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229 Comments
- voodooname, on 10/14/2008, -11/+94Nice article! That unemployment rate is huge... Coming from a man like B. Gates - I believe he is a trustworthy source.
- RogerBlogger, on 10/14/2008, -3/+57His estimate is a full percentage point higher than the Goldman Sachs estimate.
Now is the time to make yourself more valuable to your boss. 2009 is going to be a tough year. - Jeepfish, on 10/14/2008, -10/+59We should probably pay attention to this....after all, he only revolutionized the economy with practical business software.
- inactive, on 10/14/2008, -21/+65He can predict this, yet he can't predict the failure of Vista?
- CamperBob, on 10/15/2008, -3/+32ROFL. The (second-) wealthiest man in the US doesn't "know the economy."
He and that ***** Buffett guy should just STFU and accept their due down-digging, I guess. - Elranzer, on 10/15/2008, -2/+30Somehow, I'm guessing all the Diggers saying Bill Gates knows nothing of the economy are jealous Mac heads. I'd bet if it was Steve Jobs who said this, the semen would be flying all over the place.
- persianpeace, on 10/15/2008, -1/+23He ruled your economy for more than two decades and you didn't even know
- seltaeb4, on 10/15/2008, -6/+24Actually, true unemployment is at least 9% right now.
Ronald Reagan cooked the books on how unemployment was calculated right after he got into office, so he could take credit for the "increase" in employment rates.
So, whenever some mouth-breathing O'Reilly fan says "We've got an unemployment rate of 5%, while those European socialist nations have a 10% employment rate," you'll know with all the more certainty that he's full of crap. - HappyScrappy, on 10/15/2008, -0/+18Reagan cooked them by changing how farm workers were counted, Clinton (I believe) changed it to count the military as employed (instead of excluding them). Each administration seems to rejigger the figure to make themselves look good.
But the EU figures are screwed up too, for similar reasons. - 7thpixel, on 10/15/2008, -0/+18So we should stop reading Digg @work?
- PhilLesh69, on 10/15/2008, -3/+20He thinks, "let me keep up the advertising campaign to get a bunch of me-toos and wannabees buying my products."
- benologist, on 10/15/2008, -0/+17I think you underestimate just how successful and savvy he is when it comes to busines.
- sockpuppets, on 10/15/2008, -1/+17I like to stand on my head and read this that way it's only 6%.
- Murdats, on 10/15/2008, -1/+16http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates#Misattribu ...
- Ninh, on 10/14/2008, -9/+22Well, two things ... this is Bill Gates who, among many other misjudgements, famously missed the train on the internet - that much for his prediction abilities. Secondly I don't see him lowering licensing costs for Microsoft software to do his share in reviving the economy. Doesn't that feed the unemployment?
- KibibyteBrain, on 10/15/2008, -0/+12He made a ton of money off other investments.And running a very large company is quite parallel to running a small economy. After all, MSFT has at times rivaled nations in terms of it's wealth and workforce. Lastly, well, he is still in executive management, if now for a charity, so he probably has daily briefings from many experts on such things to allow his operations and planning.
- Duncan3, on 10/15/2008, -5/+17It's already near 14%. The government "number" only counts those newly unemployed still looking for full-time work and not working at all. So if you take a part time job 10 hours a week because you can't find a job, you're fully employed as far as the government data says.
At least it's better then the inflation data, that's just made up out of thin air - which is where all our money is from these days. - agfresh8, on 10/15/2008, -0/+11hivoltage 1. you attribute receiving a piece of paper to having intelligence... it does not work that way
2. When the company you founded has $200+ Billion market cap. I think you will know a thing or two about macroeconomics, but Bill doesn't know as much as you because he doesn't have the "biz degree" - seltaeb4, on 10/15/2008, -4/+15Nope. Reagan started counting the military as employed, AND he started kicking people out of the figures after their unemployment benefits were exhausted (he invented a new classification, "discouraged workers," and simply stopped counting them AT ALL.) Pretty clever, if you admire evil.
Clinton could hardly have been expected to return to the HONEST, pre-Reagan figures, as he would have caught hell from the Gingrich Republicans for "a return to Carter-Era unemployment rates."
As it was, Clinton's 1993 budget passed without a single Republican vote, and it worked pretty admirably, we know from hindsight, despite the tax increases which every Republican predicted would send us spiraling into a new Great Depression. Didn't quite turn out that way, did it? Clinton ended his term in office with a balanced budget and a surplus, having inherited the Reagan/Bush I debt of $4 trillion.
Then W.'s minions stole the 2000 election, and we all know how that turned out. We're now $10 trillion in debt.
As H.L. Mencken famously noted, "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." For most of the last 30 years, Americans bought the Republican fool's gold of "cutting taxes and deregulating industry." So, one again, we'll have to rely on the liberal party to dig us out of this cesspool, just as we had to rely on F.D.R. to get us out of the Hoover hole. - MacSuxWindozSux, on 10/15/2008, -0/+11"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
Yeah it was true when he said it back in the 80's. That doesn't mean he'd think it great for 2008. He didn't say 640k ought to be enough for all time.
"Two years from now, spam will be solved."
Yeah because he was pushing some initiative to make email cost a few pennies. His comment was out of confidence his plan would be adopted, because he was trying to convince people to adopt it. - inactive, on 10/15/2008, -8/+18Some other fantastic Bill Gates predictions:
"I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time."
