You don't just sound like a cynic, you sound like an ass for basically insulting half a billion people.
Do you have much experience with big European bureaucratic corporations? I could tell you some stories of big American bureaucratic corporations. Old farts reliant on auto & manufacturing? By that token, the US is reliant on tar sands, fracking, and peddling SUVs.
So please, take a deep breath and try to find some more nuance to discuss, instead of producing a baseless cliché word salad.
Pay people who do, not people who write white papers and frameworks, and spend material effort on “thought leadership.”
Meanwhile the EU likes to waste resources on failed hopeless regions. For example the new investments into making EU independent on chip manufacturing is going to the failed hopeless eastern parts of Germany. I know East Germany had the strongest electronics industry in the former Eastern Bloc but nowadays it's a literal failed hopeless zombieland.
The U.S. has a long history of subsidizing industries in so-called "hopeless" regions. For example, putting the FBI fingerprinting office in Clarksburg, West Virginia.
Doing things like that is how you keep "hopeless" regions from becoming even worse, and makes things better for the nation as a whole. You spend some money on jobs and opportunity, or you spend a lot more money on food subsidies and criminal justice.
Are you a European "Union," or not? If you want every region to fight for resources, then you'd might as well go back to feudal times.
Europeans on HN are always saying how it's the "civilized" continent. I don't see that in language like "hopeless zombieland."