What? The EU has super-rich, especially if you compare to the average incomes of the country rather than to the global top.
And yes, because of the tax situation these people are often not resident in the EU. London, Paris and Geneva have small neighborhoods of oil sheik families, for example. Brussels has entire neighborhoods effectively only accessible to EU appointees. Amsterdam ... and so on and so forth.
I didn’t say we didn’t have inequality or super rich people or that we’re perfect.
Yet we don’t have Musk, the Koch Brothers, Larry Ellison and swarms of fentanyl addicts folded in half in the street a few miles away from their residences.
No? Go to Paris. Start at the Notre Dame. Go North. As soon as you get off the island the first thing you'll find is the absurd-super-rich quarter. That's a little over 1.5 kilometers. Unlimited pretty fancy restaurants on the ground floor. I mean, it's gone downhill in the last 10 years, but they're all still ridiculously fancy. A great many luxury hotels, and apartments costing more in monthly rent than the president's wage on every other floor. He lives nearby, and apparently multiple ex-presidents live there. Keep going North.
You'll get to the 19th arrondissement just after passing Lafayette. Go look "under the canal" (will make sense when you get there, it's really under a bridge)
I don't believe they're fentanyl addicts, no shortage of addicts though. The main bulk are refugees (from Afghanistan, Syria, Africa, ...), most of the addicts are French, the dealers are immigrants.
And then there's the very large "are they addicts?" group. You see, it gets cold there. You know what really increases your comfort level if you have to live in the cold? Alcohol. And they definitely consume alcohol at a rate that a doctor would call addicted, but they're not really addicted. Or, if they had proper shelter they wouldn't be. Of course, alcohol really increases your comfort and increased the odds you'll freeze to death, so there's a daily round ...
(you can't really tell, but the whole camp is almost 1 kilometer long. Oh and this is one of 7 such places in the city center alone. In other words, you can start at the Notre Dame and go in basically any direction and there'll be a place like this. And the richest areas of France are right next to Notre Dame)
(btw: I've been to San Francisco too and the homeless camps in Paris are way bigger and worse than the ones in San Francisco. Way worse. Of course, I could easily have missed stuff. Oh, and obviously, while it's not impossible to freeze to death in San Francisco, I doubt it's common)
Don't worry, authorities are doing their very best to send these people away. Occasionally they succeed for a week or two, but never for very long. Half the time they essentially encourage them to go to the UK.
And this doesn't even remotely compare to the "Calais Jungle", I mean that particular camp is gone, but there's plenty new ones.
And yes, because of the tax situation these people are often not resident in the EU. London, Paris and Geneva have small neighborhoods of oil sheik families, for example. Brussels has entire neighborhoods effectively only accessible to EU appointees. Amsterdam ... and so on and so forth.