Davos 2017 An Insight, An Idea with Jack Ma

Lesson 1The Motorola beeper and where money goes

I remember when I graduated from university, I tried to buy a beeper, the Motorola beeper, cost me $250. My pay at that time is $10 a month as a teacher. And the cost of making that beeper is only $8 for a chip. So the past 30 years, IBM, Cisco, Microsoft, they made tons of them. The money, the profit they made are much more than the four largest banks in China put together. So their market cap grew more than 100 times in the past 30 years. But where did the money go? Where is the money coming? Where did the money go? For the past 30 years, the Americans had 13 wars, spending $14.2 trillion.

Lesson 2Investing in people

What if they spent part of their money on building up the infrastructure, helping the white collars and blue collars? No matter how strategic good it is, you're supposed to spend money on your own people. Not everybody can pass Harvard. We should spend money on those people who are not good at schooling. Last 10, 20 years, I heard about Silicon Valley and Wall Street. The money go to the Wall Street. So it's not the other countries steal jobs from you guys. It is your strategy. You do not distribute the money and things in a proper way.