Piketty’s masterpiece “Capitalism in the 21st century” hit the world like a brick. Piketty is now being called the Marx of this century, even though he claims to be a capitalist. Piketty, like Marx, warns us for the wealth inequality in the world is ever increasing. His book has lit up a massive and controversial discussion. This is mainly because he predicted that we as Europe go back to the 19th century and that a new social issue will arise. He sketches an image of the 19th century, in which the tremendously wealth don’t earn their money by working, but use their already enormous capital to make even more. The interest on capital is much higher than the interest on work. Even the IMF, a stronghold of neoliberalism, is now warning for the consequences of wealth inequality. Oxfam Novib estimates that in 2016 1 per cent of the world’s population will own more than the remaining 99%. This January Oxfam stated that the growing gap between the richest and the poorest people is increasing even more. At the beginning of this year the capital and wealth of the richest 62 persons in the world grew with 500 billion dollar to a total of 1760 billion dollars, while the capital of the world’s poorest population decreased with 41%. Those 62 people are todays 1 %, five years ago this wealthy 1% counted 388 persons.

In the States the middle-class is shrinking at an alarming rate. The question is if this trend will spread to Europe. In countries where the wealth is spread more equally, the criminality rate is lower and people are happier. For years we have failed to climb out of our economic depression. The only institutes who profit from this crisis are the banks. Thanks to grand money donations they now manage to make huge profits. The competitively between European countries is growing steadily, even though as a European whole we shouldn’t be fighting locally. This has sparked a discussion about the splitting of the euro, Grexit and Brexit. A lot of goods formally produced here are now produced in poorer countries for cheaper prices or are taken over by robotics. Above this process thousands of cheap labourers from countries in the Middle East and Eastern Europe are coming to work in the EU. The policy of the EU is to create tens of thousands of jobs, as declared Mark Rutte in the European Parliament recently. The Netherlands are now chairing the European Council for six months. Mark Rutte and the EU policy makers didn’t give any concrete example on how to effectuate their ideas. Did they ever read Piketty? Or is neoliberalism still their faith?

How should Europe handle these problems?

Should we prepare Europe for a new truth?