>>>It would be more accurate to say that all of Ukraine is in economic ruin. Factories in the east are heavily subsidized - that’s one way to keep unemployment lower. Mainstay of the economy in the West are the migrant workers who bring in 7-9 Billion USD annually, which is pretty significant when comparing to the country’s annual budget (please don’t make me look for the reference, but I’m sure that’s the number) This is a minor consolation, but at least this money goes to the family members directly, bypassing taxation by the Ukrainian government. Western Ukraine is not a consumer of the Russian gas and doesn’t have the trade with Russia; exact opposite for the Eastern part. The $15 billion and cheaper gas that Russia is promising goes directly to maintaining these eastern subsidized factories, so we agree there.
Easy to point to the obvious, the billionaires in the East should have been re-investing their billions to update their facilities and look for new customers, rather than exposing yourself to a client like Russia who on a whim can shut off its trade like that.<<<
So it’s a revolt of poor “mainstay” Western tax-free gast-arbeiters, cleaning toilets in Poland and Germany, against an Eastern “fat-cat” decadent industrial billionaires, stealing from the Western poor via bailouts (provided by whom? a gast-arbeiters who pay no taxes?)?
And there are still enough money to maintain an infrastructure and welfare in the West while the mainstay of western economy is collectively out of “decadent industries” and actively “bypassing taxes” hanging around neighboring countries or sitting on their behinds dreaming about better future.
Maybe a burden like that is a real reason of Eastern hardships and inability to “update facilities”?
Nice to see you have injected a little class warfare here too, but I don’t think you’ll fly far with EU with that kind of mindset.
Russia constitutes 25% of the both Uk imports and exports.
There’s more dignity in cleaning European toilets than being a government victim accepting pennies working in a subsidized coal mine, in my opinion. But I don’t want to judge them too harshly, they’re also Ukrainians and have their own life realities. The money that work migrants bring in is invested into the local economy and is taxed when the work migrants start spending it. << shouldn’t really be said, it’s so obvious
The Billionaires in the East is not a reference to the dirt poor millions but to the Communist factory directors who started reading Adam Smith in 1991. Nothing class warfare about the current crisis, just your regular corrupt president trying to contain a revolt