they were cheaper than US IT workers, then laid off the US workers once his H1B's were approved.

You made a shit load of money by keeping your salaries low Bill, you screwed US workers.

Now you give some of it back. Big deal.

[appalachiablue]

18. Read about more expected tech job losses from TPP on posts here & current measures to continue

the H-1B Visa program of importing and offshoring US tech jobs with bipartisan support. Some members discussed getting IT degrees in the 90s expecting a decent career and became SOL as you say.
Years ago Redmond friends mentioned a HS history teacher working summers cleaning carpets in large, mostly unoccupied homes of young, single Microsoft execs. Back to this thread topic, the global Gates should clarify that the poverty they refer to is primary non-US and largely devoted to efforts in Africa and Asia.

[ND-Dem]

20. +100. and his company is still lobbying for more. you notice how bill and melissa don't talk

about the US getting any better?

The third world will get a little better, the first and second worlds will get a lot worse. Because they're offshoring their businesses to the third world, so they don't need to placate US workers anymore.

[Myrina]

16. Yes, live longer to eat more GMO food and take more Common Core schooling ...

.... only to get a job as a ... a ... wait, what career options will these folks have?

[hatrack]

19. Just as soon as they buy my new OS!

Whatever, Bill . . .