> Extreme wealth is not valued in Europe. I think that's too much of a blanket statement. France (the second or third largest economy in Europe depending on th

> Extreme wealth is not valued in Europe. I think that's too much of a blanket statement. France (the second or third largest economy in Europe depending on the year) is a potent counter argument to that premise. Bernard Arnault, $89 billion. Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, $66 billion. Francois Pinault, $42 billion. Alain Wertheimer, $32 billion. Gerard Wertheimer, $32 billion. Those are immense dynastic fortunes and there's no indication those people plan to give it all away in the style of Gates, Buffett, Zuckerberg, Scott, Carnegie, Rockefeller. The US economy is about eight times larger than the French economy. If you expect that an economy eight times larger might produce something in the ballpark of fortunes eight times larger (one can apply a discount and it'll still be extreme), that wealth scale & concentration is mind-boggling large even by Bezos standards. Arnault's wealth might be like someone in the US being worth $712 billion in terms of how it towers over the economy and other wealth in the nation. Germany has 34 of the top 500 fortunes in the world. 6.8% of the 500 richest, and Germany is slightly over 1% of the world's population, and about 4% of the global economy. Clearly they like their giant fortunes as much as the next affluent nation. And the Germans are notorious for their dynastic wealth as well, they have no problem passing down immense fortunes to the next generations. (I'd do national share of global wealth for Germany, however that's a super messy batch of numbers, especially settling on even semi-accurate estimates for global wealth; it's still fairly interesting to see how their economy represents itself as part of the global share, and then how many top 500 fortunes that has produced.) Sweden, with just ten million people, has 12 of the top 500 fortunes. Russia - now infamous for their billionaire oligarchs - has 24 of the top 500 fortunes, while simultaneously having tens of millions of the poorest people in Europe.