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United States Microsoft Politics

Bill Gates Calls On the US Government To Invest More In Research and Development (fortune.com) 154

Posted by msmash from the things-gates-say dept.
An anonymous reader cites an article on Fortune: On Monday, Bill Gates attempted a commendable feat: to get politicians to focus on something other than the current election cycle and its partisan bickering. In an op-ed published by Reuters, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft called on the United States to spur technological innovation by increasing its investment in research and development. "Government funding for our world-class research institutions produces the new technologies that American entrepreneurs take to market," he wrote. But while other nations like South Korea and China have drastically upped their R and D spending, the United States' has "essentially flatlined." He said that the rest of the world's commitment to research and development is great, "but if the United States is going to maintain its leading role, it needs to up its game." His call for more government-sponsored R&D also comes as corporations pull back on their commitment to discovery and innovation. With more government investment, he said, U.S. scientists could completely eradicate polio and further decrease the number of deaths from malaria. More funding could also "develop the technologies that will power the world -- while also fighting climate change, promoting energy independence, and providing affordable energy for the 1.3 billion poor people who don't have it today."
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Bill Gates Calls On the US Government To Invest More In Research and Development More

Bill Gates Calls On the US Government To Invest More In Research and Development

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  • Rich guy wants us to pay (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 18, 2016 @02:42PM (#51933603)

    Always easier to spend other people's money than it is to spend your own, eh Billy?

    • Always easier to spend other people's money than it is to spend your own, eh Billy?

      It's called capitalism. If you're using your own money for business, you're doing it wrong.

      • Using your own money *IS* the definition of capitalism.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by bsDaemon ( 87307 )

          Investing money (capital) into assets used to make a profit, with both the ownership of the capital assets as well as the profits being in private hands is the definition of capitalism. Using your own money is one way to do it. Borrowing other people's money is called leverage.

        • Using your own money *IS* the definition of capitalism.

          Only if you want to remain a small time entrepreneur.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      He and his rich buddies also want to take advantage of all that 3rd world labor whose diseases they'll be eradicating. "Okay, now that we've eliminated your malaria, you need to to come work for us for $2 a day!" Great news if you're either very rich or very poor. For the rest of us, it just means fewer middle class jobs.

      • "Okay, now that we've eliminated your malaria, you need to to come work for us for $2 a day!"

        It doesn't work that way. The biggest weapon against malaria is literacy. Literate people can learn how the disease spreads, and can read the instructions on bed nets and cans of insecticide. Once they can read, they are also more productive, and can earn more than $2 per day. In the past decade, Africa has made huge progress against both malaria and illiteracy. If you overlay the maps of malaria reduction and illiteracy reduction, they line up almost exactly. They both line up well with a map of risi

        • Once they can read, they are also more productive, and can earn more than $2 per day.

          So Gates should be teaching the Chinese working at the Foxconn factories to read??

          • So Gates should be teaching the Chinese working at the Foxconn factories to read??

            Foxconn employees make a lot more than $2/day. A typical wage is $20-$30/day, which is more like $50/day at PPP. That is a decent wage in China.

            • I don't think you can apply PPP AND say " a decent wage in China". Once you've applied PPP we get to judge if it is a decent wage by non-Chinese Standards and frankly I imagine it would be difficult to live on anywhere if it were the only income coming in to a family.
      • Well, I'm sure the people in Africa would much rather have paying jobs than die from malaria. And raising the standard of living in Africa will help the rest of the world - more trade is generally better.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yep, well get onto that just as soon as we gather the taxes you SHOULD be paying.

    • Back in them good old days which the republicans look fondly on. Had companies that had their own R&D areas. Where they toyed with designs and ideas, some not profitable, but often would lead further to greater innovation. I am good with Government funded R&D it is very useful. However a good Private R&D is needed too.

      Government by nature is very risk adverse, meaning its R&D can have solid funding, however on tasks with a higher chance of success.
      Private will be more willing to take risks

      • Government funding led to nuclear power and space technology. Hardly risk averse. It's the private sector, especially publicly traded ones that are usually risk averse because risk causes the share price to fall.

