When Paul Allen and I started Microsoft over 30 years ago, we had big dreams about software. We had dreams about the impact it could have.

A great lathe operator commands several times the wage of an average lathe operator, but a great writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer.

Hopefully, whether it's energy or child vaccines, the case of the many benefits helping countries so that they are stable, so these refugee problems that have been troubling for Europe - a little less so for the U.S. but, even so, a lot of controversy there - these things are why the future's going to be better than the past. People really do look to the United States, so we'll be there making the case.

We can make market forces work better for the poor if we can develop a more creative capitalism-if we can stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or at least make a living, serving people who are suffering from the worst inequities. ... You have more than we had; you must start sooner, and carry on longer.

I think that our progress on key diseases over the next several decades is going to be pretty amazing and so I am very interested in that.

One thing people underestimate is how markets don't allow anyone to do anything except make better and better products. There's not much leeway. The world is a lot more competitive than most people think, particularly in a high-technology area. If a company takes its eye off improving its products, if it tries to do anything that would be viewed as an exercise of power, it'll be displaced very rapidly.

The phenomenal generosity of the United States in its aid budget towards health issues is the best in the world. You can look at that broadly, you can look at it in terms of HIV, the PEPFAR money which came together in a Republican administration with bipartisan support.