If you had as much money as Bill Gates

[lljkk]

How would you spend it in a way to benefit humanity that didn't attract huge buckets of criticism, including accusations of meglomania?

Maybe she meant wolf highways

@lljkk

How would you spend it in a way to benefit humanity that didn't attract huge buckets of criticism, including accusations of meglomania?

Microchips, microchips for everyone, that's what I'd do.

Oh and give sharks laser beams.

Pay people to be sterilised after one child? Not palatable but the increasing population is a massive factor affecting the world.

I'd need government help with this but...

Radically change the state retirement pension. People who have worked in heavy industry would be allowed to retire earlier and people over 50 who are / have become disabled would also be entitled to a state pension.

Maintenance will be set at a realistic amount to fund a child's needs. The resident parent would be able to claim this from the state, the non resident partner will have to pay to the state plus 10% admin fees. If the non resident parent cannot / will not pay it will be deducted from tax / benefits in a similar way to a student loan but with no write off.

Non resident parents who pay more than the minimum and can prove it will receive tax breaks.

Non resident parents who can show they have provided value above minimum would also be able to claim eg if a NR parent pays school fees, the resident parent will still get the minimum amount but the NR parent will receive some tax back.

Ensure I was not using very complicated processes to avoid paying tax, definitely in stable democracies. Governments are rightly criticised a lot but the general public can elect them and decide priorities.

I would concentrate on research and education into illnesses that are less campaigned about or funded such as lung and liver cancer and colorectal cancer, dengue and Hep C. (Gates did this for malaria)

www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00244-4

www.cancerhealth.com/article/cancers-better-funded-others

People who have worked in heavy industry would be allowed to retire earlier

Programme to Retrain and upskill people at about age 45-50 makes more sense.

Reality is that almost no one does heavy labour jobs for more than about 20 years of their lives. For one thing, even after 3-5 years they become more senior & move into management which means admin. Even being an HCA with low education background, these people wind up being senior workers/managers after 10 yrs or so with a lot less labour compared to what they did at start. Care home staff: often part-time and work on/off so they progress to management more slowly but don't wear themselves out too.

Moreover, with age, ppl move completely out of those heavy labour industries and into other industries or types of jobs. The plumber owns a business where he supervises a team of plumbers and the owner spends > half his time on admin, quotes, management, instead of the physicality of putting in/pulling out pipes. He retires at 58 & goes into basket-weaving or Part-time care-takering for the local primary school instead. The vision I had of the muscle-bound worn out working class fellow reaching 65 at the steel works still working full-time moving heavy goods around -- it's wrong. It's a work pattern very few people follow. Plus most of the heavy labour is automated now in many environments. Similar on a building site: plasterers (such a shortage of good ones) are among the few that are still doing somewhat physical jobs as late as their late 50s.

Even farmers reduce the heavy labour part of their jobs as they get older, find younger colleagues to pick up those jobs, etc.

I'm not talking about individuals but population wide... so if you personally know a Stallone type still doing heavy physical labour at 60 for 35-50 hours/week then fair enough, some must exist, but there are actually very few people like. This is why losing occupational physical activity doesn't matter as much as you might have thought it should for people who hit retirement age -- they already wound down occupational physical activity 10-20 yrs earlier.

Losing active travel for manual occupations and junior managers when they reach retirement age does impact their physical activity levels potentially, though.