The story is longer: Poland was the first country to make a remarkable peaceful transition from a bankrupt, failed Soviet satellite state. The shock therapy, plus NATO and EU aspirations, paved the way.
It is a story of a country that made a lot of the right decisions along the way. Managed to keep consistent high growth, not a pony trick or boom/bust mode.
Poland should be a role model for many other countries.
>> Poland was the first country to make a remarkable peaceful transition from a bankrupt, failed Soviet satellite state.
In what sense? Czechia is richer per capita. Almost all of the former Soviet satellite states in eastern Europe have had largely peaceful (since 1991) sustained economic growth. The exceptions are exactly those countries which continue to have Russian troops occupying portions, namely Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova.
Poland's first partly free election was on 4 June 1989, preceded by the roundtable negotiations.
The protests in Czechoslovakia came later, called the Velvet Revolution, from 17 to 28 November 1989. In June 1990, Czechoslovakia held its first democratic elections, a year after Poland.
Poland paved the way for the whole of central and eastern Europe. The Round Table produced the negotiated-exit template that Hungary built on in its own talks that summer, and that Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and the Baltics drew on as their regimes fell within months.
And it did so from the deepest macroeconomic crisis of any of the satellite states: hyperinflation running into the hundreds of percent by late 1989, an unresolved sovereign default from 1981, and chronic shortages.
Since then Poland has converged fastest of any of them. From a low base it has climbed to the upper-middle of central and eastern Europe by GDP per capita PPP, overtaken Hungary, and is now closing on Czechia and Slovenia.
I'm curious what this means in real terms from the perspective of a Pole.
GDP/capita is often a relatively useless metric in modern times. For instance Ireland has one of the highest GDP/capitas in the world -- around 50% higher than the US. But that's because of economic games with their working as a tax haven to enable corporations to avoid paying taxes to their home countries. It doesn't translate to anything for the average Irishman.
As a Polish millenial the perspective is a rollercoaster. In one way the transformation of absolutely everything over and over and over is mind blowing in a positive way. OTOH we're also all paranoid running on what feels like a never ending hamster wheel of inflation, raises and mortgages. And then Gen-Z's feel straight get up locked out of everything.
We visit western European countries and it's like WTF it's cheaper here?
The multi-generational spread is wild - my boss remembers being raised in 80's scarcity culture verging on 2-3rd world hunger. But our entry level employees are running around demanding everyone to be up to date with everything they see and hear in these little glowing rectangles. It's like two separate progressions have been superimposed on top of each other.
Just as a quick note, the “second world” would have been the Eastern Bloc countries, so by definition, living in Poland in the 80s would have been 2nd-world conditions.
The Baltic states are a pretty odd mix, Estonia could be any western European country while Latvia next door still feels in places like the Red Army has only just pulled out. It was quite a jolt going from one to the other.
Mind you since we'd started from Russia both of them looked pretty good in comparison, that place was dire.
> GDP/capita is often a relatively useless metric in modern times.
"Often" is the wrong modifier. GDP/capita aligns very closely with material standard of living for the median person. If you look at the GDP/capita growth in India and China since 1990, or South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, since 1950, that reflects very real increases in material standards for ordinary people.
There's two, relatively well-understood situations where GDP/capita isn't reflective:
1) Countries where the economy is dominated by resource extraction or tourism
2) Tax havens
But it's pretty easy to tell whether one of these exceptions applies. It doesn't in the case of Poland, which has a broad, diversified economy with a high level of industrial production.
> GDP/capita aligns very closely with material standard of living for the median person
GDP is an average, not a median, so it might align with the average person, not the median. The average/mean can hide many things (see Anscombe s quartet) which is one of the problems with GDP IMO.
It depends what you’re using the data for. If you’re comparing across countries, or looking at a developing country over time, it’s a relatively small factor. The ratio between the average and the median isn’t that big even in the U.S. (about 1.3). Meanwhile, Poland’s GDP per capita has tripled since 2005: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location....
I don’t know that there is any way to calculate a median value of GDP/capita. You can look at income distributions and find a median income and compare that to a mean income, which could allow an estimation, but beyond that, GDP is an intrinsically composite number which cannot be easily (at all?) broken down to individual contributions. I assume income is what the parent commenter is basing the median-mean comparison on, but it’s kind of out of nowhere with no explanation.
For purposes of comparing countries to each other and the same country over time, it’s not 30% off. The average skews higher than the median everywhere, so it’ll be 1.3/1.x.
If you have reported median incomes that are calculated the same way across countries and over time, that would be better. But many countries don’t reliably track that data, and the ones that do calculate it in completely different ways.
That all sounds reasonable. My concern was with your quote
> GDP/capita aligns very closely with material standard of living for the median person
GDP per capita is an average. This means it does not align with the _median_ person, but with the average. I believe this is factual and undeniable. No doubt it is interesting too to try to find other metrics for different usages as well.
> For purposes of comparing countries to each other and the same country over time, it’s not 30% off
You said the ratio for the same country between gdp mediand and average is 1.30. That means it is 30% off. Again, we can keep moving the goalposts and I could agree, but for the quoted statements i believe the above is true.
I'm Irish. Well northern Irish. The Republic Ireland seems a lot richer than when I was growing up in n. Ireland. Ireland is the second biggest exporter of software in the world now. I'm pretty certain the tax paid by both corporations and their well paid staff definitely translate to something for the average Irish man. Even if he thinks it doesn't.
Within a short time, especially since the EU accession, the development of Poland is just remarkable. I have personally spent a lot of time there and I think the quality of life, safety, access to healthcare, is excellent. Sure, it’s not perfect, but - I know, capital city bias, but I can’t think of a better place. Macro data, as imperfect as they are, reveal a dramatic trajectory in Life expectancy, HDI, while the gini-coefficient remained relatively stable.
I'm enjoying the way this dispute reflects on the USSR. We were the first to try to escape! No, we were the first, years before that! No, you're both wrong, it was us!
Round Table agreement, which paved the way to the partially free elections in 1989 won by the opposition, preceded similar events in other countries by several months including Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia and the Fall of Berlin Wall.
Are you sure about that? I'm Czech but have lived in Poland for 8 years and visit regularly. Poland used to be way poorer than Czechia, but these days it looks the other way around. I think the stats are either lagging behind or computed wrong. Note I regularly visit both the cities and the countryside in both Czechia and Poland.
Btw, the article has a "GDP per capita growth in post-communist countries" table, with Poland at the top and Czechia at the bottom.
Ukraine didn't have Russian troops occupying anything but the leased Crimean bases before the war started (and I do count the start of the war as being immediately after Euromaidan)... Yet in 2013, it was the second poorest country in Europe. (Ahead of Moldova, which has been occupied for decades, but significantly behind Belarus and Bulgaria)
Whether they were going to leave or not if it wasn't renewed decades down the road isn't particularly relevant to why Ukraine's economy was in the pits. It's not like those sailors were 'foraging' the countryside for their upkeep.
"It's much like Russia but with no oil or gas" was the better explanation for why it wasn't doing well. It's also why Belarus isn't topping the development indexes.
I think 35 years since the Ukraine declared its independence is long enough time to stop blaming Russia for any problem in Ukraine. It just doesn't fly
De-russification didn't really start until the Orange Revolution, though. It's a long and painful process for Ukraine as reducing corruption requires shedding all the Russian influence. Before that, a lot of the problems genuinely are because of Russia.
All states escaping the Russian curse improve speedily once they join the EU, and I expect the same to happen in Ukraine.
Romania is still occupied by Russia. Unlike with Germany, where the East and West reunited, Romania failed to reunite with Eastern Moldova (Western Moldova is in Romania) because of Russian interference in the 1990s. The Russians invaded Transnistria (which was never Romanian) and expanded a bit west. So the Russians still occupy part of the land that is by right Romanian and still have political influence in R. Moldova. That is slowly being eroded.
> Romania is still occupied by Russia?
I'm a Romanian and never heard such nonsense. We have nothing to do with what's going on in Eastern Moldova nor with people from that region. We do not consider them Romanians at all. While a lot of them come here and integrate well, as a general feeling in these areas, they are more russians than romanians and I assure you, should it be to a vote, we wouldn't join.
And btw, Romania is not occupied by Russia stop spreading such nonsense.
(My external barely informed understanding is that proponents of unification are largely right wing nationalist, pro-Russians call for a unification with Bessarabia while ceding Transsinistria to Russia; Moldovans are largely against union in polls.)
Why wouldn't the story be that they succeeded despite the shock therapy? Honestly asking, I am not an expert on Polish economy, but I heard bad things.
Maybe all of those hardworking people could have done even better with a different macro strategy?
The rapid and successful conversion to market economy was the main reason we are where we are. Human cost was extremely high, crime went up quickly and lots of money was lost. I'd argue this was corrected by joining EU and by adjusting the plan to polish reality.
What made it a success was also the social capital in Poland, a lot of people worked extremely hard to pull it off, but still high unemployment was alleviated only by joining EU and people leaving to find employment elsewhere
Not to forget tens of billions in EU subsidies. Not trying to diminish the polish efforts, but not every country gets this opportunity of massive, predictable transfers without much conditionality.
I wonder how far Poland would be without the years of PiS corruption.
Over the last 20 years, the SLD govt used to literally sell new legislation for bribes, PO (currently in charge of Poland) literally has right now a guy in their ranks who has likely stolen 100s of millions PLN from a public company, but is the prime minister’s BFF so the prosecutor canceled the investigation. The stuff PiS has done is nothing compared to those.
