Biggest douche in the world – entertainment category

Is Bono the biggest douche bag in the world? He’s got to be a contender.

For a start, anyone who wears lavender shades and a cowboy hat, even when inside, is on pretty thin ice.

But what really gets me is the rank hypocrisy over his campaigning for Africa. Bono does a lot of work advocating for debt relief and increased foreign aid for Africa. There’s a couple of big problems with this.

The first is the theory that foreign aid (i.e. handouts) is what Africa needs. This only fosters an on-going reliance on charity and doesn’t address the real issues such as democratic reform, education and training of the people, or proper market access for local producers. Of course, this is nowhere near as glamorous as big celebrity-endorsed concerts and charity drives, and there’s a whole industry grown up around this concept of charity.

Unfortunately, even if charity was needed, Bono’s private actions do not live up to his public admonitions. You see, Ireland is tax-haven, particularly for artists who did not pay any tax on royalties. And when Ireland moved to cap this tax-free band at 250,000 euros, U2 moved its tax base to the Netherlands, rather than pay (a still very low) 15% marginal tax rate. For example, all the money made from the Vertigo tour, which was used to promote the ONE campaign to increase US foreign aid donations, was channelled through tax-minimising companies in low tax companies. The Vertigo tour made US$389 million in ticket sales. And that's just the ticket sales of one of their tours- not to mention all the other tours, merchandising and spin-off enterprises.

The only way that governments can afford charity, debt relief, or development funds is through a functioning tax system. Bono’s actions fail the basic test of social behaviour- what would happen if everyone acted that way? If we could all afford to move our finances to off-shore tax havens, then there would be no foreign aid at all. And developing countries in Africa would have none of their own tax revenue to spend on roads, schools or hospitals.

You can read about the tax avoidance here.

And the African problem here.