Dinero? That's a Bono No No!

Time now for a little tip of the hat and a word of defense for a bloke who has gotten terrific mileage selling himself as one of the world's biggest big spenders, singer Paul Hewson.
Turns out he's not so loose with the cash after all.
This, predictably, perhaps inevitably, has now gotten him into trouble.
Of course he was never really a big spender. Under his nom de tune Bono, Hewson has enjoyed a blockbuster career as front man for the Irish megaband U-2. Anyone watching could tell that he was not only musically gifted, but also posessed of some profound business acumen. Well, either that or he's had some superb management since very early on in the band's sojourn through the pop music ionosphere.
It’s a noteworthy accomplishment. So many musicians achieve great success, only to be undone by poor investments, corrupt or incompetent money management or simple wasteful spending. The wretched rags-to-to riches-to-(really expensive)-rags story of MC Hammer will stand as a cautionary tale for generations.
Instead, Hewson and his managers are so smart with money that, this year, when the Irish government changed its tax laws to confiscate royalties musicians make with their music, the band relocated its business to the Netherlands.
Very smart.
Especially considering that, according to U-2 lead guitarist David Evans, who goes by the the no-longer-edgey name The Edge, the band makes 90% of its money outside of Ireland anyway.
Even smarter.
Here's the trouble.
For years, Hewson/Bono has made himself an international hero with his outspoken advocacy for the most wasteful of wasteful spending.
Hewson has even been a perennial contender for the Nobel Peace Prize fer cryinoutloud for his proposals that international lenders walk away from billions of dollars in loans made in third world countries.
Never mind the consequences to the lenders, or the investors whose money the lenders loaned, or the societies from which the money would be sucked. Just dump lorry loads of cash into a black hole and forget the debt.
The merits of such a plan are the subject of endless international debate.
Can the developed world really afford to subsidize bad decision making in defective economic systems?
Is it truly helpful, or even responsible, not to demand at least a modicum of financial order and discipline in countries that desperately need some?
Will pissing away billions of dollars actually solve everything, or merely bring everyone back to this exact same situation a few years hence?
Fortunately, the Nobel committee decided this time to laud the principal of lending money in the third world rather than just handing it over for nothing. Muhammad Yunis was honored this year for the work his Grameen Bank does helping people by introducing them to entrepreneurship, not handing them welfare with no accountability or responsibility attached to it.
Nonetheless, Hewson has publicly hitched his wagon to the redistributionist model. He has even proposed that the Irish government pour good money after bad by seizing still more from the Irish taxpayers and dumping it in Africa.
And now he's been caught trying to protect his own money.
But like any actor who plays a role totally unlike his real personality, Hewson can hardly be blamed for behaving one way on stage and another in "real life."
But Hewson's fellow travelers, at least those of his public persona Bono, are doing precisely that. Bloomberg news service quotes Joan Burton, finance spokeswoman for Ireland's leftist opposition Labour Party as saying "It seems odd, in a situation where they enjoy an already favorable tax regime, they would move operations to the Netherlands to get an even more favorable rate."
So the regime the U-2s seek to escape is "already favorable?"
Starting January 1, under Ireland's new tax regime for artists' royalties, Hewson and the band would have faced a tax rate of 42 percent on qualifying income.
Avoiding such robbery is not hypocrisy. It's common sense. It's the moral equivalent of locking your house at night.
What Hewson is really doing wrong is not his protection of his own earnings.
He, and other artists in the same ideological dilemma should, by all means, keep their money in the deepest most impregnable tax shelters they can find. More power to them.
They should, however, rethink the taxation they advocate for everyone else.
October 18, 2006