        • Private generally doesn't invest in things with low chance of profit. Space and military are just such things.

          Government can increase the risk by threatening tax increases, spending out of control such that increases may be inevitable, and running around trying to get elected promising to bash evil big business on the head.

          • Private generally doesn't invest in things with low chance of profit. Space and military are just such things.

            Unless you are a contractor. The Aerospace industry makes money hand over fist on Government projects.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by idji ( 984038 )
      uh no. This billionaire is spending his own money and money of others who approve what he is doing. We wants the country to then spend trillions on improving the life of billions. Commendable and he puts his money where his mouth is. What did you do this year to improve the world for other humans?
      • You haven't actually looked into what he and his cronies are really up to, have you.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Now would that be the money in tax havens or the money in tax discounting countries without any revenue or the money from un-employing people where the revenue is generated and employing people who can never afford to buy the product based on the wages being paid or is that money generated by using slave prison labour or is that the money generated by using criminal uncompetitive practices or the money generated by corrupting governments to ensure product sales of etc. etc. etc.. You tell a lie, that gener

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dywolf ( 2673597 )

      We should pay.
      And gladly.

      Basic science research is an investment.
      An investment that yields tremendous returns.

      Not just in the abstract of knowledge being good and the next someone building on the knowledge we gained today.
      But also in the form of economic growth, employment, advancing industry, productivity.
      Not just in our nation, but across the whole world (though of course those who harness it best tend to profit the most).

      It's one of the most powerful positive loops in a nation's (or world's) economic eng

    • Research is hard to do at corporations. Research does not make profits in the short term, and in the long term it makes profits for other companies. So the bottom line from the board of directors almost always says to do very little research. Broad based research is even more rare. The few exceptions to this are companies that are either extremely rich or which have a monopoly position (IBM, Bell). So there is a reliance on universities and government funding to keep research alive. That taxpayer money

    • Yeah, because decades of research into particle physics and fusion power is definitely something that a private corporation is going to do with no practical immediate uses available in the next 6 quarters.

      Government R&D definitely has it's place, and anyone that says otherwise is a damn fool.

    • He is spending a lot of his own money. Asking the government to fund more R&D is a good thing, and even as rich as Bill Gates is, the feds have way more money.

  • hard (Score:3, Insightful)

    by religionofpeas ( 4511805 ) on Monday April 18, 2016 @02:43PM (#51933617)
    Government spending is easy. Making sure it doesn't result in people lining their pockets with the money without producing tangible results is hard.

    • Re:hard (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Monday April 18, 2016 @03:06PM (#51933815) Journal

      Government spending is easy. Making sure it doesn't result in people lining their pockets with the money without producing tangible results is hard.

      Gates has a point (for once). The US economy typically depends on the leading-edge. Once something becomes a commodity, it flows to cheaper-labor countries, where we can't compete.

      And if we want to continue to surf the leading edge, we have to create the leading edge. Nobody else is going to do it for us.

      That may require government money. The Internet, early computers, jets, the space program, and indirectly the semi-conductor industry were all spurred on by government spending, changing the world.

      The private market has decided to focus on near-term R&D and products for the most part. The days of Xerox's GUI-like research are mostly gone (with the notable exception of near-Earth-orbit spaceflight.)

      I'm not sure why industry changed. It could be a bad batch of MBA's trained via education fads to chase short-term, or maybe the pressure of global competition putting companies in semi-panic survival mode. But it has changed.

      Thus, government has to step in the fill the void. I don't see the private sector growing more interested in medium- and long-term R&D again. It's not whether the government sucks, it's whether the alternative is worse.

      Perhaps some form of collaboration between government, universities, and private industry needs to be explored more. Sometimes you just have to experiment with collaboration systems.

      Either way, if we don't find a way to stoke the leading edge, our comparative advantage of pushing the envelope will disappear and we'll become a second-rate economy. Stagnation is not our friend.

      • The private market has decided to focus on near-term R&D and products for the most part. The days of Xerox's GUI-like research are mostly gone (with the notable exception of near-Earth-orbit spaceflight.)

