Microsoft Timeline
Business @ the Speed of Thought
Remarks by Bill Gates
Georgetown University School of Business
March 24, 1999
QUESTION: During the course of the presentation, you mentioned job
reduction a number of times. While, as business students, we can all
appreciate what that means for the bottom line, have you put any
thought into what it means for society as a whole?
MR. GATES: Well, part of the lesson of economics is that there are
infinite demands for jobs out there, as long as you want class sizes
to be smaller, or entertainment services to be better, there's not a
lump of labor where there's a finite demand for a certain number of
jobs. And so, as efficiency changes, such as in food production, the
jobs shifted to manufacturing. As efficiencies were gained there,
those jobs moved into services. In fact, there's no shortage of things
that can be done. So, it's not like we're going to run out of jobs
here.
Tom Walker