In 2004: "Two years from now, spam will be solved."
At Comdex, 2001: "So next year a lot of people in the audience, I hope, will be taking their notes with those Tablet PCs."
"640K ought to be enough for anybody. " (he denies this one) - DavidtheMavin, on 11/11/2008, -14/+24The only thing the US has going for it right now is the 6.x% unemployment rate. If this prediction does come true we're in a whole lot of trouble. Luckily Obama has a tax break for companies per new hire among other things, so hopefully that will help when he's elected president. ;-)
- Ramble, on 10/15/2008, -1/+10He's right, forecasting the economy is different - because it's complete *****.
- Ramble, on 10/15/2008, -3/+12Are you joking? XP was a huge pile of ***** when released, far far worse than Vista was.
- NidStyles, on 10/15/2008, -0/+8Wow, really... Must be the reality that the common man loves buying into locked out hardware, and subterfuged software. Yep that must be it, we just want everything fed to us.
- reallytempting2, on 10/15/2008, -2/+109% is a very scary number .. let hope bill is wrong ...
- inactive, on 10/14/2008, -8/+16If he said Vista was gonna be a success, we're in the ***** house for sure on this one. Man we're all *****.
- Myztry, on 10/15/2008, -2/+10"Consumer sentiment has never been so low," Gates said
Enough about Vista. I want to hear about the world economy... - credential101, on 10/15/2008, -1/+8As if getting a job wasn't hard enough.
- BoneStamp, on 10/14/2008, -8/+15Give Bill more tax breaks. According to McCain, that's what will result in more jobs and help the poor people gain wealth.
- akhomestead, on 10/15/2008, -0/+7We're probably already over 9% if they figured the number like they did 20 years ago. The unemployment number now is so screwed to make it look lower that it's not an accurate figure at all.
- Myztry, on 10/15/2008, -2/+9He missed the Internet. LOL. *****!
- cquinnd, on 10/15/2008, -0/+7""640K ought to be enough for anybody. " (he denies this one)"
He denies it because no one has ever (to my knowledge) come up with a post or publication where he was actually qouted as saying that.
What he did say, and the meaning of his speech at the time, have been confused over the years by people who forget what the practical limit on memory was for the early PC CPUs. - toxicityj, on 10/15/2008, -3/+10I don't get how Vista is a failure...it holds more marketshare than all of its non-windows competition combined...
- LMN8R, on 10/15/2008, -3/+10120+ million Vista users in a year and a half beg to differ with your sentiment that it "failed".
- PhilLesh69, on 10/15/2008, -5/+11It's "Mojave" now.
Always remember, you can always rename your failures and put more perfume on it, and eventually people will forget that it smells like *****.
In 2 or 3 more years, we'll all forget that vista was a resource hogging operating system that would force businesses to suffer the cost of learning curves and lost efficiencies, and we'll be forced to upgrade because all new software will no longer run on XP.
It sucks for microsoft that XP was their best effort so far, and will be a viable OS as long as they don't undermine it with new software that isn't compatible with it.
Sort of like the opposite of how every Linux and Unix variant doesn't force you to buy something new whenever a new version of some application or server daemon is released. You can still load a 1983 version of Sendmail on the most recent release of Redhat or Debian. Or MySQL 2 on the most recent Gentoo. - sid007i, on 10/15/2008, -0/+6It True. In IT, we've lost people and have not replaced them nor are we hiring. Yet I am doing the work of two people. Merged teams and doubled our work with the same # of people.
Well suppose it's better to be employed and staying busy verus being unemployed or be at risk of losing your job. - NidStyles, on 10/15/2008, -1/+7He's retired, or did you miss that bit of new's?
- Merp08, on 10/15/2008, -0/+6Get on your knees.
- chillypacman, on 10/15/2008, -6/+12Vista IS a success, it's a great OS and it gest the job done, unlike Linux which is not practical for home use or Macs which aren't really practical for anything unless you like showing off stuff.
But don't let reality get in the way, go bag MS some more =) - inactive, on 10/15/2008, -3/+9Is that because Microsoft is taking more jobs out of America? I called Xbox support a month ago and got someone in Mexico.
- macinit1138, on 10/15/2008, -2/+8Nice for him to enlighten us on the effect and not the cause: The Federal Reserve. I doubt he really cares, and if he does he's a coward and not willing to talk about it.
- persianpeace, on 10/15/2008, -1/+7Even B doesn't care about Vista anymore.
- ThePenrod, on 10/15/2008, -4/+10Hmmm... but what does Steve Jobs think?
- HappyScrappy, on 10/15/2008, -0/+6Except that unemployment rates cannot be compared across countries, because the formula for unemployment rate is ***** in each country. And each one is ***** in a different way.
The US, for example, doesn't count people who have given up looking for work. It also counts the military as employed (instead of non counted) and ignores seasonal laborers out of work (even if not out of work just for the season. - aaronhoffmeyer, on 10/15/2008, -3/+8A quick glance of the unemployment data since 1940s shows that almost peaks after 1949 have occurred while a Republican is president, and usually at the end of their term.
http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat1.pdf - MacSuxWindozSux, on 10/15/2008, -1/+6Perhaps you prefer Apple *****? Or Nintendo *****?
- ronaldmonster, on 10/15/2008, -2/+7Linux & Mac Bots in 3...2...1
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