While the vast majority of the EU’s population has become steadily poorer recently, its top five richest billionaires have increased their wealth from €244bn in 2020 to €429bn in 2023, an Oxfam report revealed on Monday (15 January).
This represents a 76 percent increase in just three years — at a rate of €5.7m per hour.
“This inequality is no accident; the billionaire class is ensuring that corporations deliver more wealth to them at the expense of everyone else,” said Amitabh Behar, Oxfam International’s interim executive director.
That’s one side of the equation. On the other there’s the EU officially being a social market economy and USians would get an aneuryism reading some parts of the German constitution. Like “Property entails obligations. Its use shall also serve the public good.”. Or that, going way beyond eminent domain, means of productions can be socialised without even having to prove social good. Expropriate big landlords? Berlin is currently in the process of doing exactly that.
And that while no doubt Europe is causing a lot of problems elsewhere by its sheer economic weight alone, there’s also stuff like the upcoming Supply Chain Act, making anyone importing anything into Europe responsible for checking that human rights were observed. There is no fucking way in hell such a thing would even be considered by the Yanks.