It’s a good thing there is a “?” after the title of this web log article, Mr. & Mrs. Reader.

Mr. Gates must be bored with his $billions and is apparently looking for some other way (besides throwing around the weight of his UNTAXED philanthropic trusts) to make himself relevant in a recession-plagued U.S. economy where even FNMA/FHLMC is being bailed out by the federal government. Mr. Gates has apparently found that he fits the Andrew Carnegie (of library fame) mold very well, i.e., tax the little guy, but don’t tax my $billion dollar trusts.

Of course, Mr. Carnegie intended that the privileged class be taxed…not the middle class and working class of 1913…when the first personal & corporate income tax-related revenue act was passed by congress and signed into law by the president (subsequent to ratification of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution).

What BGI is said by Reuters to have stated about the “competitive threat to (Waste Management’s) position in the market…” is precisely what Mr. Gates managed to avoid during his time at the helm of Microsoft (and likewise Mr. Carnegie in the realm of steel manufacturing where low working class pay was the traditional norm of the time). If Mr. Carnegie’s steel workers had been able to hold stock in U.S. Steel, perhaps a few of them would have become privileged class $multi-millionaires, as did several of Mr. Gates’ employees.

In other words, Mr. Gates cornered the market on PC graphical user interface operating systems (GUI OS), and then through various aggressive anti-competitive means kept the Windows OS monopoly from having to face any real “competitive threat to (Mr. Gates’) position in the market…”.

Beginning with Windows 3.0, Mr. Gates’ bureaucratic behemoth (on its huge Redmond, Washington campus outside Seattle) repeatedly came out with bug-plagued Windows GUI OS whose tens of millions upon tens of millions of unlucky domestic & foreign purchasers were persuaded had less bugs with each succeeding version. On the contrary, however, each version of Mr. Gates’ GUI OS was more prone to bugs than the last. I know this from personal experience, having been one of the tens of millions. Microsoft leaves it to its consumers to find the bugs and report them (with no feedback, of course).

Without open GUI OS competition, consumers were left holding the bag (and still are). Major PC manufacturers such as Dell (and most others) have deals with Mr. Gates to sell their hardware only with Mr. Gates’ GUI OS and other software preloaded. No other GUI OS manufacturer has a ghost of a chance of competing with Microsoft under the circumstances.

Subsequently, Mr. Gates became the wealthiest member of the super privileged class club of under taxed $billionaires…in part due to 1) his MONOPOLISTIC practices and in part due to 2) the UNREALISTICALLY LOW top marginal rate on personal income, corporate profits and capital gains instituted during the Ronald Reagan administration between 1981 and 1986. That’s when the top marginal rate was cut from 70% to 28% (now 35%…said top rate close to 40% by the time Bill Clinton’s administration balanced the budget in 1999).

It didn’t hurt Mr. Gates that TRUST-SYMPATHETIC “borrow & spend” republicans have resided at the White House for 20 of 28 years (R. Reagan - 8; G.H.W. Bush - 4; G.W. Bush - 8). A major antitrust suit brought by the federal government against Microsoft by the Bill Clinton justice department (ruled against Mr. Gates’ corporation in 2000) was settled by the George Bush justice department in 2001.

Mr. Gates is certainly not an “activist” in the traditional sense. I equate “activism” with something that is good for the future of the middle class and working class.

OK Jack