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The Seattle area is home to the two richest men in the United States, but their local heritage represents two very different eras for the city.
While Jeff Bezos of Amazon is blamed by some for rising rents and clogged streets, Bill Gates The legacy of Microsoft's co-founder includes the opening of the largest charity Space Needle, creating housing for homeless families and supporting chartered schools.
Microsoft was the first technology company to dramatically change the economy of the region growing rapidly in the 1980s and 1990s. Today, Seattle is once again booming, the prices of the Real estate skyrocketing thanks to the explosive growth of Amazon's online distribution giant that has added tens of thousands of well-paid workers to the region.
Bezos was a source of tension. The city council recently passed and quickly canceled a tax on large employers to fight against homelessness, against which Amazon opposed and worked successfully. A city councilor held demonstrations in front of Amazon buildings with people carrying "Tax Bezos" signs
Meanwhile, Gates largely escaped criticism directed against Bezos and other technological leaders while Seattle discusses loudly the pros and cons The observers say that Gates enjoys being a local and global philanthropist.
Margaret O. Mara, a historian and professor at the University of Washington, said that Gates came from a prominent philanthropist. The Seattle family appeared to the public eye at a time when there was less concern about online privacy.
"It's a really, really different public figure," said O. Mara. "He recognized the importance of this responsibility, this broader civic responsibility, that he had great power to be incredibly influential, to deploy his intelligence and his persuasive powers for the good."
There were some critics that Gates and his company could be better corporate citizens like Microsoft's flourished. But thanks to the billions that he gives every year, Gates has managed to get rid of his reputation as a sharp laser technology billionaire, although his controversial philanthropic work focused on the evolution of American school systems has not passed. unnoticed at home.
Microsoft has its headquarters in the eastern suburbs of Seattle since 1979. The company is considered the game changer that allowed the region to get rid of its famous recession of the 1970s when the aircraft manufacturer set to Amazon is much more visible near downtown since its launch as an online book salesman in 1994. It has emerged as one of the success stories of the dot-com boom of the 1990s and is now the largest in the city. private employer with more than 45,000 workers. Bezos, who grew up in Houston, moved to Seattle to start his startup partly because of the favorable tax structure of Washington State.
Amazon declined to comment on Bezos.
Bezos – who last year overtook Gates the richest person in the world – he recently hinted that he would also take philanthropy to a great extent. He said on Twitter that he would announce his plans later this year. Locally, Bezos has been a board member of the Bezos Family Foundation, run by his parents, which focuses on national education.
In January, Bezos also gave $ 33 million in scholarships for young illegal US immigrants. He did not sign The Giving Pledge, an initiative launched by Gates encouraging billionaires to commit to donating most of their wealth.
Where Bezos has been criticized for not being present enough, the nonprofit of Gates since 2000 has devoted resources to the local community. Food banks and assistance to victims of domestic violence are part of the modestly funded and less known work of the powerful Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Bill Gates is also credited with the enactment of a law on chartered schools of Washington State and the support of his foundation to the movement.
David Bley, who heads the Pacific Northwest unit of the Gates Foundation, said his team is the only one Officially, only 1.5% – or almost 70 million – of the $ 4.6 billion that the Foundation distributed in 2016 benefited the needy in the Puget Sound area and the state of Washington, according to the Gates Foundation estimates to have contributed up to $ 1.5 billion to Seattle's economy in 2015. It supports 9,100 local jobs, including 1,200 at the foundation itself and many others in Seattle. For example, it has allocated approximately $ 270 million to six local organizations over four years as part of its goal of eradicating malaria worldwide, fueling Seattle's biotechnology and health sector. 19659015]. . One thing that the local hero can not escape is his national reputation as the largest funder of American education reform. Some of the controversial ideas that he has prioritized have waded in the state over the years.
The state of Washington challenged the federal authority when it refused in 2014 to use the test results in teacher evaluations. The concept of linking teacher performance to student test results was part of a Gates flagship initiative, but teacher unions vehemently opposed it.
Gates also donated millions of dollars to a public school. He helped support each of the 12 state-funded public schools, although the law is still being challenged in court after its limited approval of 2012.
"Teaching in the shadow of Bill Gates is I think, a very disturbing experience because we know that its foundation is organized around the principle of the privatization of our schools, the elimination of the very institutions in which we work, "said Jesse Hagopian, high school teacher in Seattle and critic of Gates.] Teachers also protested at the Foundation's headquarters in Seattle about its national school curriculum.The Gates Foundation said it had a "top-down" relationship With public schools in Seattle The district did not want to comment on this
The foundation stated that she was not concerned about the urgency she was having. thinks necessary to transform school systems that systematically leave behind poor and minority children
"We are a funder. This is not a government, they have a lot more money, they have authority, "Bley said. "We only have influence and catalytic amounts to help people try new things."
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