        Exactly. But the private market isn't doing this for a lack of money, so adding government money isn't going to fix the underlying problem that the private market just isn't motivated in doing long term research. Instead, the business will take the government handouts, and use it to support a part of their company that wasn't making much profit. They'll come up with some nice looking business proposal that nobody in the government can properly judge on its merits, and the money will be wasted.

      • We had a panic over communism which spurred on education and research. There was very serious concern that our schools were falling behind and so tax dollars flowed into the schools. There was worry that the Russkies were making better weapons than us and so money flowed to defense industries. The whole space program was about competing against the enemy. Today though the panic is over terrorists so there's no worry about being better educated or having better technology. Though if the public's panic w

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        The private market has decided to focus on near-term R&D and products for the most part. The days of Xerox's GUI-like research are mostly gone (with the notable exception of near-Earth-orbit spaceflight.)

        I'm not sure why industry changed. It could be a bad batch of MBA's trained via education fads to chase short-term, or maybe the pressure of global competition putting companies in semi-panic survival mode. But it has changed.

        Easy, greed took over. It used to be executives managed their companies lookin

    • Re:hard (Score:5, Insightful)

      by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Monday April 18, 2016 @03:27PM (#51933985) Journal

      Government spending is easy. Making sure it doesn't result in people lining their pockets with the money without producing tangible results is hard.

      Fortunately, government-financed R&D has produced lots of tangible results. If some grad students and associate professors "line their pockets" with a barely-living wage, I don't care.

      And if companies can share in the benefit from this research and make billions, great.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by chihowa ( 366380 )

        This is a great answer. To add to that, the US government runs quite a few national research laboratories that are having to turn away potential researchers and push out existing researchers because there is too little money allocated to keeping research staff.

        Where I work, well equipped and built up labs are sitting empty because there is no money set aside to actually hire people to work in the labs. The budgets barely keep up with inflation and often come with so many new mandated projects that money has

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by TopherC ( 412335 )

        Typically in university-based research, most of the government funding goes to post-doc salaries. The professors are paid by the university, and most of a grad student's research assistantship (basically minimum wage) is also paid through the university. Post-doc salaries are between about 1/3 to 1/2 of what industry would pay the same people.

        • Typically in university-based research, most of the government funding goes to post-doc salaries. The professors are paid by the university, and most of a grad student's research assistantship (basically minimum wage) is also paid through the university. Post-doc salaries are between about 1/3 to 1/2 of what industry would pay the same people.

          I am completely OK with post-docs "lining their pockets" with that fat "1/3 of what industry would pay".

          The post-docs I've known are pretty damn hard-working, or they

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z80a ( 971949 )

      Sometimes you have to actually produce some results, or well, there won't be any money to pocket.

  • Wait a minute (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Why don't the entrepreneurs invest in the R&D that they're going to take to market? Why should we socialize the cost of R&D and then privatize the profits that come from it?

  • Article haiku (Score:4, Insightful)

    by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Monday April 18, 2016 @02:46PM (#51933637)
    >> Government funding for our world-class research institutions produces the new technologies that American entrepreneurs take to market

    You pay the taxes
    Public schools research the tech
    Big business profits
  • Given its track record, I have little faith that the government would use taxpayer funds to get promising ideas developed by people who would otherwise not have the resources to do it on their own. More than likely, this would be just another avenue to funnel tons of cash to the friends and donors of those in power (on both sides of the aisle).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dywolf ( 2673597 )

      spoken like someone unfamiliar with:
      -the track record of government funded science
      -how basic research is done and the sums involved
      -actual crony capitalism

      the modern world exists because of government funded basic research.

      and much the whole stupid "terrorists will hide in the refugees" thing, if getting rich off government funds is your thing, there are far easier, far more lucrative avenues than some piddly research grants.

    • Yeah who needs satellites, GPS, nuclear power or the internet.

    • Unfortunately we will not see any groundbreaking revolutionary new technology on private funds. Private investors want products. They want something to sell. And that's far, far away when you're doing basic research. But that is what you need to get new technologies.

