How much money is enough?
What is enough to sustain oneself for a comfortable and well earned life of liesure?
How much tax should one man/band have to pay?
All of these are questions that only wealthy men can answer. I sadly cannot. Do I dream that if I had $100 million I would give half of it away to the poor? Absolutely not. I dream of becoming a super rich asshole, brushing aside the poor and the working world to live in that "other" world 99% of the world never gets to see. After 10 years though I think I might want to do something else. Truthfully, I might get pretty guilty. Children with cancer really bum me out, so I could see giving a hell of a lot of money to sick kids, but like I said that is me saying that today. I'll let you know what happens in ten years or $100 million dollars, what ever comes first.
All of this to say that Bono of U2 fame is an asshole.
Why?
I can hear you now "he's such a humanitarian, he fights for the poor, he gives and gives, amnesty international, noble peace prize and all that shit"
He is also a two faced liar who was at the very least ignorant of the details of his mighty cause and now has been proven to be working against his lofty goals.
The National post newspaper in Canada has released an article as an excerpt from a book which details the financial dealings of U2, but more interestingly Bono.
The article explains that in the past 10 years, Bono has worked very hard to secure all access to profit avenues for his band (concerts, publishing, teeshirst etc.) and has worked even harder ensuring that he doesn't have to pay tax on that revenue stream.
What all that means is that while he pushes 1st world governments to forgive debt because they are so rich, but
HE REFUSES TO PAY APPROPRIATE TAXES ON INCOME IN THE COUNTRIES IN WHICH HE RESIDES.
The world's biggest band, second most successful concert tour in history, moved their key holdings out of Ireland when the government there decided to remove tax breaks on publishing.
In addition, he and the band have never incdicated that they support finacially the cause they are so loudly supporting.
Bono is at the very least the dumbest sokesman on the face of the earth. Actually listen to one of his press conference rants about third world debt relief, he has absolutely no idea what he is talking about. He doesn't understand the ramifications of such actions, he doesn't understand the history of similar actions in the past and what is even more clear is that he has no interest in learning more.
When pressed on key issues involving debt forgivenss he turns the questions on the reports or experts suggesting that they don't get it, or it's time for new thinking, or worse still that he isn't "here" to debate the issue.
All he is saying is that he doesn't know.
Mexico and Brazil both received huge debt forgiveness, or simply stopped paying back loans and started from scratch. Both proceeded to borrow at increasingly dangerous rates to the point where both threw their economies back into peril. Neither country did anything to improve the station of the common man with that original forgiveness and you can be garunteed that no country given the same treatement would do anything positive with their new found "wealth".
We all hark back to Ethiopia and how wonderfull our efforts were through Live Aid. What we forget is that country is in the grips of drought and famine every other week and ALL THE MONEY AND AID we sent got pissed away on items as useful as PRIVATE GOVERNMENT JETS.
The problem is not the debt these countries have incurred, it is that they are not equiped with the capacity to spend properly should that debt be forgiven. Place all the conditions you want, they will be back in debt in 5 years.
None of these regions in question are equiped to govern themselves properly. There is a very unpopular but hugely accurate theory that most "old Colonies" that achieved independance in the period after the Second World War were not ready for independance and they have paid the price for the actions of men seeking more power than they could handle. On the other hand, colonies that handled their transition peacefully have flourished regadless of location. If you think for a minute that the geography of Canada or Australia somehow lends itself better to a successful nation your are absolutely crazy. How Canada becomes a G7 country and Algeria becomes hell on earth is a mystery to me, given its location and the opportunity presented to it by France in the 1950's. (In case you didn't know, France offered to let Algeria join the country as a province/state, full status, and given the proximety and historical relationship it made sense. They said NO)
Does India splinter into into three seperate countries and continue to have the plague in the 21st century if they wait 20 years to gain independace?
What happens in Africa if anyone of the former colonies allows for a peaceful transition of power sometime in the 1980's. You cannot convince me they would not be better off with the stable political and economic leadership provided to them by a first world power. Does Britain let a colony suffer through famine, subject it to war lords or civil war if it is still in control? Fuck you they would.
These countries may have been subgigated by Western powers, but each and every opportunity afforded them by those powers was thrown back in the face of the West, so why would this opportunity be any different?
You want to get out of debt, plan your economy properly, or live with the debt. How a country with massive health issues, over population, weak infrastructure and piss poor industry can blame debt on all thier problems is beyond me. Maybe Bono should write a fucking song and explain it to me.
