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Your Tax Money At Work

A quite splendid use of the money extorted from you at gunpoint, don\’t you think?

The Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, is to buy a new Gulfstream presidential jet for £24m after convincing MPs that his £16m plane bought seven years ago is out of date.

The UK is of course pumping £700 million into Uganda over the next decade to reduce poverty. No, of course, none of that will pay for this plane, none at all: except of course that money is fungible.

And Musuveni is actually one of the better of the African leaders for this sort of thing.

2 thoughts on “Your Tax Money At Work”

  1. You know your parallel discovery of the Principal-Agent Problem you referred to in your post Economists Know More Than You Think? Well the true effect of aid is to benefit the donor countries. Only free trade benefits poorer countries. And besides, with a newer faster, longer range bizjet the prez can increase his productivity because he can now fit in more visits to donor countries.

  2. Isn’t Uganda one of the countries whose debts just had to be written off after Bono and what’s the other bloke’s name pleaded and swore at the G8? In fact, I believe, that was the second time Uganda’s debts were written off.

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