Which is a better friend to America: Bill Gates and Microsoft or Steve Jobs and Apple?
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11 votes
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55% | |||
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9 votes
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45% | |||
1.) Approach to Philanthropy
Sham Entrepreneur:
A sham entrepreneur is a short-term thinker. He uses philanthropy to push socialist policies that will boost his immediate self-esteem and influence while damaging the long-term outlook for entrepreneurship.
Gates partners with Warren Buffett to urge billionaires to take a public “Giving Pledge” to donate at least half of their wealth to charity. Unfortunately, this appears to be a way for Gates to get public recognition while sending the message that charity must be broadcasted. More important, it is counteractive for Gates to encourage voluntary charity and coerced charity (via higher taxes) simultaneously.
Gates is pompous about his philanthropy and he under-appreciates entrepreneurial passion. Gates told Jobs’ biographer, Walter Isaacson: “Here I am, merely saving the world from malaria and that sort of thing, and Steve is still coming up with amazing new products. Maybe I should have stayed in that game.”
Today, Gates is the non-executive chairman of Microsoft (he handed the CEO reigns over to Steve Ballmer). I get the sense that Gates enjoyed competition and making money more than ensuring Microsoft lasted for future generations.
Jobs told Isaacson: “Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology. … Bill likes to portray himself as a man of the product, but he’s really not. He’s a businessperson. Winning business was more important than making great products. … Even when they [Microsoft] saw the Mac, they couldn’t copy it well. … I hate it when people call themselves ‘entrepreneurs’ when what they’re really trying to do is launch a startup and then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on. They’re unwilling to do the work it takes to build a real company … You build a company that will still stand for something a generation or two from now. That’s what Walt Disney did, and Hewlett Packard, and the people who built Intel. They created a company to last, not just to make money. That’s what I want Apple to be.”
Overall, Gates pushes for higher taxes as a way to solve U.S. and global budgetary problems. He takes credit for “saving the world” when a big part of what he does is ask the government to tell people how to spend their own money.
Real Entrepreneur:
I think that the best way a company can “help” the world is by being profitable and enduring. Apple helps the world primarily by creating and selling extraordinary products and secondarily via traditional philanthropy. For example:
•The affordability of iPhones and iPads “democratizes” technology and information. Steve Jobs wanted to make technology a tool for freedom by making it affordable to most Americans; by making Apple profitable, he was able to fulfill this goal.
•iPad technology has helped disabled Americans vote in private.
•U.S. troops in Afghanistan heavily utilize iPhones.
•The iPad is an intuitive device that is a blessing to mothers and fathers everywhere. Very young children who have never seen or used computers can instinctively use it. iPads support educational games that, when used judiciously, help teach and engage children. And, iPads playing white noise have been known to soothe cranky children into falling asleep.
•Apple creates or supports 514,000 jobs in America and an additional 23,000 jobs globally.
•As the most valuable company in the world, Apple creates profits for its shareholders and bolsters the U.S. economy.
•Apple pays its legal share of taxes and nothing more; Apple will not bail out the U.S. government’s wasteful spending. Apple is the biggest taxpayer in Cupertino, CA (Apple headquarters), paying over $8 million in annual property taxes. Globally, Apple paid at least $3.3 billion in taxes last year. In order to maximize profits to shareholders, Apple utilizes legal tax incentives to shift some profits overseas to more competitive tax rates and avoid the combined federal-state U.S. corporate income tax rate of 39.2 percent (the highest in the world).
•Apple donates silently. Apple matches employee donations to a long list of vetted charities. Apple also gave “…Stanford University more than $50 million in the past two years. The company also donated over $50 million to an African aid organization,” reports The New York Times.
2.) Approach to Public Policy
Sham Entrepreneur: Makes his money and runs. He does not care about defending the free market system for future generations; he cares about his public image. If the president is a socialist who “budgets” by raising taxes, a sham entrepreneur (like Gates) will tell the media that tax hikes are necessary because: “You’ve gotta fund the government somehow.”
Real Entrepreneur: Challenges the government, even if he or she is a member of the ruling political party. Jobs, for example, was a life-long Democrat. However, he was vocal about his capitalistic beliefs and he persistently challenged Obama to decrease business regulations. Jobs led by example, teaching the next generation of tech entrepreneurs to defend their businesses. Just look at what happened when entrepreneurs like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales publicly opposed SOPA and PIPA; freedom prevailed over big government.
