His father (Bill Gates Sr.) is pretty honest:
"Let's talk about the question of why people are wealthy. There is
a myth that it's a function of enormous personal
attributes. There's a myth that achieving wealth is a function of
personal intelligence and energy and thus that the product of that
intelligence and energy being wealth is the sole and exclusive
possession of the person who developed and earned it. And that
myth is so egregious. It's just egregious.
[...]
"There are some things that our government does with its tax money
which directly create personal wealth and that is the enormous
federal research activity. Do you know there would not be an
Internet but for federal research money? There would not be new
biotechnological companies but for the federal research
effort. There would not be an examination of the human genome
without the federal research effort. In those university
laboratories is the seed of the health of our economy.
"We have a wonderfully robust economy, which may be a gutsy thing
to say on a Tuesday in January 2003, but in fact it is an
enormously robust economy, and the individual wealth which is
generated in this economy is, in my judgment, and I doubt that
there is much that anyone could disagree with about this, is a
function of the innovative businesses which are created as a
result of federal research. But you understand that the people who
benefit from that research get it free. The universities own it
under federal law. And the universities have the ability to
license it, even the professors who are in many cases the
inventors generate a direct personal stake in the products of that
research. So, if somebody starts a software company or a
biotechnology company, or even if somebody owns a building in
downtown Washington which you rent to those people, it starts from
the same place. It starts from this incredible research activity
which is going on with federal money."
-- http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/url.cfm?ID=900584
All the best, Tj