      Take lasers. You know, the staple of 60s James Bond villains and the things that we use to read optical media. The fundamental work and early research towards them started about a century ago. A century. It took almost half a century until the f

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dywolf ( 2673597 )

        well I wouldn't go so far as to say none.

        there have always been a few mavericks who would push the envelope just because its there.

        but its definitely true that they do not and never have represented the majority view when it comes to private investment in research.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dywolf ( 2673597 )

      "Short" (1176 articles), and incomplete list of science performed with NSF funding:
      http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries... [nsf.gov]

      Much of it seemingly banal ("health indicators of coral", "water availability"), but that's what basic research is: building blocks.
      But get enough blocks together, and eventually you've got a skyscraper of discovery and innovation.

    • Given its track record, I have little faith that the government would use taxpayer funds to get promising ideas developed by people who would otherwise not have the resources to do it on their own.

      I love people who argue against government-funded R&D...on the Internet.

      Some other successes of government-funded R&D:

      - Communications and weather satellites
      - optical digital recording technology
      - supercomputers
      - digital communications
      - lasers
      - GPS
      - Human Genome Project
      - fluorescent lights
      - Every single bi

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      You clearly do not understand how the federal government funds research. It goes to NSF, NIH, DoD labs, etc. You won't get a drop without a viable research plan and work at viable research institution. Congress has periodically attempted to short-circuit this, but earmarks have been cut to such an extent, research earmarks no longer exist.

      That said, one of the best things Congress could do is cut that tax writeoff for research by private companies. They will label anything research just to get free money.

      An

  • It's too late now. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Monday April 18, 2016 @02:52PM (#51933697)

    The government might have the money to increase R&D funding if companies like Microsoft hadn't used creative accounting to almost totally avoid paying taxes. Perhaps Bill should have thought about that sooner.

  • Nice idea but probably futile (Score:3)

    by sjbe ( 173966 ) on Monday April 18, 2016 @03:05PM (#51933797)

    Bill Gates attempted a commendable feat: to get politicians to focus on something other than the current election cycle and its partisan bickering.

    I didn't know his middle name was Sisyphus [wikipedia.org]...

    Getting politicians to care about anything other than getting power and bashing the opposition these days is nigh impossible.

    More funding could also "develop the technologies that will power the world -- while also fighting climate change, promoting energy independence, and providing affordable energy for the 1.3 billion poor people who don't have it today."

    The party which currently controls Congress cares about none of those things. They plainly dispute even the existence of climate change, they aren't concerned about energy independence because that would hurt their oil and coal buddies and they certainly don't care about providing energy for poor people, especially ones that aren't American citizens.

  • Bill Gates for KING!!!

  • It's been down since the Great R but we're at $140B for FY2016 [aaas.org], how much more should we spend there billy? Under Dubya it was up to was about $20B more.

  • Bill, you have more money than the US, do it yourself.

  • First you need the science educated people, so lets get the science back in science class and the creationism (ID = Creationism) back in church.
  • That battle is already lost.

    Better to put your money into something you can control and make a difference in, like cheap/free Internet for the world (although the cheap electricity thing would have to come first, obviously).

  • Makes sense, companies aren't doing it anymore (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Monday April 18, 2016 @03:47PM (#51934219)

    Regular companies have slashed their R&D or eliminated it completely. Bell Labs barely exists anymore, HP, IBM and Microsoft's Research arms are so product focused that very little long-term groundbreaking science comes out of there these days. Product manufacturing being shifted overseas means the engineering around manufacturing and product development is slowly shifting closer to the factories. Add in the fact that science in the academic world is a notoriously unstable, low-paying area to be in, and it's no wonder that basic research gets underfunded. It's not the same in other countries -- foreign students come back from their education here and are treated quite well compared to students here.

    The problem is that to continue innovating, you need that R&D pipeline. The public market and the MBA crowd prohibit investment in anything further than 2 quarters out, so something has to come in and pick up the slack. The golden age of for-profit companies paying for R&D is over unless some major shift happens. Not that I want to go back to the Cold War era, but look how much money got poured into the Space Race and defense programs. When the limitations of budgets, etc. were removed, progress was made quickly. The goal was to beat the Russians to the Moon, or to protect the country from a nuclear attack at all costs, and the work got done.

    tl;dr: Yes, throwing money at this particular problem will work, and it has in the past. It just takes the will to do it.

