Back when U2 lead singer Bono was castigating rich nations for not giving enough aid to poor ones, he was hailed as a champion of the underdog.
But his travels through desperately poor corners of the world have since taught him, as he says, that foreign aid and welfare are only “a Band-Aid,” that the only real hope for the poor comes from the opportunity and wealth free enterprise brings. And it’s not going over well among those Bono calls the “cranky left.”
This is the term he used in a far-ranging interview with Britain’s The Guardian. In it, the Irishman says he likes to “torture the left over protectionism in Europe because it hurts farmers” in Africa. He declared, “You do not solve poverty by alms.”
When asked if he was being hypocritical for moving U2’s publishing arm to the Netherlands because the Dutch offered a better deal on taxes, Bono gave a good answer:
“It is not an intellectually rigorous position unless you understand that at the heart of the Irish economy has always been the philosophy of tax competitiveness. Tax competitiveness has taken our country out of poverty. People in the [Irish department of] revenue accept that if you engage in that policy then some people are going to go out, and some people are coming in. It has been a successful policy. On the cranky left, that is very annoying.”
One clear message from Bono is that you don’t help the world’s poor by keeping them out of markets. You help them by getting them in. We, too, can see how that annoys the cranky left.
And we hope Bono keeps annoying them.