Keeping Track of Government Spending.
ZAKARIA: Did you know that 11 percent of America's working-age population works for the government? Federal, state and local governments combined employed more than 23 million people in 2014. And those governments spent $5.4 trillion. That's a 5, then a 4, then 11 zeros, for those of you following along. My next guest is a billionaire. That's fewer zeros. And he wanted to spend some of that money examining the U.S. government like one examines a business. Steve Ballmer made billions for himself and for his company, Microsoft, by scrupulously looking at balance sheets, head counts and where the money went. So what happens when you do the same to government? Welcome, Steve.</s>BALLMER: Pleasure to be here, Fareed. Thanks.</s>ZAKARIA: The -- let's start with that first statistic, the number of people who work for the government. Did that surprise you? And do you think it's too high?</s>BALLMER: Well, it did surprise me. Now, it's an amalgamation of a lot of things, some of which people think about government formally, but it also includes teachers, who obviously work for government. It includes people who work at hospitals that are operated by the government. When you look at it in aggregate, you wind up saying there's a lot of good things that come from that group of people. And, you know, people can have their own judgments as to whether some of these things should be done by government or done privately. But I was impressed that such a low percentage of people were doing the work that typically people call bureaucrats, if you will. And so I -- I noted that with great interest.</s>ZAKARIA: Expand on that. That's a very interesting point, you know, that the part that people think -- these kind of vast, faceless bureaucrats sitting in offices, you know, passing memos -- there's not a lot of people doing that. There's a lot of, as you say, people working in hospitals, nurses, park rangers, that kind of thing, right?</s>BALLMER: Exactly right. And, you know, if you look at the top -- I don't know -- eight or nine areas that involve government workers, that's what you're going to find. You're going to find police; you're going to find firemen; you're going to find people who work in correctional facilities, in hospitals, in government businesses like water and sewer and the like, obviously teachers and professors and the people who work in schools and universities, the military -- people who clearly don't look anything like this popular conception of the bureaucrat.</s>ZAKARIA: When you look at health care, the data you provide to me tells a kind of sad story about American health care. And it goes back, really, decades. If you look at -- you know, I look at three or four decades of the numbers and basically the story is costs have gone up, way up. Outcomes, health care outcomes, really haven't improved very much. And you don't provide this data, but you know, if you look at it compared to other countries, it's striking how poor U.S. outcomes are, particularly compared with the soaring costs. Again, what do you see in that data?</s>BALLMER: Well, I think there's a couple things I'll note what we should do, maybe, somewhat different. I think it is interesting that, over the period of time, which I think goes back 2000, 2005, that the government has mentioned it, we looked at the average age of death, as opposed to the average life expectancy. In my opinion, advances in health care and increased health care spending in the last 15 years should better be reflected in the average age at which people die, frankly, than almost anything. And it's moved up, but it's moved up maybe .8 years. If you look at the public health statistics, the percentage of people with diabetes, depression and other, you know, sort of public health characteristics, those numbers, other than smoking, have not come down. And at least as I look at the numbers, those public health statistics, to me, seem very material and very interesting as it relates to health care in this country. Another sad statistic -- in some ways the one that should worry us all the most -- is the lack of economic and social mobility. You have this interesting block chart which shows essentially what is the chance of a child exceeding the income of the family he grew up in, the parents that he was born to. And it looks much worse today than it did 30 years ago. And it doesn't look very good. That seems to me, in some ways, the -- you know, the meta-problem, which is the sense that the American dream that your children will do better than you is -- is under greater stress.</s>BALLMER: Well, the American dream is interesting. What is the American dream? Is the American dream the dream that kids can advance, sort of, statistically versus their parents economically? That might be the dream. And the dream might be can people live better than their parents, which is slightly different. And to me, the thing that's striking in the data is there are groups of people who have a very low probability of moving up the economic ladder. In the documents we show that, for white kids, it's about 27 percent chance that, if your parents are in the bottom 20 percent, you wind up in the bottom 20 percent. Perfect, of course, would be 20 percent -- so 27 percent to 20 percent. For African-American kids, that number would be 50 percent chance of staying in the bottom 20 percent, obviously a much more, sort of, constrained set of economic mobility criteria for African-American kids versus white kids.</s>ZAKARIA: When you look at all this data, what I was wondering -- I was -- constantly thought about the fact that I would love to see comparisons to other countries. So, for instance, on this economic mobility data, European countries, particularly northern European, do much better. Canada does better. Have you thought about maybe providing international comparisons so that people can understand where -- where America stacks up?</s>BALLMER: Well, I think it would be a great thing to do, but it would start with trying to prepare something equivalent to USAFacts for Canada or the U.K. or France. There's a lot of things that would need to be in place for us to do an equivalent piece of work. Would I like to do that? Yes. Is that probably our very next step? Maybe not. But we've had some approaches from at least people in Canada to say is there are a way to do equivalent at work? I think it would be cool as heck if we can find somebody to partner up with in a couple of countries. We're not up to taking on that work ourselves right now. There's still a lot to be done in the United States.</s>ZAKARIA: Fascinating stuff, a data-driven view of politics. Thank you, Steve Ballmer.</s>BALLMER: Thanks, Fareed. My pleasure.</s>ZAKARIA: Next on "GPS," many parts of the world are on the march, moving en masse from the countryside to cities. We have the satellite pictures to prove it. We'll show you one shining example in a moment.