With the wealth inequality gap growing in the United States, many social scientists are calling for some type of redistribution policy to help the poor population of this country. Bill Gates proposes "creative capitalism" as an avenue to help the struggling people while generating profits for everybody else. His objective is to create business that target the poor as customers. Gates defines poor as the lower third of the world population. His plan seems very logical on paper but will it work in reality. Many critics accuse Gates of being hypocritical since he made his fortunes through capitalism while neglecting all the inequality around him. The article also brings up the efficiency arguments of philanthropy claiming many dollars spent on aid and relief don't impact the people or the countries they intend to help.
Source:WSJ
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
4 comments:
a "cynical capitalist" would respond that if profit opportunities were available by targeting the poor we wouldn't need Mr Gates to push the agenda.
Anonymous makes a good point. This "creative capitalism" can only work if the incentives for this "philanthropy" are properly aligned. Unfortunately, that's just how capitalism works. (And foreign aid doesn't work, but thats a whole different story.) Suska, I'm interested in what you think about this.
haha, let's just say i fall right in line with anonymous for some reason
Sounds ok
Post a Comment