Bill Gates, at TED, Calls Out States' Health Care and Pension Costs (VIDEO)

Bill Gates was at TED the other day, giving a talk on education. But instead of speaking on the Gates Foundation's somewhat controversial support for teacher-testing and enhanced online learning, he reached directly for the third rail: "In this fiery talk, Bill Gates says that state budgets are riddled with accounting tricks that disguise the true cost of health care and pensions and weighted with worsening deficits--with the financing of education at the losing end."

The slide titled "Enron would blush," gives you some idea of his opinion on state accounting practices. Gates has a big stake in the states' larger economic situation because, on the face of it, education spending is the big budget item that is already being pared down--or slashed. This leaves nowhere for Gates' teacher performance incentives to go--his reforms are a non-starter unless this long-term deficit growth can be addressed. 

After name-checking Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson (approvingly, it would seem), Gates noted the irony that after their warnings on behalf of fiscal austerity, another round of "tax cuts made the situation even worse." Pension costs are a big news item these days, with talk of trillions in unfunded obligations, but as Ezra Klein argues, to a great extent their "unfundedness" depends upon what you think the stock market will do.

Health care costs have yet to be reined in, but I didn't hear Gates take up a position pro or con on the repeal of the national health care bill. Admittedly, he only had ten minutes, but I'm left with the impression of sound and fury and some kind of accounting reform, rather than the outlines of a substantive policy proposal.