I actually think that the Anti- Corruption Bureau that PiS founded is one of the core reasons Poland was able to mostly weed out the post-Russian corruption (corruption is unfortunately the main export of Russian culture, every country they invaded ended up extremely corrupt).
Yes. Piss is holier than holy and didnt run Justice Fund as its own private piggy bank stealing for PIS election campaigns and surveillance software to intercept PO politicians private communications. There is no reason whatsoever for former PIS prosecutor general last 7 months hiding in Hungary together with his co criminal deputy Marcin Romanowski who has been hiding there for almost two years. Former state-owned Oil giant Orlen CEO also spend some time hiding from prosecution in Hungary, what a coincidence.
Did we forget about pushing for illegal mail elections? Using state-owned companies filled with PIS politicians to finance bribes and promoting PIS? $25 billion pumped out straight to PIS coffers.
It was mainly thanks to two men who decided to give up their future: the prime minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki and the minister of finances Leszek Balcerowicz.
Today's politicians look like angry toddlers in a sandbox in comparison.
There ware other great people of course, but these two paid the price.
Solidarność was funded by the West, though you may credit Polish/Eastern European capture of US foreign policy and the Polish Pope, too.
It is true of course that they were the most persistent and brave. I don't think it would have been possible in East Germany for example, which ran a tighter regime until Poland managed the peaceful revolution.
> The story is longer: Poland was the first country to make a remarkable peaceful transition from a bankrupt, failed Soviet satellite state. The shock therapy, plus NATO and EU aspirations, paved the way.
The story is told in much more detail in the OP. What do you feel is missing from it?
I live in Poland. This headline is misleading. Poland didn't build a top-20 economy. Western Europe and the US built their economy in Poland, because the labor is educated and cheap.
There are almost no globally competitive Polish companies. The "growth" is branch offices of German and American corporations taking advantage of engineers who'll work for 40% of Berlin rates. Remove the foreign-owned sector and you're looking at a mid-tier economy running on EU structural funds.
It's a great place to live, genuinely. But calling this "Poland's economy" is like calling a McDonald's franchise "your restaurant"
That is how all economies grow. It is unnecessary to remove credit from Poland. You say labor is educated, for example. Is that also not their merit?
Didnt USA benefit from mostly not being bombed during ww2? Didnt Germany benefit from cheap Russian gas and educated immigrants after 2008 crisis in EU? In the end, we can keep going back looking for pthers to thank but the country did it, and it is fair to say so.
P.S. I also live in Poland, not Polish. I also lived in Berlin, and I dont think the salaries are always so different.
> P.S. I also live in Poland, not Polish. I also lived in Berlin, and I dont think the salaries are always so different.
Anecdotally this is also my experience. Several countries in eastern Europe have vastly lower taxes, and as a result international companies can pay salaries that are on par with western Europe but still cheaper than an equivalent worker in Germany or France because the cost to the employer is much lower.
> It's a great place to live, genuinely. But calling this "Poland's economy" is like calling a McDonald's franchise "your restaurant"
Economically? Yes, if you ignore the fact that we're one of the most overworked populations in the first world and pretty much all low-level jobs(restaurant/call office/etc) have abysmally poor working conditions.
Culturally? Developed cities in Western/Northern Poland and Warsaw, sure. But everywhere else is shades of shitty and if you're LGBT+ a third of the country has legislation against your very existence.
Poland has made a lot of progress but calling it a great place to live is - while not altogether untrue - a statement of privilege more than universal reality.
Yeah I think this what most miss. FDI is good, great if eventually lead to domestic brand to capture more % of value, like Asian Tigers. I'm not sure if the case in EU, some GDP accounting can grossly conflate actual FDI contribution, i.e. when PRC captured $6 labour for each iphone assembled but it was counting full device cost $100s towards GDP instead of just value add. Same concept as Ireland GDP & corporate tax laundering.
Cursory search shows 1% companies in Poland are foreign enterprises which drive ~40% of output, ~30% of workforce and ~70% of exports. These are companies that will dip if Poland gets too expensive or geopolitics, in the meantime what is Samsung or Hyundai or Huawei of Poland. At end of day, countries need national champions committed to their own midstream industries who end up capturing the rents.
FDI itself is not enough. Modern national champions happen because state protectionism, typically under autocratic industrial policy (Asian Tigers), in combination with FDI. Hyundai was suppose to be Honda, you can throw TSMC in there. There's no sign Poland is going to get national class to world class champions, because democracies more easily captured and EU forbids tier of subsidies and protectionism that enable giants that compete with established incumbents. Is there any strategic Polish company on road to being world class?
On paper countries can build giants without FDI, but can't build giants without industrial policy Poland can't adopt due to EU trap (which basically designed to keep west euro industrial incumbents on top) and (IMO) if Poland ever tries, FDI tap going to stop. Structurally Poland is periphery not core, allowed to prosper but not overtake, which puts ceiling. Exception being defense, but even then stepping on west euro toes.
Small, but exemplary, and given the context of the post and arguments, developing exemplary leading companies is a sign that Poland is developing a deep base beyond mere outsourcing, even if there are a small number and they're not huge yet.
It's like comparing a 6-year-old soccer player to Lionel Messi - you're looking at early signs of development, and the progress to getting there, not saying Poland is already there, but there are positive signs it is on that path.
Foreign investment isn't fake growth and money being spent in the country is definitely a good thing. It's how Singapore managed to kickstart its economy in the 1960s. Lee Kuan Yew tried very hard, and succeeded, in getting foreign corporations to set up shop in Singapore. The key is to capture value and move up the chain over time rather than getting stuck as a "cheaper back office".
Yep, and today the situation is completely reversed. Through acquisition and business development Singapore is the country which owns the brands and invests in other countries. Poland just needs to stick to the formula. It's citizens are building global-class professional, managerial, and business development experience. Soon if not already those employees will start itching to build their own businesses. Poland just needs to maintain a competitive environment, and not let international companies suppress local startups by lobbying for anti-competitive laws and policies that favor the big guys, foreign or domestic. If it wants to give local companies a leg up, do it indirectly by investing in education and research.
This is zero sum thinking. The foreign companies benefit and the local Polish people benefit. Wealth is created in the process and everyone benefits. What if those companies never came and never employed Polish people? Would Poland be any better off?
if spotify employs an american and they become more experienced over their tenure were american resources extracted? human capital tends to get better with experience, particularly when dealing with high quality foreign management.
Let’s be honest. If anyone would be building a brand new company in Poland or any other country with the intention of raising capital or IPOing they would still incorporate in the US or a handful of other countries. So any successful Polish company would count as American/ German / Singaporean / etc anyway.
My understanding is that Poland is also seeking smart win-win arrangements with some of these foreign sources. For example, Poland has initiated several big equipment buys from South Korean military suppliers on the condition that most of the manufacturing is done in Poland and that there is technical sharing for future self-sustainment.
It's basically importing expensive R&D for "free" while helping establish a heavy industrial base (which has also proven very fruitful for South Koreans). I'm sure there are other examples like this. You also get a better trained workforce, and then the import of the technical knowledge later where it is slower to digest but with the ability now to turn that knowledge into working production.
It's the first step to building the top companies: You first need enough agglomeration of that labor so that, whenever there's a recession, you can scoop up some of that labor for a startup.
And as demand of those cheap engineers go up, salaries rise. It's not just Poland: Go see what happens to engineering salaries in, say, Spain vs Berlin. You find Capgemini opening offices, because the labor is that cheap. New grads making as little as 20k in some regions.
So compared to that, having big tech moving over and paying over local market rates, and expanding enough so salaries end up rising is much better than the alternative: They don't come, there's no money, the engineers emigrate, and the country becomes poorer.
What kind of dev salaries are you seeing in Poland?
I have family in Poland, they are from smaller villages and they ALWAYS complain about EU and the economy. I wonder if things are similar in large cities.
> and they ALWAYS complain about EU and the economy
That's funny because Poland became dramatically richer after joining the EU, it allowed them access to one of the richest markets on Earth.
I understand that if you're from a smaller village you might also have missed the enormous infrastructure investments (highways, airports, sewage systems, etc.) that have only been possible because of EU money.
Then there's all the foreign companies that you mentioned whose investments have provided jobs directly and indirectly - as a EU member, Poland has become a lot more attractive for foreign investors.
And arguable, Poland carries a much bigger weight in international policies then it used to.
These points are not to say that there's nothing to criticize about the EU. As a matter of fact, there's not shortage of things to criticize. But it's unfair not to see the enormous gains Poland got since joining.
I would go so far as to argue that Poland is one of the biggest success stories of post-1989 Europe.
> I understand that if you're from a smaller village you might also have missed the enormous infrastructure investments (highways, airports, sewage systems, etc.) that have only been possible because of EU money.
That's the key. There wasn't enough done to ensure that everyone can enjoy the benefits. That why at some point populists won the vote and ruled the country for 8 years. They are still kicking. Recently elected president of Poland is from the populist camp. They still have support even though they didn't really hide their kleptocratic tendencies. Fortunately somehow they didn't manage to do significant macroeconomic harm. But they stalled development of renewables for a decade.
this is Poland for you. everyone complains about everything. perhaps that's the secret to success - there's always something to complain about and one in a hundred (or thousand) people actually does something about it.
> this is Poland for you. everyone complains about everything
That is western Europe for you, not just Poland. Same in the Netherlands, same in Sweden, same in Belgium, same in Denmark, same in Norway, same in France, same in Germany, etcetera. Descartes claimed that he thought, therefore he was. A more realistic and equally erudite quote would be Queror, ergo sum which translates to I complain, therefore I am.
