The death of the middle class

"Gates got ready for his commencement speech to Harvard — the school he famously dropped out of in 1975 to launch Microsoft.
Rather than giving advice on how to succeed or how technology is changing the world, Gates talked an issue not usually associated with billionaires — reducing inequality.
“Humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries — but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity,” he says in the article. “Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care or broad economic opportunity — reducing inequity is the highest human achievement.”

In other words, here is the richest man in the world talking about reducing the gap between the rich and the poor. What gives?

The rich, after all, are supposed to be champions of the free market, believers in survival of the fittest, and enemies of government involvement that reduce incentives. Why is Gates — and Buffett and so many other billionaires — suddenly worrying about the wealth gap?"

The Wall Street Journal

The fortune of Bill Gates was understanding and betting on the Mass Market.
The Computer, since then a tool in the hands of a few, became a toy in the hands of millions.
The PC, Personal Computer, meant a huge market and the Software needed for the PC a far bigger one.
Because, once you produce one, the cost of it is divided among the number of the ones you sell.
The more you sell the bigger the Revenue.
Was it luck or genius?
At the end what counts is the result.

But the growing of the Gap between rich and poor means the death of the middle class, the death of the mass, and, with it, the death of the Mass Market.
Less customers mean less copies of the same software sold.
That is: the cost is the same, but the revenues are not...