    • Re:Makes sense, companies aren't doing it anymore (Score:4, Insightful)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Monday April 18, 2016 @04:28PM (#51934611) Journal

      Microsoft's Research arms are so product focused that very little long-term groundbreaking science comes out of there these days.

      It's actually kind of amazing how little good stuff comes out of Microsoft research, considering how much money they throw at it.

      • Yeah, there were lots of prototype devices that likely would of only interested the geekiest (small market). So given production at the time, likely a loss all round even if brought to market. Except, the market we have today, with 3D printing and other low-run manufacturing possibilities...it makes one wonder what Microsoft might do with all those (previously) "set-aside" hardware prototypes.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Qzukk ( 229616 )

          I remember a lot of people making googly-eyes at the Microsoft Courier [cnet.com] After half a decade of ipads and android tablets, I doubt it could make any kind of comeback, especially not with the Surface occupying the "Microsoft Tablet" niche.

    • The problem is you then perpetuate businesses using the public trust as their own slush fund while offering very little in return. The public gets raped twice- once from paying the actual taxes that corps.skiver, and again when the products are sold back to them as jobs move elsewhere.

      It all seems a bit of economic brinkmanship, with corps. threatening to crash the party unless they get dibs on research dollars, and sucking that dry until the infrastructure crumbles and they move on to another market.

      I'm ac

  • $5 Trillion (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    That $6 trillion we pissed away in Iraq and the Afghanistan would have come in handy right about now.

  • Not only do we need research in areas likely to be useful we also need the exotic research that has no apparent reason to take place. Those exotic studies somehow tend to yield the best fruit.

  • Bill Gates is no doubt an intelligent and educated man, he is also no doubt acting in his own self interests. From where he sits he stands to benefit from more government spending on research since that is then research he does not have to fund himself but is also in a position to turn into products quickly. The internet is something that Gates did not see coming, and from what I recall from history he was either late to realize the impact it would have or perhaps even was dragged kicking and screaming in

  • Since 1999 the US government has paid more for basic research to universities than the combined private and public investment in early stage commercialization (government research grants vs angel investing + venture capital + SBIR). We've built our R&D system such that it costs more to commercialize a good idea than it does to do the basic research. Basic research costs are kept low by subsidies from the researchers who accept degrees, PhDs, postdoctoral fellowships, and tenure in lieu of money.

    So, now

    • Add to your list the requirement that university receiving federal grants have to keep their administrative and non-academic expenses to 25% max. Otherwise these grants fund more administrative positions and other needless fluff. US universities have increased spending on administrative and non-academic (mainly college athletics) positions by 300% while expenses for academic positions (profs, researchers, techs) stayed flat at best.
  • It's not like we've been through an unusually long recession or anything else that might lead Congress to tighten the strings on discretionary spending.
    • Yes, but a responsible Congress with folks who have a clue increase R&D and infrastructure spending during a regression. Not only does that keep folks employed, it also lays the groundwork once the economy picks back up again. And that is when Congress needs to step in and grab some of that cash so that it compensates for previous expenses rather than make very few people very rich. But with that many utterly clueless tea baggers in Congress we can all forget about common sense.
      • No, that's what they do if they misread Keynes. His theory was that the government can shore up the economy by increasing spending to replace falling consumer demand, but it's been twisted around, leaving out everything but "increase spending during a recession". Having forgotten the key point that it is consumption that needs to be increased, well intentioned but incorrect legislators start to think that any spending will do; or worse, that the government needs to increase supply and demand labor. Not o
  • The Gates Foundation favors research teams over others stifling the necessary discourse. Also, so far none of the projects sponsored by the Gates Foundation had any lasting impact for the greater good. Plus...although he is no longer directly involved...Microsoft is one of the biggest roadblocks to open access to tech.

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