(also, q.e.d. because I'm complaining about people complaining)
Are they really unaware or do they actively deny the cultural connections? Prussia was a thing not that long ago - it is still used as a slang term for Germans in parts of the Netherlands ("de Pruisen" of "die Preußen"). Anyone who had a bit of history or who has looked at an older map sees that Prussia was divided between what is now Germany and Poland. Of course both countries went through a lot of upheaval between then and now but there's still plenty of people alive who will remember living in Prussia.
Joining the EU meant giving up some measure of sovereignty, so they're living under a regulatory regime that's probably more extensive than it would be if Poland were independent.
Typical salary for a senior dev is around 20-30k PLN per month, which translates to $65k-$100k per year (gross). Also, a lot of devs do a little bit of tax avoidance that is currently not persecuted, which allows them to pay total taxes below 20% on that amount. So, your take-home pay is $50k-$80k.
This website says Senior Java Developer is 20kPLN-27k PLN (64k USD per year after taxes) (employment contract) and 25k PLN-30k PLN if you agree to lose employee rights.
> Typical salary for a senior dev is around 20-30k PLN per month
Typical, yes, though it's possible to earn way more than that. Not that 20-30k PLN per month is bad, the average Polish salary is perhaps around 9k and the median around 7k.
20-30k PLN goes a long way in Poland. Some seven years ago, I was spending around 7k PLN a month, living in the beautiful Warsaw old town, 50 metres from Kolumna Zygmunta, eating out all the time, and generally felt I was living like a king. Good times!
> Western Europe and the US built their economy in Poland, because the labor is educated and cheap.
> There are almost no globally competitive Polish companies.
Same issue in all southern and eastern European countries.
Grossly incorrect and unfounded. There are no Googles there, but there are plenty of mid tier companies delivering quality products. For a blatant example see e.g. Shelly in Bulgaria. Or depending on how you count South, e.g. Vinci or Eni or car producers in Italy.
And not everyone needs to succeed in industrial household names, that e.g. much of southern European economies come from tourism is not a bad thing.
Poland has also the lowest fertility rate of the EU. This growth came at a cost and may be short-lived when the cheap workforce dies out with no replacement.
Yes and we see what happens to countries after doing this, they start developing their own domestic industries and economies. It's not a bad strategy to organically build a robust economy either.
It's one thing to say they don't want immigrants taking their jobs. But its a whole other thing to discount foreign investment, giving your people jobs, under your rules...
But I only know of them because they bought some successful small companies in my country and shut them down to reduce competition, for which they are universally hated around here.
It was founded in Poland and by poles by I think it’s owned whole by foreign capital - hard to call it polish even though still listed on polish stock exchange. Google branch in Warsaw we wouldn’t call it polish either.
There are plenty of polish companies, but like in Germany many are more in the middle of the spectrum, so they might be well known in their sector but not much beyond. I've seen e.g. plenty of polish building materials and furniture across shops on western Europe.
This is one way of having "A" that isn't "massive internal natural resources" like USA, China, Russia, Colonialism, or Oil States (I'm sure I missed other kickstarters here).
It terms of the IT sector there is not much difference to the rest of the Europe. America has dominated the field, China is catching up, especially in global giants category.
I don’t live in Poland, but this is like comparing a thriving metro area to Silicon Valley. Just because the metro isn’t coming up with the latest ideas doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its own economy - it’s just different. From my outsider perspective this is very much a positive step for Poland and should be celebrated.
I don't think that's a good way to think about the modern economy. Large companies aren't American, German or Polish just because they're founded in one place. The surplus value that a country like Poland adds or that all the producers in the supply chain of Apple or Tesla add are real and contribute to their national economies.
Singapore isn't a "fake rich" country because most of the companies that have settled down there are international businesses, the money is as real as anywhere else, so are the jobs. Always strikes me as a bit atavistic when people talk about companies as if they're owned by a country despite the fact that the value creation and supply chains run through two hundred countries.
Reading the article it attributed institutional strength to poland, which is great, but it sounds like this was something the west decided not to sabotage. The oligarchs taking over in e.g. Russia was engineered by the clinton administration and Larry Summers as "shock therapy" when the soviet government fell.
Years ago I bought some really nice brushless motors and was surprised to see they were made in Poland. I had no idea they were manufacturers of things like that.
Later I bought even nicer motors, meant to provide exceptional control and feedback for tactile/haptic behaviours, and they were from Poland too.
Then I got to work on a robotic arm which contained a bunch of components from Poland. At this point it was clear to me that it wasn’t coincidence.
Finally, I built a drone with my kids and again, the motors are Polish. And they’re excellent.
They went from being a place I would only expect to encounter cultural food items from to a place that entered a high tech supply chain which seems to produce high enough quality components that I see them without seeking them out.
As a Canadian it made me very envious. We should be able to do this. I’ve seen a handful of Canadian motors in my life, and they were all blower motors a long time ago. Our ability to build cutting edge technology seems to be so limited as to be virtually irrelevant in most cases.
As A Finn I’d like to see Canada figure out that “oh shit we could be a world superpower with all the smarts and natural resources we have” and start trading culture and goods with Nordic countries. We would rule!
Most of the AI scientists powering the current AI revolution (or apocalypse) are Canadian.
If your banking system is conservative and you don’t have a venture capital backed risk taking infrastructure - it’s systemic issue. It is the same problem with Europe.
There is a saying I've heard: "Silicon Valley is powered by Waterloo Grads"
The problem with Canadian innovation is that our best and brightest tend to complete their education in Canada, then emigrate to the US. The brain drain is a real issue for us.
One of the "positives" of Trump's hostilities towards Canada is that perhaps this would slow the brain drain for the current generation.
Britain, well… I’ll take Scotland, they’re sensible. But rest of you, we can’t just look what you are doing to yourself. Please Britain, get some help.
I was referring to how you have selected post-2008 government after another to completely tank the economy and destroy key British institutions, but Finland has a goverment that does exactly the same, so we do kinda need help as sell. Maybe we should go to some 12-step-program together.
(PS. Finnish suicide rate has fallen through the 2000’s from 1200 per year to about 750)
I have to admit, I feel the same envy about industry and economic growth.
But there also seem to be many explanations of why Canada continually fails to attract large cap business other than resource extraction. The cost of living / skilled worker wages / tax structure / high levels of regulation means that if you have large cap, you could just build your factory somewhere else and make more money.
We've got golden handcuffs in many ways.
Still, that 'envy' or ambition is what keeps me coming back to HN, I think it is still possible to start something successful and innovative in this country.
Absolutely. For a lot of my career I worked from west coast Canada for US companies in California. After a few years of earning $80k CAD and working as hard as anyone I'd meet at conferences in the USA, I realized I was being an idiot. It was transformative. I only know a couple people personally in software here who work for Canadian companies apart from where I work.
I earned ~2–3x more than I do now working for a Canadian company, doing the best work of my career. I'm so unimportant here, they would readily discard me and laugh if I asked for a raise. This is Canada. But, I like this place, the people, and the work. I think it's important work. I'm at a stage where I prefer that over cash.
I don't think many of my peers feel the same. There's a sense that there's no point in working for Canadian companies if you don't have to. On balance they perform worse, pay less, have less interesting opportunities, and work you as hard as any American counterpart would.
Some anecdata: in the area I'm from in the northeastern US which has a large number of manufacturing/tool & die companies of all sizes, and with a large Polish diaspora, 80% of the most skilled machinists are Polish (or 2nd or 3rd gen descendants), at least that was the case when I was working with these business between 20-30 years ago. Many of the best engineers at these business are Polish as well.
It's been a while and I can't recall the other big one. I know some engineers from one of them went on to work for Clone Robotics, which seems to be doing interesting stuff with other types of actuators.
Rockwell Automation has a facility in Katowice, Silesia which was/is a major centre of coal mining and locomotive manufacturing since the 1800s when it was part of Prussia, and continuing through the Polish Republic, WW2 era and beyond.
I interviewed there in 2012. Great people and culture, but salary was shite. Kinda regret, though, from all companies I interviewed, they suit my area of interest and experience the most.
You're describing something that some Canadians did (and very few still do), but this is not reflective of the vast majority of us. For most Canadians, especially as our economy declines, our extremely expensive homes are more like death sentences for our financial futures. We're not going to profit off of these things—ever—unless decades-long trends rapidly begin to reverse rather than accelerate.
The point is that capital holders decided doing risky things isn't worth it, so they invested in unproductive low-risk assets, then the government juiced the immigration rate, said assets rose, capital holders are making off like bandits leaving Canadians behind in a stagnant economy holding the proverbial bag...
Fact is, only ~25% of Canadians are net tax payers. The rest work for a government, are unemployed, disabled, retired, or receive more funding from the government than they put in. So yeah, it's the boomers, the government workers, unemployed, disabled, etc...
The status quo is what Canadians want. It's why anyone with ambition (ie. wants to work and/or be an entrepreneur) leaves.
Not arguing for this one way or another, but as countries become more economically developed, they invariably move off of manufacturing and more into services because it's a higher value part of the economic food chain (wish I could find the research article with all the data - I remember reading it as part of a post arguing that Trump's attempts to "bring back manufacturing jobs to the US" was doomed to fail)
So, the reason you can buy motors and robotics components from Poland and not Canada is because Poland has lower costs (i.e. people make less money because the economy is less developed), not because Canada doesn't know how to make them.
