U2 singer Bono has said Ireland’s tax regime, which creates tax loopholes for multinational corporations, has brought Ireland “the only prosperity we’ve known”.
“We are a tiny country, we don’t have scale, and our version of scale is to be innovative and to be clever, and tax competitiveness has brought our country the only prosperity we’re known,” he said, according to the Irish Times.
“That’s how we got these companies here . . . we don’t have natural resources, we have to be able to attract people.”
Bono is generally not a fan of multinational corporations and generally favors interventions by the state. Apparently Irish pride, trumps those positions, for Bonon
Well, in fairness to Bono, I believe he might be coming around based on this I read last year:
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“Aid is just a stopgap,” he said. “Commerce [and] entrepreneurial capitalism take more people out of poverty than aid. We need Africa to become an economic powerhouse.”
You can only read CS Lewis so long(like Bono does) before you can no longer ignore the anti-statist themes in his works.
He also said this:
"The Irish singer and co-founder of ONE, a campaigning group that fights poverty and disease in Africa, said it had been “a humbling thing for me” to realize the importance of capitalism and entrepreneurialism in philanthropy, particularly as someone who “got into this as a righteous anger activist with all the cliches.”
“Job creators and innovators are just the key, and aid is just a bridge,” he told an audience of 200 leading technology entrepreneurs and investors at the F.ounders tech conference in Dublin. “We see it as startup money, investment in new countries. A humbling thing was to learn the role of commerce.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2012/10/22/bonos-humbling-realizations-about-aid-capitalism-and-nerds/
So I think his views are evolving....kudos to him as it doesn't happen as much as you get older.
Hold the kudos. Progressives as Bono has identified himself use lying and deceit as a legitimate technique for getting what they want. Suggesting that entrepreneurialism is "important" to philanthropy is absurd as these terms have opposite meanings to each other. And his statement that "...aid is just a bridge..." is another shocking lie. Aid is a swamp from which there is no escape. Finally he suggests this revelation about capitalism was a "humbling thing." Was this before his recent iTunes event which he blamed on his ego? Based on his public persona the man has never known a humble moment. Either he is certifiably insane or he is lying through his teeth. He may have some talent as an entertainer in pop music, but as a truth teller or community organizer he ranks right down there with Obama. To be fair, this is true of most artists and entertainers as they are simply to childlike to be consistently rational.
DeleteThis is Bono who set up a textile operation in Africa, discovered they wouldn't do any work, and moved the shop to Asia. The guy is a true citizen of the world.
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