- In an AMA on Reddit, Bill Gates confirmed that he will not be running for president.
- While Gates is troubled by the current administration, he believes that people put too much faith in the government when it comes to issues like education and poverty.
- Gates believes that the onus of providing aid in the fields of education and healthcare should be left to smaller, localized groups.
Bill Gates does not want to be president.
On Tuesday, the Microsoft founder confirmed that he has no plans to run for office in an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit. While Gates has taken issue with the current presidential administration in the past, he’s too committed to his work with his wife, Melinda, overseeing their multi-billion dollar philanthropic fund, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
“I won’t be running for President because I am super committed to the work Melinda and I are doing at the Foundation and outside the Foundation,” Gates explained on Reddit. “I agree it is important to have a President who thinks long term about the US role in the world and the research to solve disease burdens and costs and to tackle climate change and improve education.”
Regardless of who is in the White House though, Gates said Americans may be overestimating the government’s ability to improve education and fight poverty.
“I do think people are expecting too much from Government,” he continued. “Yes Government can do better but local groups can do a lot that government can’t – helping out in schools, reaching out to people in poverty.”
Gates says that providing aid through smaller, localized groups is a vision he’d like to see not just in the US, but worldwide as well.
“This is also true internationally,” he said. “I would like to see this civil society sector step up a lot more. Some issues like abortion or even immigration we may never get a consensus on but there are things like better health and better education that we can achieve.”