Again, I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing, and I think we've certainly started to see problems as the manufacturing know-how of advanced countries deteriorates as they outsource much of their manufacturing to lower cost locales. But having an economy with a lower percentage of economic activity from manufacturing isn't some sort of failure, as it just means that economy has moved into more profitable activities.
> So, the reason you can buy motors and robotics components from Poland and not Canada is because Poland has lower costs
I hear you, and I partially agree. What I worry is that this made more sense ten or twenty years ago, though.
Living in Canada for 40 years, I'm no longer confident that we can continue using economic levers to allow ourselves to output less and buy more from poorer countries. We're stagnating, and the numbers are clear and directional.
We are not a very productive country compared to a younger version of ourselves, and our productivity only falls. Our most recent GDP increases belie population increases that outstripped wealth creation, leading to decreases in GDP per capita. We're growing and yet doing less.
At this rate we will need to be more resourceful, and our relative wages will continue to fall. We should be prepared and capable in all manners of wealth creation, industrial and otherwise.
Our government has stated it will do things like focus on tax competitiveness, internal trade barriers, and AI investment. To me this is depressing as hell. It's nowhere near the fighting spirit we need to make real progress. And frankly, what is AI investment? What the hell is Canada going to do with AI? We have some decent schools and interesting companies, but our government has no business speaking about the matter as an economic opportunity. We may lead the G7 in terms of research outputs here, but our spending plans on AI-related infrastructure and policy are a rounding error on singular US tech firms' balance sheets. We need to be serious. The gap between rhetoric and realistic outcomes is so absurd as to seem irresponsible.
Canadians are getting poorer quickly and at this rate we will eventually have those lower costs, but no trajectory leading us to developing better industrial and high tech manufacturing. We should have been finding ways to leverage our higher cost labour force for advanced manufacturing 20–30 years ago. Now we will have to leverage our middle-cost labour for barely-competitive products in industries with far more competition.
So I agree completely 15–25 years ago, but today I believe Canada's not doing so well, those costs will collapse, and we're going to wish we got ahead of this.
FWIW, my cousin lives in Canada and feels similarly to you. He structured his business deliberately around maximizing his exposure to the U.S. economy and minimizing his exposure to the Canadian economy. He tries to work for American clients, getting paid in American dollars.
I think there's an even more salient issue. Manufacturing is the backbone of any economy. When you outsource it, you end up creating a dependency on a nation that is ostensibly less developed. I say ostensibly because what does "less developed" even mean when the other country can not only do fine without you, but now also has the power to destroy your economy if they wanted to?
> they invariably move off of manufacturing and more into services because it's a higher value part of the economic food chain
What part of the economic food chain are government employees?
> Most Canadian employment growth is now reliant on the public sector. Public sector employment climbed 0.9% (+41k jobs) to 4.45 million in July. Annual growth shows 4.8% (+205k) jobs added, a rate 8x greater than private sector growth. Canada’s now so dependent on public sector growth that government workers represent 1 in 4 employed workers.[1]
I ment: „Poland gets money, Poland transforms it into more money”.
Is Poland more efficient in it than other countries?
I do not know.
Would Poland have generated less money without it ? Probably?
Is an annual investment of the 2-3%of the GDP into a country a lot? I think so?
Think of it as an investment. The rest of the EU also benefits from their hard work, and economic prosperity. Other countries in the EU have also enjoyed economic growth and support over the years.
I'm old enough to remember internal borders with passport checks in Europe, before the wall fell and Poland was still on the other side of that. Nice to see them moving on from that.
Thanks to the EU free movement of people, I've now studied, worked and lived in four different countries. I know people all over Europe. I currently live in Germany. Germany benefits a lot from the EU. Yes it costs money. But there's trade, access to skilled labour, etc. as well. And if you look at Poland, it's what sits between Germany and Belarus & Ukraine. So, there's a strategic relevance as well. Poland doing fine is good for everyone else in the EU.
> The rest of the EU also benefits from their hard work
I don't know. I want to agree with you, but a large part of the economic growth in Poland is off-shoring and cheap tax (~12% on contract) for tech workers. The average tech wage there now is pretty similar to the UK, and I don't really see many startups there - probably in part because of how bureaucratic their business system can be. I don't know if this influx of foreign money from off-shoring and surge in real estate pricing is sustainable or good in the long run.
Other than a massive influx of overdevelopment of flats in the cities (sometimes too rushed, I've seen reports of flat blocks subsiding because of cutting corners), I'm not sure where else the increase it.
Do you have any sources for the claim that a large part of growth is off-shoring?
Because that seems extremely implausible, and actually very insulting to the incredible success of Eastern Europe, before and after joining the EU, in closing the gap to Western Europe over the last 3 decades.
I’m so confused. At least in tech all the big companies I work with are hiring in Poland because it is about the same as India after losses around fake hiring and the quality averages better.
It is absolutely a huge offshoring target at least for the US.
Anecdotes from your bubble inside one particular industry, that represents a small fraction of the economy of a nation, do not adequately explain the post soviet transformation of economies containing hundreds of millions of people. That's all.
Specifically I asked for evidence that current GDP growth is significantly driven by this specific type of foreign investment, as claimed. None has been forthcoming.
The reason for the growth over different time frames can differ. Anecdotal, but most of the IT people I know from Poland worked for, as they call it, "big corpo" and generally it's offshoring either directly with companies such as DXC/Luxoft or n-ix, or through local offices (Akamai for example). If you look at the average salary in Poland (in general), and the average tech salary + the number of tech workers there, it's easy to say a large part of the GDP is tech.
Whether or not it's offshoring is a little less obvious, but I can't think of more than 2 or 3 successful Polish tech companies.
There are other countries in the world or even in the EU where salaries are lower than in Poland. Why don't they see the similar growth? I guess this is more nuanced than just lowered salaries can explain it. Surely, that's part of the equation but to develop highly innovative economy, one needs to start with something. That's how China started, how Korea started etc.
China was the offshore haven and built their own domestic economy off the expertise while still maintaining very low income taxes and 15% corporate tax for tech companies.
You dont have money, you complain. You (as in your country) get the money, yet you still complain.
Sure, its not ideally distributed, but nowhete is. Such economic success will drag many parts of the country up. Yes, jobs not paid the best will have to commute from further. But compared to where Poland was 2 decades ago (been there many times), its great growth and success.
Plus you guys have correct mentality to by far the biggest threat to Europe - russia. Not so common in eastern Europe, russian-paid politicians are quite successful in some places. But of course Poland has a history with russia to remember so thats luckily not an option.
An economic investment as well as one of solidarity. People forget that the EU is a peace project that ensures peace via economic cooperation. This nuance seems trivial but is actually massively important. I can see trust degrading in the US but being fortified across the EU.
Look at Hungary recently, they did a 180 not because of Brussels or Berlin saying they should. Hungarians are sceptical of both. However they do trust the Polish people who they see as genuine peers who are very pro-EU.
They didn't do a 180 at all. Tusk basically shares Orban's entire platform, particularly vis-à-vis the EU. Orban just got caught in corruption scandals.
I wonder if that's part of why the US is a superpower: the richer states being forced to invest in the poorer ones.
In the early 20th century Texas for instance was a poor state, a recipient of federal funds, but now it's an economic powerhouse. (To be precise I still think it's a recipient of federal funding but it holds its own now.)
> Think of it as an investment. The rest of the EU also benefits from their hard work, and economic prosperity. Other countries in the EU have also enjoyed economic growth and support over the years.
It is for as long, as the EU exists in its current form. The rise of anti-EU parties in both Poland and Germany makes it a risky investment.
Be careful about reading too much into that. Our elections yesterday were for local and sometimes regional representatives - not our central national government. The result might still prompt a change in our unpopular Prime Minister but the high vote for Reform won't necessarily translate into voting for them at the next general election. We often see protest votes for alternative parties in local politics and everyone was expecting one this time.
Surveys here have been showing a trend towards greater public support for the EU. Its advocates have been pushing for closer integration and even talking of a referendum on rejoining. Although of course this also has to be viewed cautiously because the polls before the Brexit referendum had also pointed towards remaining and one of the biggest fans of the EU recently has been that unpopular PM who might not be in office for much longer.
There is pretty common trend of people complaining about X being bad coz EU but most of the time it turns into one of
* It was pretty sensible EU directive implemented badly by national govt
* It was pretty sensible EU directive implemented okay but communicated badly
* Outright lie about the problem and the scope of it.
One example: The people complained that "EU will force them to pay to scrap solar panels"
The truth: Some countries added price of recycling into price of the solar panels, some didn't. Those that did had free recycling, those that didn't needed owner to pay a fee when scrapping it. So, naturally, buying solar panel from country with no fee was cheaper and scrapping it in country with fee was free. EU noticed that loophole and forced countries into including the fee in panel cost:
The truth: Poland applied it by just applying fee to panels bought before the rule unification
The lie number 1: EU forced that implementation on Poland. Nothing was forced, that way of "fixing it" (vs eating the cost was what Polish govt chose
The lie number 2: (and I have no idea where it came from) "You will have to scrap your panels made before this date AND pay for it".
Sometimes I suspect most of that is just russian propaganda using anything to undermine EU
> Outright lie about the problem and the scope of it.
One of my favorites was “EU is banning juice”, when the definition of juice was being standardized and local producers of fruit-flavored sugar water couldn’t keep selling their beverages as “juice” anymore.
There's the classic "bendy banana law" which British tabloids pushed a lot to paint the EU as an inefficient bureaucracy.
