Bill Gates Quotes

The government doesn't have to solve everyone's problem here.

Government policies and regulations in the postcrisis era have aided the hollowing-out of middle America far more than anything the private sector has done. These changes even expanded the wealth gap by making asset owners richer at the expense of renters.

I see no present solution of a great and intricate problem but that the rich should realize their duty to the poor.

I think there are people in this Congress who actually believe that government does not have a benign role in the lives of the people, except as an engine to redistribute the wealth of the Nation upwards.

Our elected officials would do well to remember that the most prosperous countries are those that allow consumers - not governments - to direct the use of resources. Allowing the government to pick winners and losers hurts almost everyone, especially our poorest citizens.

We do not have a money problem in America. We have a values and priorities problem.

In a world of global dependencies with no corresponding global polity and few tools of global justice, the rich of the world are free to pursue their own interests while paying no attention to the rest.

Businesses should be focused on business, and social responsibility should be government responsibility.

We've been so preoccupied with getting the government to behave in a fair and democratic way, we were not able to focus on the private sector where most of the jobs are, where most of the wealth and opportunities are.

There are rich people everywhere, and yet they don't contribute to the growth of their countries.

Unequal wealth distribution is a risk factor for inequality that must be attacked by policies.

The wealthy have a responsibility to invest in addressing inequality. This is especially true when constraints on others are so great.

Individual capitalists are in charge of a wide range of decisions which, because of their consequences for the general welfare of society, are in fact public policy decisions taken by private individuals.

Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.

The people in Washington are getting rich with our money. Under President Barack Obama, the federal government swelled to record size, and it took more and more of our money to pay for it. Who benefitted? Not Missouri farmers or workers.

I don't want to claim that my government can find solutions to all the problems facing the people.

The Government should be taking notice of the youth of today so much more. They're trying to keep the rich, rich and the poor, poor. If I sat down with David Cameron in a room, I would ask him how he feels about it and what the hell he's doing about it.

I think the media and the candidates have got to talk about why the middle class is in decline and why we have massive levels of income and wealth inequality.

Imagine what would happen if the government were to take the wealth of 200,000 of India's richest people and redistribute it amongst 2 million of India's poorest? We would hear a lot about socialist appropriation and the death of democracy. Why should taking from the rich be called appropriation and taking from the poor be called development?

When poverty declines, the need for government declines, which is why expecting government to solve poverty is like expecting a tobacco company to mount an aggressive anti-smoking campaign.

Why throw money at problems? That is what money is for. Should the nation's wealth be redistributed? It has been and continues to be redistributed to a few people in a manner strikingly unhelpful.

The international community... allows nearly 3 billion people - almost half of all humanity - to subsist on $2 or less a day in a world of unprecedented wealth.

Millionaires are just as patriotic as poor people. The very wealthy are just as noble and patriotic as the middle class. But nothing has been asked of them in this horrendous recession. And it's time we just ask.

The distribution of wealth is even more unequal than that of income. ...The wealthiest 5% of American households held 54% of all wealth reported in the 1989 survey. Their share rose to 61% in 2010 and reached 63% in 2013. By contrast, the rest of those in the top half of the wealth distribution —families that in 2013 had a net worth between $81,000 and $1.9 million —held 43% of wealth in 1989 and only 36% in 2013.

Once you realize that trickle-down economics does not work, you will see the excessive tax cuts for the rick as what they are -- a simple upward redistribution of income, rather than a way to make all of us richer, as we were told.