----- Original Message ---- From: Wendy Lyon <wendy.lyon at gmail.com>
“Bono has championed the call for increases in aid to impoverished countries, yet in his personal life he is engaged in tax avoidance issues and it is tax avoidance that is undermining the possibility of developing countries fighting their way out of poverty,” she said.
[WS:] That the very essence of the liberal approach to social issues - no taxes, and spare change thrown to philanthropy. The later is not as much as to "help the less fortunate" but to buy social status - not that much different from, say, banks buying naming rights for sports stadiums, only much cheaper. It is nothing more than a PR scam.
The reality is that nonprofits get most of their money from government (between 30 and 70 percent, depending on the country) and fees for services, while private philanthropy accounts for less than 10 percent of nonporfit revenue in most countries. In this context, tax avoidance actually undermines the mission of nonprofits, which rely much more heavily on government than on private philanthropists.
In most cases tax-avoiding "philanthropists" are wealthy corporate scumbags, immune from public protest, but rock-and-rollers are not in that category - their very raison d'etre depends on public support. A boycott of their product will hit them where it really hurts, in their pocket books.
PS. I do not really give a flying fuck what excuses wealthy tax evaders uses to justify their actions. The bottom line is that they are scofflaws, no different than any other anti-social, parasitic, or criminal element. Sending these scumbags to reeducation camps where they would learn virtues of hard work would serve them well :).
Wojtek