In reality it was a way to harmonise banana grading, no one was forbidden to sell abnormally shaped bananas, it would just be classed lower than the "Extra" class.
I a sure it's Russian propaganda that the EU has basically tried for the last 3 years to ban encryption so that it can access all your personal messages without a warrant?
Or is it also Russia propaganda that it wants to force VPNs to collect data on their users or force everyone to use their real identities online so that it makes it easy to prosecute anyone for wrong speech?
Yes, this is an important aspect of the EU, and other countries like Spain and Ireland benefited in the same way.
And it's a good thing, but I wish Eastern European countries would recognize this and become more of a team player instead of shitting on EU.
Poland waited for Trump 2nd term, threatening the take some of the EU territory by force to finally transition from buying US weapons to buying from other European countries.
> I'm old enough to remember internal borders with passport checks in Europe, before the wall fell and Poland was still on the other side of that. Nice to see them moving on from that.
Europe is the outlier here. The rest of the world checks your passport when you come in their country because they like to know who comes and who goes for a lot of reasons including public safety, biosecurity and so on.
The fact that Europe has basically given up on trying to filter who comes in is not necessarily a model that is desirable for the rest of the world.
> Thanks to the EU free movement of people, I've now studied, worked and lived in four different countries.
You can do that without Europe as well. Do you think people did not move to another country or studied in another country before the European countries decided to remove borders? What about now with all the students moving to the US/UK/Australia/Canada?
I’m not very familiar with deep EU politics. But I’ve heard a lot of complaints from colleagues in countries like Germany and the Netherlands about feeling like their taxes mainly help countries like Poland.
While what you’re saying may be true, and this prosperity may be good for all of Europe, I think there is a lot of resentment about who the beneficiaries of the EU structure are.
This is how it works. Ireland was a net beneficiary until 2018, and now it is a net contributor (one of only 10 net contributors). These are decades long investments, Poland joined in 2004.
Per capita Poland is not the "greatest" beneficiary but I don't think that will help win any arguments for those already resistant to facts or reasoning.
https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/12/09/eu-budget-who-p...
> Think of it as an investment. The rest of the EU also benefits from their hard work, and economic prosperity. Other countries in the EU have also enjoyed economic growth and support over the years.
This is something I tell people I am generally politically/socially align with (liberals/progressives) when they start talking about “handouts for red states.” California and other areas were not developed on their own, they required years of sustained federal investment and interest in the area.
It obviously goes without saying that conservatives in the US need to stop demonizing taxes so much for the same reason/they need to recognize that as the some of the largest beneficiaries of federal tax dollars they are cutting their nose to spite their face (I believe Kentucky is still the most subsidized state in the US).
All of us should want our states cooperation with the federal government so we can all rise together, and we need to view investing in our neighbors as a collective good.
The argument that red states receive handouts is essentially a myth. Almost the entirety of the "handout" is social security/medicare based on where retirees live (notably the sunbelt), where military bases are located (rural areas of less populous states), and where most Federal land management offices and employees are located (the mountain west). Ironically, it counts Federal employment as "welfare" with more steps.
Two of the three are intrinsically tied to the locale. You can't move the National Forests to Manhattan. They closed the military bases in the most expensive areas like California decades ago to save money so they are mostly located in flyover country now.
Social Security actually is a welfare handout but retirees are choosing to move to red states. Unless one is arguing to forcibly prevent retirees from moving to the sunbelt, Social Security dollars will disproportionately flow into those states.
This [0] mentions that social security, medicare, public assistance and military and other federal wages were a wash, as of 2018-2022 data:
> Digging deeper into the component parts of federal contribution, red and blue states received similar dollar amounts in direct payments on a nominal ($6.9 trillion) and per capita ($42,900) basis, much of which come in the form of payments from Social Security, Medicare, and public assistance programs, such as the earned income and child tax credits. The red and blue states also receive similar amounts for military and non-military wages (excluding the U.S. Post Office, which is self-funded) on a nominal ($650 billion) and per capita ($4,900) basis.
Tax receipts were listed as the most significant difference, and after that other things like military bases, block grants, federal contracts and highways, some going one way, and some the other.
The numbers were interesting. They added it up to $1 trillion going from blue to red states.
A cursory search indicates an even split of red/blue states put in more than they get, but that 7 of the top 10 receivers of federal aid are red states. But ultimately my point doesn’t hinge on the ratio: everyone should support solid investments in all states.
You can give all the caveats you want but my point is it doesn’t matter what the reason is, these states rail against taxes and the federal government despite leaning heavily on their investment and “donor states” need to see it as a positive for all of us.
Why does it matter if it’s national parks or military bases or whatever? Do you think these states would gladly give it up so they can “liberate themselves from federal intervention” or whatever? Fat chance.
People need something to resent or hold in disregard. Government and taxes are a good target. The problem only really begin when someone actually tries to reduce or eliminate that target. It's the old "be careful what you ask for, you might just get it".
>This is something I tell people I am generally politically/socially align with (liberals/progressives) when they start talking about “handouts for red states.” California and other areas were not developed on their own, they required years of sustained federal investment and interest in the area.
If they were to ask where you think this "federal investment" funding came from, what would you reply?
It’s a fair point, but there is a significant difference between investment in infrastructure and education versus just supporting states that are intentionally degrading their infrastructure and education.
Upwards spiral versus downwards. Money pours in for both cases, but only one is really an investment.
Much of it would come from borrowing, which would be paid back using tax revenues in later years from the regions developed using that investment. Just like most investments.
The West Coast of the United States, California, Washington, and Oregon. will just move on like the rest of the world is moving on away from the United States. Turning your back on infrastructure useful infrastructure medicine education, science, schools is not a winning hand long-term.
If you look at a map of the American South Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia will just move on. Actually it’s already happening and has been happening for the last 30 years. Other parts of the American South are however, stuck more firmly in the past and getting further behind and that also applies to some of the Midwestern states.
Louisiana has another ongoing long-term problem the gulf of Mexico is eating away at the bottom half of the state lands end is moving further north that involves scientific observations oh boy thems fighting words.
World War II significantly contributed to the development of the West Coast of the United States mid century. San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle harbors became crucial to the war effort in the pacific, leading to industrial expansion and the establishment of the UC system and the junior colleges in California, which eventually led to Silicon Valley, also the large water projects built 50-60 years earlier and the the transcontinental railroads built 50 years prior also didn’t hurt the expansion and growth of the West Coast of the United States either.
Building useful infrastructure, in the can do America of the past worked, the parasitic AI data centers currently, however, appear to be a financial dead end.
That era of America appears to be gone at the Federal level, infrastructure, schools, science, medicine, college, vaccines, voting etc. etc. don’t appear to be on the current menu.
The question is not whether it is an investment or whether it is not.
The question is whether growth is objective and fair or whether it is not.
For comparison of wealth in Poland, ALL net-subsidies would have to be deducted, because this is essentially wealth taken from other countries, and distributed to poorer areas in the EU. I am not disputing that this leads to more growth; I am disputing the "country xyz is now rich" while not even mentioning the subsidies. And that reuters article does not mention that at all.
It also has to be mentioned because the crazy bureaucrats in Brussels want to aggressively expand eastwards. They think that the richer areas in the EU need to pay for that expansion. I simply fail to agree with that "logic" at all and I also consider it hugely unfair to richer areas. The richer areas made good decisions; now this is being negated by bureaucrats in Brussels. That is unfair. (This is not meant against Poland, but against the constant expansionistic agenda from Brussels.)
I agree, but people are very weary of these things because of the (correct) belief that their appropriation is guided by unaccountable bureaucrats. It stands in need of justification that Europeans feel they never got to hear
> but people are very weary of these things because of the (correct) belief that their appropriation is guided by unaccountable bureaucrats.
People believe this because every single member state is using EU institutions as a punching bag whenever they have issues locally. The people have no idea how the EU work, they only hear about it when used as a bogeyman
That also works the other way around: Eastern European countries wanted to join the EU (ok, more importantly NATO, but also the EU) to make sure they never ever again slid into Russia's "sphere of influence". Notwithstanding certain populist EU-skeptic right wing parties that don't seem to mind that anymore (some would say because they are financed by Russia), that's generally still true...
I agree, but subsidies aren't free as well. Simply making the overall cake bigger doesn't necessarily pay out for everyone - some have to foot the bill.
Because the total increase of the cake can mostly be transferred to those that receive the subsidies. It's not that hard to understand: if you redistribute 10% of total wealth from the top quartile to the bottom quartile for 1% in additional total growth, then even if that additional growth went completely to the top quartile, it would be a net -9% of total wealth for them. I don't say that's a bad thing per se. But it doesn't help to willfully ignore that fact.
Edit: I just now got the part "If the increase in cake size is bigger than the subsidies" – that's a ridiculous assumption. EU total growth in 2025 was 1.5% or 295 billion USD. From 2021-2027, the EU budget committed roughly 370bn € each for Agriculture subsidies and for Cohesion Policies, totaling 720bn € over 7 years; 2025 has seen ~130bn USD from those two buckets alone. Germany alone has paid another 60bn in subsidies the same year. Oh, and there has been a total of 417bn USD in energy subsidies in europe in 2023 (most recent data available). Even if we could attribute all total growth to subsidies alone, we'd have a factor below 0.5 – and that doesn't include any growth through private investmen, PPP, or any kind of increase of regular public spending.
OTOH, the more developed EU countries want the less developed countries to be reasonably well-off, so they can keep buying stuff from them. E.g. 56% of Germany's exports went to other EU countries in 2025. And, while Trump and Xi Jin Ping are around, that's only going to become more important...
