You've paid more tax than anybody has ever paid in the history of the world ...
Which is admirable and you advocate higher taxes
and yet a kind of tax phobia seems to have gripped the world at the moment.
How do you reverse that state of mind
that says taxes are bad?
In general, a lot of taxes are too low in my view,
for example the estate tax, you know I'm a huge fan of that
because it creates a certain dynamism where you don't just get
an aristocratic type view.
You know, the person has died, if they have a huge amount of money
which is amazing that, you know,
we allow people to have gigantic amounts of money,
then the state should take some of that and ...
But it's very unpopular.
Yeah, no, but ... of all my tax misunderstandings,
the fact that people aren't for an estate tax
is kind of mind-blowing to me.
I mean, even in China.
This is a communist country.
They are hesitating to put in a vigorous estate tax.
Weirdly, this is the one area where even though the US estate tax is way too low,
it's actually a higher estate tax than most other countries.
Your report this year on global goals
and what progress we're making on poverty and disease.
What strikes you most about this year's report?
Although the number of children being born has levelled off,
the places where those children are being born is more and more in poor countries.
It's more difficult to make sure that kids
get the vaccines, they get the nutrition, the education,
the things that will allow this younger generation to contribute
and drive welfare and economic growth.
And amazingly, almost all of those young children will be born in Africa.
What do we do to persuade the rich world to stay engaged?
What works best? Is it hope or is it fear?
The best way of motivating people is if you can get them
to go, you know, meet the people, see the problems.
Then you're engaged at a human level.
You can point out that the stability of Africa will make a huge difference
for the entire world.
The idea of, could 0.7% of GDP be devoted to helping those extremely poor people
– of which there are very large numbers –
and very small amounts of money goes a long way.
But even maintaining current levels, you know,
it's often challenged.
It's very much challenged in Britain.
Constantly under attack by our conservative press,
saying, 'why are we spending all this money abroad?'
And it is right at the bottom of people's priorities
and quite hard for a government to hold on to.
How do you persuade people
that this is money well spent when they prefer to spend it at home?
If you're saving lives, for very small amounts of money
and if you're really uplifting countries
that over time will graduate from receiving aid,
people should feel very good about that.
The data about the impact is pretty amazing.
I mean, you're a very influential man,
do you have a chance to speak to President Trump
and perhaps to persuade him that there is value in these things?
Now we need to work with Trump himself
and the whole administration on 'what is your vision for Africa'
and as a human being who cares about other human beings,
as a country who doesn't want to have to go fight foreign wars
or deal with pandemics that are out of control.
Isn't it possible that the US
which spends less than a third of a per cent on foreign aid ...
Is President Trump persuadable?
Yes, I think, actually, he does ...
one of the things that you could say is, a plus or a minus,
is in very few areas does he have a fixed ideology.
If there's something where he feels he can look smart,
particularly if it's doing it in a different way than it was done before,
and yes, I think he's open-minded.
Improvement in the world is something people should be excited about
and the fact that when they read about Africa,
it's always, you know, sort of the latest problem there
which there are huge problems,
unless people get into their framework that Africa has improved immensely
and that innovation all over the world
can do a lot more and that this generosity ...
there's no need to be cynical about it, you know,
it's great people doing their best.
So I wish people could go and see more of the great work going on.