Overall, I think it is unethical for Gates to use capitalism to achieve billionaire status and then publicly advocate tax policies that will destroy capitalism. I think Gates has a responsibility to stand up to our bully government and defend his freedom and private property rights. For, by defending his rights, he will help ensure that babies—future generations of American entrepreneurs—have the same opportunities to achieve success that he had.
See full report here:
http://townhall.com/columnists/katiekieffer/2012/05/07/how_bi...
Bill Gates gave billions to charities and saved countless lives.
Apple makes products that get dumbed down further every year to make sure no one has to challenge their brains to do anything.
Microsoft makes products that can be fixed just as easily as Apple's but allows the user to troubleshoot and think critically instead of just throwing it away to get a new one.
Apple sells overpriced, underpowered pieces of metal that look good, while Microsoft focuses on form rather than fashion.
I do not like Apple's business model and do not agree with the freedom-loving image it has crafted for itself in the least. The license for Mac OS X is far more restrictive than the license for Windows, and the iPhone is more restrictive than the Android on most counts (I have never used the Windows Phone series, but Windows Mobile was even less restrictive than Android on most counts). But even those restrictions pale in comparison to the anti-entrepreneurial atrocities committed by Microsoft in the '90s under Gates' leadership which are directly responsible for hindering the advancement of technology.
So no, neither of them are great champions of freedom or friends to America.
But the answer of who was the better entrepreneur, there is no doubt that it was Jobs.
Now as for Steve Jobs, he gave to draw attention to a cause and increase revenue for Apple.
Now if you look at the Gate's family you don't hear about the millions he give to feed children here in the US.
You don't see the amount of money he gives to local schools and excepts no media for these donation. In fact it is the media whom looks into the Gate's family donations to bring them to light.
Now on the other hand, Steve Jobs made it a point to say that this donation is from Apple and himself. He would even take it to the point of telling those whom attend a school which received his donation, the family could get a discount on Apple products. Now education wise, what can you learn off a Ipod Nano.
I could not believe the crap posted at the head of this thread about apple.
Apple: made in China, untaxed profits kept offshore
By David Gewirtz | January 26, 2012, 4:00am PST
Summary: About two-thirds of Apple’s $97.6 billion cash pile is offshore. That’s a lot of money for an American company to keep outside of America.
It’s been a banner week for Apple. With Apple’s announcement of Q1 2012 results, the company is now apparently worth more than Greece.
In the same week, the President of the United States invoked the late Steve Jobs and Apple in his Congressionally-mandated State of the Union address.
Just a few hours later, in the GOP response to the President’s speech, Governor Mitch Daniels also played the Steve Jobs card, saying “The late Steve Jobs — what a fitting name he had — created more of them than all those stimulus dollars the President borrowed and blew.”
Partisanship aside, certainly Apple has created a lot of jobs over the years. But today, most of the jobs created by Apple are not American jobs, they’re sweatshop-style jobs for miserable, overworked workers in China.
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I could not believe the crap posted at the head of this thread about apple.
Apple: made in China, untaxed profits kept offshore
By David Gewirtz | January 26, 2012, 4:00am PST
Summary: About two-thirds of Apple’s $97.6 billion cash pile is offshore. That’s a lot of money for an American company to keep outside of America.
It’s been a banner week for Apple. With Apple’s announcement of Q1 2012 results, the company is now apparently worth more than Greece.
In the same week, the President of the United States invoked the late Steve Jobs and Apple in his Congressionally-mandated State of the Union address.
Just a few hours later, in the GOP response to the President’s speech, Governor Mitch Daniels also played the Steve Jobs card, saying “The late Steve Jobs — what a fitting name he had — created more of them than all those stimulus dollars the President borrowed and blew.”
Partisanship aside, certainly Apple has created a lot of jobs over the years. But today, most of the jobs created by Apple are not American jobs, they’re sweatshop-style jobs for miserable, overworked workers in China.
According to the New York Times, Apple employs 43,000 people in the United States. That’s not an inconsiderable number of people. However, Apple no longer builds its own devices. There was a time when Apple computers were actually manufactured in the United States. Today, Apple products are built in China. Foxconn City has 230,000 people working to make iPhones and iPads — and Presidential candidate Rick Santorum claims more than 500,000 people build Apple products in China.