On Tuesday, the Microsoft founder held an “Ask Me Anything” event on Reddit. When a user asked, “Do you think in the near future, we will have another financial crisis similar to the one in 2008?” Gates replied with a stern – but still optimistic – warning.
“Yes. It is hard to say when but this is a certainty,” Gates said. “Fortunately we got through that one reasonably well.”
Gates then deferred to his friend and fellow billionaire philanthropist Warren Buffett, saying, “Warren has talked about this and he understands this area far better than I do.”
The 2008 crisis led to the Great Recession, which saw 8.8 million jobs lost. The net worth of households across the US fell by more than $19 trillion, and the number of homeless families increased.
Gates ended his reply by saying, “Despite this prediction of bumps ahead I am quite optimistic about how innovation and capitalism will improve the situation for humans everywhere.”
Earlier this month, Gates said during a live Q&A in New York that “it doesn’t happen automatically”. “It’s because people care,” he said. He often cites his and his wife’s efforts to reduce worldwide rates of poverty through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The proportion of the world population that lives in extreme poverty – defined by the World Bank as those living on less than $1.90 a day – has fallen to about one-tenth of the population from more than one-third in 1990, according to a column Gates wrote for Time last month.