Yeah, they're so uncompetitive that Trump had to introduce tariffs to keep them out. China is a different topic, but I wouldn't generally call German products uncompetitive...
The tariffs put on the US by Germany were higher than the other way around in some cases, even though the US wasn’t exporting such products in any significant amount.
The Holocaust was a decision taken by one of the two pillars of the EU, Germany, so countries nowadays being rich or poor has nothing to do with past “good” decisions of those countries populaces. And before anyone commenting that the Holocaust and the German economy are two orthogonal subjects, just look at the corporate history of German industry giants VW and Bayer.
Neither VW and Bayer are rich because of the Holocaust. They are rich because of good business environment and good corporate decisions after 2nd world war.
From a purely economic viewpoint Holocaust and 2nd world war were very very stupid decisions.
Worse, Germany has one of the worst upward mobility stats in the EU. If you look at the filthy rich families in Germany, most of them have ties to benefitting heavily from WW2.
"I'm old enough to remember internal borders with passport checks in Europe"
Did you recently crossed borders? On many the checks are there again, because of fear of immigration terrorism or something, so the people could see, politicians were doing something to make them feel safe (but what I could see when passing borders, especially between poland and germany, were looong lines of trucks, so much for free flowing goods).
Not sure of the current situation, though, but last summer and autumn was horrible with checks (probably still better than what was before, but having experienced the real open border situation, having them restricted again is frustrating).
Not the same extent like it was before… Now most of the times is just slowed down traffic (quick glance who's in car and move on), and more than that I was maybe stopped two times for quick chit-chat (where/why I'm heading). And I crossed, multiple times, borders of DK (they had checks since 2018?), DE, A, IT, CH, CZ…
Quick ID check happened once - when I was traveling with bus across border.
Back in a days it was a lot, lot slower and more detailed.
If you miss the old days, try the bus from Vilnius to Minsk. It’s a full on border control just like in the times of the Soviet Union. Only 35 km away from an European Union capital city.
"Back in a days it was a lot, lot slower and more detailed."
Oh for sure, I have childhood memories of the really dark time, but it is way worse now, than it was back in 2015. I missed flixbus connections because of intense checks and changed vacation plans avoiding long waiting times at borders within EU (my recommendation, cross at night).
Every country can choose independently, and for each border. From a cursory
search, it appears e.g. Poland currently only checks the borders with Germany and Lithuania. You'd have missed any checks on your specific trio, if this list was true at the time:
Your current state is how Canada used to be from the US. Early 2000s we just showed drivers licenses. Went camping, up to Nelson. Then it got less friendly (US side) then passports required. To the point we stopped going. It sucks when politicians make our world smaller as in 'we have access to less' instead of smaller as in 'it's a small world after all'.
Not just Canada but all of North America. I used to go into Mexico with my friends as a teenager to find trouble. No passport or adult supervision required.
I'm surprised how quickly people have forgotten that North America was a giant open border zone until very recently. You only needed a passport to travel overseas. In hindsight that was actually a pretty unique arrangement.
Hm, I went there multiple times from different directions, including france last year and at most had to show ID, but was usually waived on. It really depends I guess.
Yes, this is how European social welfare works. And it is fantastic! Because the entirety of the EU is benefitting from it. Polish people have larger spending power, interesting and safe places to visit, etc.
This is not a "present" given to Poland. This is ensuring a better life for all Europeans.
In the 1980s, EU money was flowing to Spain, Portugal and Greece. And people complained about that too.
But the result is inarguably positive. Those countries had only recently become democracies after decades of military dictatorships or otherwise unstable third-world style governments. Today they're the most dynamic economies in the EU in many respects, and their democracies are well established and functioning.
The EU doesn't get nearly enough credit for how it transformed the continent. People have forgotten how nearly all European countries were in a very bad shape after WWII. Fascists had remained in power in Spain and Portugal. Soviets were orchestrating communist takeovers in countries like Italy. It's a small miracle that the liberal democratic economic order won so quickly and decisively.
I think this is the hidden reason why the American alt-right/far-right/MAGA/techbro types hate the EU with so much apoplectic rage. For all its problems, big-picture-like it actually works to gradually coalesce a huge rich continent with a bigger population than the US into something increasingly more coherent, and if it continues to work it will mean that the Western world now has two heavyweight leaders, not one. For people who tend to view the world as a giant zero-sum dominance competition, this is of course a big threat. One more big player = one more competitor.
(The techbros hate it for a different, if related, reason - they aren't nearly as successful at capturing regulators, astroturfing and controlling discourse, and otherwise taking charge of that second entity as they are with the hapless US federal government).
> (The techbros hate it for a different, if related, reason - they aren't nearly as successful at capturing regulators, astroturfing and controlling discourse, and otherwise taking charge of that second entity as they are with the hapless US federal government).
I'd propose a different reason - the techbros disassociate with the EU because if someone want to work in tech that means getting fairly intimate with US culture, companies and markets. There is a reason this conversation is happening on a message board backed by a US company (moderated to US standards, I might add) - the Europeans don't have the ecosystem to sustain something similar.
If Europe were capable of building the ecosystems needed to fielding a large number of competent tech companies then techbros would start turning up there too.
Don’t make shit up about people you don’t understand.
>American alt-right/far-right/MAGA/techbro
Bucketing these all together doesn’t even make sense. A “techbro” has completely different reasons to dislike the EU (regulatory regime unfriendly to tech startups) than some MAGA focused on US competitors.
As someone from the tech industry, I’m disappointed in the EU as it falls further and further behind on innovation. I love the EU though and frequently visit it (which is not something a MAGA would do).
All non-monarchies in Europe are republics too. It’s by far the most common type of democracy. It’s unclear to me why some Americans insist on making a distinction that doesn’t exist.
That’s not what I said. I said there are more important things to increase the wellbeing of the citizens of a country than democracy. In other words, a country can use democracy as a tool to destroy itself.
>Today they're the most dynamic economies in the EU in many respects
In what sense are they "dynamic economies"? Their GDP per capita has barely increased at all over the past two decades, they're mired in debt, and haven't produced a single new company that's significant on the global stage.
Spain is currently the fastest growing state in Europe, is the largest source new job creation in Europe, and is currently benefiting from its large scale investments in renewables and grid infrastructure sheltering it from the worst of the Iran war.
That is incorrect for Portugal. We didn't took part on the WWII and came out with a rich country that kept growing on double-digits. Eventually it was attacked simultaneouly by the US/Russia proxies for 10 years until 1974.
It was after that US/Russia sponsored this communist takeover of our country that the new puppet governments have thrown the natives into extreme misery until someone from the EU decided to reduce the levels of corruption and misery. We simply swapped one master for another and hasn't been good for our land.
So please don't compare our country to whatever "solutions" brought by the same entities who caused our problems in the first place. We needed almost 50 years to remove socialism from this country and reduce the venezuelan/cuban style poverty forced upon us.
Spain is often given as an example of a failed economy ruined by socialists.
GDP per capita is basically flat over the last 2 decades, $30K.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/esp/spa...
vs Poland that tripled or let's say Israel that had the same GDP as Spain and now has double.
As noted in the other comment Poland is not even getting that much money per capita, it’s just a fairly large country.
They are still getting half of what Belgium is getting and unlike the overwhelming majority of bureaucrats in Brussels Polish farmers actually produce something useful.
That's like the entire point of the EU yes, most people agree it's better than what we used to have, considering how it went in 1914 and 1939 for example
No capitalists just provide money, something other entities can as well. Often better too.
Capitalists are completely useless when they have no workers, so I don't understand your points outside of "wow capitalists require a lot of workers to exist."
Hence the rush towards LLM systems, the dream of perpetual labor machine is too enticing.
There is also no risks for capitalists, do we live on the same planet where the stated US economic policy isn't to socialize the risks and privatize the gains?
The risk is absolutely real, and varies immensely, as does its significance.
Consider the risks of VC backed initiatives, which far more often than not, return less than market salary to entrepreneurs, and less than the S&P 500 to capitalists.
For a shot at the jackpot, entrepreneurs are risking substandard salaries, and capitalists substandard returns.
You could argue that the capitalist’s risk is more significant than the entrepreneur’s. Even in failure, a VC initiative can afford the entrepreneur greater networking and professional experience than other roles, which increases their future earning potential and offsets their risk of substandard salary.
Hard to say the same for the capitalist, who is also, of course, risking a far greater amount of currency than anyone else.
But a risk’s significance is not determined by the amount wagered; it is determined by the consequences of losing the wager. As well as the consequences of participation, or lack thereof.
Median American lifetime earnings are somewhere between one and two million dollars; let’s say an entire life costs two million. A capitalist capable of investing a billion dollars could risk an entire lifetime’s money on a venture every other month, for eighty years, cradle to grave, and if they suffered complete losses every time, they’d still die with enough money for 1600 years of life in a wealthy nation.
The sum risked is immense. But the consequences of losing it are null.
It is, of course, more nuanced than that. Many businesses are funded by people with far less than a billion dollars, and many of them fail. There's also 3,000 billionaires, and an overwhelming majority of human lives that cost far less than American's.
These are reasons why it might not be the largest provider of funds per capita, not why it would be by orders of magnitude the biggest recipient.
I have been to Luxembourg and to Hungary, Bulgaria & Greece - the otherwise obvious contenders for "poorest" in the EU and Luxembourg should not be in the picture.
