One of the lessons that I hope people will take out is the extreme dependence simply on the financial sector is really dangerous.
Well that's a bit of a question like saying, what have you learned in life that would help you lead? My whole life has been learning to lead, from my parents, to my education, to the experience I had in the private sector, to helping run the Olympics, and then of course helping guide a state. Those experiences in totality have given me an understanding of how America works and how the economy works.
When the private sector fails, the solution is more government. When the government fails, the solution is more government.
During the early 1960s, I decided to supplement research support for quantitative economic studies at Pennsylvania by selling econometric forecasts to private and public sector buyers.
How much further beyond basic research the role of the government should be, you could have a really good debate about it. Almost nobody would say it's zero. But that's where at least we need the private sector to play a big role.
Building a business and becoming a billionaire is it's not championship. It's the competence; the competence in your sector with other companies not looking to have some kind of records in this issue.
Having more women in company boards, in senior management, supervisory positions and workers in the formal sector is not only the right thing to do, but the smart thing to do. It's good for the bottom line.
We tell the for-profit sector, 'Spend, spend, spend on advertising until the last dollar no longer produces a penny of value,' but we don't like to see our donations spent on advertising in charity. Our attitude is, 'Well look, if you can get the advertising donated (at four o'clock in the morning) I'm okay with that, but I don't want my donation spent on advertising, I want it to go to the needy,' as if the money invested in advertising could not bring in dramatically greater sums of money to serve the needy.
We need Netflix. We in the independent sector more than anybody need Netflix, because they care about what we do.
Once IBM gains control of a market sector, they almost always stop innovation. They prevent innovation from happening.
The private sector is doing fine.
We've discussed the public sector union people. We are messing with their bread and butter. They have their hands in the treasuries of all states in which they operate and the US Treasury. They have their hands there. That's how they live. Now, we're broke and the states are broke for a multitude of reasons. What they're being paid is among them.
I believe that "government", as we know it today, should pull out of most things except for law enforcement and justice, national defense and foreign policy, and let the private sector, a "Grameenized private sector", a social-consciousness-driven private sector, take over their other functions.
What I am saying every day to Malawians is that time has come for us to move from aid to trade. We have picked several sectors that we think we can focus on immediately in order for us to grow our economy. So we have decided to diversify agriculture, we decided to develop our tourism sector, we have decided to develop our mining sector.
I think in the '50s, the percentage of Americans employed by the private sector who were in unions was above 30 percent. And now it's in the single digits, so it plummeted. And with the plummeting of unions came the weakening of an organized working-class voice in politics.
It was a new kind of class war -- the people as citizens versus the politicians and their clients in the public sector.
The private sector is creating a miracle a day, even as the stuff that government attempts is failing left and right.
The federal government has been a proven failure in picking winners and losers in the energy sector.
In a little while, I'd like to address one of the most important aspects of America's national security, and that's cyber security. To truly make America safe, we must make cyber security a major priority, which I don't believe we're doing right now, for both government and the private sector.
I want to get America's private sector growing and I know how to do it.