If it gets funds for restoring one railway bridge or something of that sort the fact the population is tiny makes the per capita investment look huge, just usual tiny country effects.
A bunch of foreign companies also incorporate their EU subsidiaries there (presumably due to some tax benefit). I imagine that distorts their GDP quite badly as well.
I presume this is because of the EU institutions there and that expenditure to maintain those institutions counts towards receipts (and this effect is then exaggerated due to Luxembourg's small population). Certainly no one in the EU is under any illusion that Luxembourg is poor, much less vastly poorer than the next poorest EU country.
Notoriously difficult to portray correctly in EU money-shuffling statistics. Some money not granted to the grand duchy still filed under "beneficiary country: Luxembourg" due to some program or institution being headquartered there. And it is essentially impossible to compare apples to apples what happens in actual EU budget and what happens in Kirchberg, home to EIB.
The largest EU benefit is that it makes democratic and rule of law backsliding unlikely. So if you invest money in Poland you can be reasonably sure that it won't get stolen from you.
Hungary was a demonstration that this works over the long term.
In the EU, money gets stolen from you in a more subtle way. For example, the COVID situation, with unlimited money-printing was a tax on the people who had savings, and supporting a specific subset of the economy, or, delaying the tax in the essence.
There is no lesson of "democracy" to give. At best it is a guided democracy, and this is very generous.
For example, VPNs are going to be forbidden, and the free speech compared to the US is a little toy.
Elections are often a facade in many EU countries.
In France for example, it's always the "right" (btw you can be socially or jailed if you support them by using the wrong words) against the existing party, and communists are begging it's better to vote for the existing party, than support the newcomers.
It's a loop, this is why there is this joke that voters are "beavers", because at every elections they are asked "build a dam" against competition.
There is the same beaver thing, over and over again for 30 years.
Even people that are actually elected you have nowhere your word near their decisions (and even less near Von der Leyen and similar people).
Poland understood long time ago that it needs a safe country, and that they need to make sure that the people in their country are fine and safe before helping the whole planet.
Hungary and Poland are a little bit in the same boat, their relative independence saves them (e.g. refusing the EUR currency, refusing some policies) that allows them to have more leeway to support the local people, while benefiting of the funds from the EU and Schengen.
The EU prevents your money from being stolen, except when the EU itself decides to withhold or deduct it. Hungary has lost over a billion euros in ECJ daily fines...
If you push it even further, this is forgetting about the hundreds of billions that are centrally distributed to third-parties (and this is just Ukraine!). So, your money, our decision.
> unlimited money-printing was a tax on the people who had savings
US printed so much that basically entire global economy had to pay for it in huge inflation in the years that followed. And all that freshly printed money ended up in pockets of US billionaires.
> The largest EU benefit is that it makes democratic and rule of law backsliding unlikely.
On the contrary. Since the EU has no meaningful penalty mechanism other than withholding funds, and enormous capacity for shared damage absorption, once a country passes a certain threshold of development membership in the EU actually encourages government misbehavior including democratic backsliding, because it insulates the government from many potential adverse consequences.
For example, governments around the world have to fear violent revolution. But in the EU, the shared desire for law and order is so strong that the rest of the members are likely to support a member state in repressing such a revolution with essentially any degree of brutality, regardless of the condition of that state’s democracy, because the alternative (a successful coup in an EU member state) is impossible to contemplate.
> doesn't explain why it worked so much better for Poland than for Czechia, Slovakia and a few others.
It's hard to see the other paths they could be on tho. One person's failure is another's raging success. It might be a bit like the way we take a peace for granted, because we can't internalize the cost of all the ways it could have been worse.
> Yet you can see crowds of young anti-woke Germans on X
There are also crowds of young anti-woke Poles claiming that Poland should leave EU because we would be better without it and claiming that EU is puppet of Germany. I've also seen opinions that Israel is a puppet of Poland, aimed at Israelis. If you want to, you will see all opinions you could imagine.
This all started with Facebook. Those "opinions" are partly manufactured in russia and for russian money amplified through US owned social networks. Any "opinion" that sows discord in the West is used. Content is pretty much irrelevant. The outcome is what matters. Divisions, reduction of trust in institutions and leadership. It works because there are people in the west who opportunistically politically capture audiences created by this discord. And they do it, by repeating same "opinions", often even for free.
The "logic" of xenophobic nationalism is that narratives are selected for how well they (1) cast "us" as victims, (2) cast some convenient "others" as villains, and (3) fire up "our" feelings of hatred. Neither logic nor truth are particularly desirable - and narratives which are particularly defiant of logic and truth may be a way of virtue signaling within xenophobic national social circles.
Yes - main benefit of EU is regulatory stabilization and open market. Ironically also this was working also before joining EU (most of the adjustment happening as requirement to join EU and implemented before joining).
A lot of it also was behind a requirement to basically "fix your shit".
You could get the money but you had to get bureaucracy to be right and transparent to cut down on fraud, and that helped the rest of the govt to have less fraud.
Much of the stabilization was due to the strong domestic market. Recall that Poland was the only country to avoid the 2008/2009 recession. It is tight global integration that causes recessions to spread.
Brazil also famously avoided the 2008-09 recession to a great extent, to name one example.
Tight global integration is not a bad thing. Even if we took at face value your argument that a strong domestic market protected Poland in that case, you can't cherry pick the one instance in which lower-than-expected integration was beneficial without also considering all the other times in which it was harmful.
Poland's growth does well when everyone is in the dip. Even in 2020 crisis Poland dipped less than other. Although the difference was less that time. 8 years of populist rule did harm Poland a bit.
Indeed. The self-congratulatory narrative around "EU funds" is obnoxious and ignorant. As you say, Poland's economic growth was similar before it had joined the EU. (Many economists then thought Poland's accession in 2004 was premature and should have been postponed.) Causes were cultural (there is a strong, traditional entrepreneurial streak in Polish culture) and related to the economic reforms undertaken during the transition from the centrally-planned economy of the socialist period. People need to remember that Poles did not choose the communist regime after the War. It was thuggishly and violently imposed onto Poland by the occupying Soviets. Poles merely endured a provisional acceptance of the regime, because they had no choice.
Furthermore, as the GP hints, EU funds earmarked for Poland don't necessarily remain in Poland as investment. Much of that money circulates back into the pockets of contributing countries. You have to look at the entire paper trail to understand where money is actually ending up.
Also worth noting: Poland didn't receive a dime of reparations after the War. Germany (and with later contribution by the Soviets) had unleashed such mind-boggling destruction on Polish cities, towns, cultural inheritance, industry, etc. that only the so-called Swedish Deluge matches or exceeds this devastation.
The EU presents certain clear economic benefits for member countries. Nobody disputes that. But the patronizing and paternalistic narrative of some countries - reminiscent of their goofy rationalizations for their occupation of that region during the 19th century - need to go away.
Can't agree more. Given its geography and population, one would expect Poland to be a major economy, but it's been occupied or even completely erased from existence for large stretches of industrial modernity. The period since 1989 is the longest stretch of true sovereignty that Poland has had since the 18th century.
The fucking krauts (both the German/Prussian and the Austrian/Hapsburg varieties) can and should toss them a few złoty for economic development as recompense for the horrific treatment they've dealt Poland over the centuries. It would be nice if the Russians would too, but that's not the reality we currently live in.
If you peer into the (un-tendentious) history of much of those lands, you might take a slightly different view of them and their role and importance in Polish history, culture, language, and statehood, beyond just the 20th century... But perhaps more to the point, Poland lost nearly half of its prewar territory, east of the Curzon line. Poland is territorially smaller today than it was before WWII.
It also "received" several million of its own people killed, including the highly educated Jewish community. While we are crunching numbers, let us not forget that loss of human capital matters in economy as well.
1% of the GDP is a considerable amount of money. The GDP is not a country's profit, not even its revenue. If we stick to 2023, Poland had a budget deficit of 5% of the GDP, which makes 1% a very welcome gift.
> I love the polish, but credit where credit is due
> I ment: „Poland gets money, Poland transforms it into more money”.
I have noticed that absolutely every time Poland's success is mentioned, someone from EU steps in to downplay it. A self-serving bias. Seriously, that type of comment is absolutely everywhere. Any YouTube video. Any Reddit post. In last couple days I have seen it about dozen times, last time today here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ArchitecturalRevival/comments/1t6k7...
And each time it's some unsubstantiated remark, not once do those people actually bother to check what the actual amount of subsidies did Poland receive over the past 22 years, or how does Poland fare against other EU members. They always imply that ALL THIS SUCCESS is thanks to EU.
For the record: Poland received in total about as much as its yearly budget is in 2026. Other recent EU members also received more-less the same or, per-capita, much more! Did you bother to see how other EU countries developed in that time?
Seriously, look at that damn map. Find other EU members on that list.
Ergo, Poland must be doing something EXCEPTIONAL if its combined growth FAR SURPASSES not only any other recent EU members but ALL BUT ONE country worldwide? It can't just be that relatively small amount of the EU money, or the EU membership itself, can it?
So, for f*ks say, how about western EU shuts up and acknowledges IT'S NOT ALL THANKS TO THE EU, will it?
I am personally a big fan of the EU, but those downplaying comments are so annoying I can't but think it's some sort of jealousy. Credit where credit is due to POLES themselves.
You could just as well claim the growth is thanks to NATO membership because, if you look at Ukraine and Belaraus, it's quite plausible as well.
Based on my limited experience, Polish are incredibly workaholic and work-focused people. It's really no surprise they elevate themselves economically.
Even without funds distributing EU cash, a common market works as a leveller this way and pulls up the poorer countries, because if you can live work and operate anywhere, people naturally pick the cheapest and easiest places to start a business serving the EU.
Spain and Portugal were the previous beneficiaries and everyone benefits really as jobs are created everywhere.
This is far better than a situation where larger economies dominate all others forever.
I don't understand the number of people here who repeat the official EU elites line.
Would you say that The US and Mexico should be forced to implement free movement of people, goods, services and industry with a new North American Union capital in Mexico city?
If not, what is the difference?
Mind you that Polish workers are the next in line to be screwed if Ukraine joins the EU.
Per capita Slovakia and Hungary are getting way more than Poland so its the other way around if anything (of course the Baltics are a good counterpoint)
"GDP measured in constant 2021 international dollars, adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP) to account for differences in the cost of goods and services across countries"
Meh, idk what magic maths they pull, but any other sources I find do not corroborate their graph.
that is a graph of growth, but they started from different baselines, e.g. Hungary was famously known as "the happiest barrack in the communist camp".
Slovakia and Hungary have trailed % growth compared to Poland, but they are far richer countries now that they were 20 years ago, and the GDP per capita for Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia is quite close to each other[0].
I'm not trying to say Poland didn't do well, it did! I'm just saying the advantages of being in the EU outweigh any national merit by a lot, which should be quite self evident.
The comments are questioning what you wrote, which implies without evidence, that a small amount of EU money relative to Poland's own GDP, in just 6 years, is somehow entirely responsible for Poland's growth.
Polish people have such a fear of Germans, thinking Germans are constantly scheming to screw Poland over. Whereas most Germans barely know Poland even exists.
As someone who has lived in both countries its such a hilarious anxiety.
> As someone who has lived in both countries its such a hilarious anxiety.
What's hilarious about it? It seems pretty well-rooted given the actual history of the two areas.
- 1939: Germany invaded in 1939, officially starting World War II.
- 1941: Germany occupied the rest of Poland after attacking the Soviet Union, which had previously occupied Eastern Poland.
- Teutonic Order/Prussia: Throughout the 13th–16th centuries, the Teutonic Order fought numerous wars against Poland.
- Medieval Period: Records show invasions by Margrave Gero (963), Margrave Odo I (972), Emperor Otto II (979), and multiple campaigns by King Heinrich II between 1003 and 1017.
It’s been barely two generations since the death camps. My grandma, who is still alive, can tell you stories of seeing trains take half her village away.
Intergenerational trauma is a real psychological phenomenon.
A „hilarious anxiety” is an incredibly naive world view.
Germans probably won't attack anyone anymore, that is true.
But Germans making huge mistakes out of misguided idealism is still a problem. And given the size and influence of Germany, the rest of the continent has always to process those mistakes as well.
There are many countries in the EU that get many more funds per person than Poland and have much worse outcomes.
Some moron always show up with the "but it was all the EU subsidies" talking point, which is quite frankly part of racist tropes of eastern Europeans being dumb and worse than westerners. Could you imagine them accomplishing anything on their own? That's ridiculous. It's us, the western saviors, who did this with our penny subsidies!
Perhaps I wouldn't use such harsh words, but it is a noticeable phenomenon when interacting with _some_ Western Europeans that if Poland's success comes up in a conversation, they immediately "offer insight" that it was in fact all outside help that made it possible. (There are also, in fact, some folks further east of Poland, who like to repeat that narrative as well, but it doesn't happen nearly as often as with Westerners.)
And yes, my own take why this does happen is that there was certain order to the region in the past centuries - the West was modern and wealthy, the East was backwards and poor and all was in its natural place. This new situation is unfamiliar and needs a sort of explanation that would preserve the balance somehow. In short, they cope.
> Some moron always show up with the "but it was all the EU subsides" talking point, which is quite frankly part of racist tropes of eastern Europeans being dumb and worse than westerners. Could you imagine them accomplishing anything on their own? That's ridiculous. It's us, the western saviors, who did this with our penny subsidies!
Ireland were in a similar position for instance (received €40bn in EU subsidies in the first 45 years of membership; now a net contributor).
I'm wondering how much of the net contribution comes from tech companies and how it compares to the loss of taxes due to Ireland acting as a tax haven for tech companies.
EDIT: Net contributions seem to be $3bn/year (total, independent of tech) while loss for other EU countries due to corporate tax evasion is $6bn/year.
idk who's racist but you didn't research this topic even 5 minutes on google apparently, you see the exact same trends everywhere, the GDP per capita rose pretty much in the same manner in Poland vs Slovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria for example.
Of course these countries have 5-10m inhabitants so in term of raw GDP and industrial power they can't compete
Many (especially Germans) try to wrap it falsely as charity and throwing numbers without context.
It is not true for the entire EU budget: the 2014–2020 MFF allowed up to €959.99bn in commitments, so Poland’s €77.6bn cohesion allocation was about 8.1% of the whole EU long-term budget.
For context this is like 0.7% of yearly German overall public expenditure go to Poland. And this money per year is also like 5% of state budget spending.
a big share of this money goes back to foreign companies in form of sales and contracts.
Poland had a relatively clear idea of what they wanted to do once the Russians were out unlike some of the other countries in the eastern block, and it didn’t hurt that some of their neighbors to the north Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia also had pretty good idea of what they wanted to do once they were out from under the Russians, it’s just too bad that the Ukraine when they had the brief chance, they didn’t take advantage of it hopefully they’ll get a second chance.
Finland has been an EU net contributor since 2001. Now it has among the highest unemployment rates in the EU and is going through austerity, while Poland is visibly building and converging. I understand the logic of cohesion funds, but from Finland it increasingly feels like: we cut, Poland builds.
Since one of the major donors is Germany, I also like to consider this as reparations for WWII. I wish people in Poland would realize more how generous the EU has been to them.
Institutions aside, Poland is well placed geographically to be a manufacturing hub for Germany and the rest of Europe. You can't do that in Baltics or the Balkans.
Countries don't mechanically convert inputs into development. There are many examples of countries with large capital inflows and/or strong capabilities that still fail to become strong economies. Corruption is one of the major frictions that prevents those resources from translating into broad economic success.
It’s a factor that’s not any more significant than the Marshall Plan was in your Wirtschaftswunder in the 1970s, which, oddly enough, a lot of Germans have no issue attributing to a domestic merit alone. Funny how that works!
If it was the EU contributions that were the dominant force here, Germany could… simply do the same and prop up its own struggling economy with money printed by the ECB. Instead, it prefers to see it crumble under an obese welfare state that largely funds inactive third-world fake asylum seekers. So clearly, there’s way more nuance to economic success than simply having funds redirected from one account to another.
Britain received more from the Marshall plan and did a little worse. The Marshall plan also did not involve the US having completely free access to Germany economically and move all their companies to Germany for cheaper wages.
If you talk about asylum seekers (which may be a valid point), notice also that German social security institutions are filled to the brim with Eastern European claimants.
> Notice also that German social security institutions are filled to the brim with Eastern European claimants.
Utterly false: nationals of Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania account for approximately 4.9% of all SGB-II Leistungsberechtigte (~256,000 of 5.24 million as of December 2025).
> The Marshall plan also did not involve the US having completely free access to Germany economically and move all their companies to Germany for cheaper wages.
This is such a bizarre point. The openness of the common market goes both ways, you do realise that, right? For more than the first decade after the accession of the Central Eastern European countries to the EU, Western European countries saw an influx of workers that were well educated (or skilled in trade professions), which helped fill the gaps in their labour market. So if you were going to try to draw an analogy here, you’d also have to point out that the US didn’t import millions of Germans after the war into its own labour market. Well, barring some rocket scientists who had built weapons of mass destruction and death for Hitler.
Anyway, yes, that’s how the common market works: companies can move operations to countries where labour is cheaper (in Poland), but other companies have encouraged labour to move where they already operate (in Germany). And what’s forgotten in this discussion is that the cohesion subsidies are in fact a form of compensation for the inherent imbalance that a pure common market would exhibit. That’s why it took years in negotiations for those poorer countries to decide under what terms they’re actually willing to open up their markets, and in many cases it’s been a very controversial issue.
You are arguing from the point of capital and the industry. West Germany was fine without an influx of educated Poles. The capital and the industry benefit, not the employees.
You are by the way underestimating the credit that the Marshall Plan gets in Germany. It is taught in schools and not commonly denied.
No one can deny EU funds have helped, but putting credits only there is pure misinformation. Take a look at what part of GDP are EU funds and what is the size per capita. Hard work and open market were actually the biggest contributors to the development of Poland.
> „Poland is the largest beneficiary of EU funds 2014-2020, with one in four euro going to Poland“
The lion share of this budget has been defrauded, fraud is only slightly less widespread than in Hungary. Piles of (only) documentation are produced by professionals then funds are funnelled to the families of local authorities. Honestly I'm confused, maybe that's indeed how EU funds are suppoused to work?
It's important to understand the difference between handouts and investments with an expected ROI.
It's unfortunate that 0th order thinking jumps to this framing, it's one reason I always laugh when people talk about SpaceX taking 'government handouts' without these folks realizing the 100x ROI the government got out of their investment. All investments are 'hand outs' but not all 'hand outs' are investments.
Clear thinking at a large enough scale will prevent a populace from self destructing due to stupidity about this topic.
Honestly, it’s not why their economy has grown. That money is just wasted on government projects? Has it hurt? No, but it is a small amount when it comes to the entire Polish economy.
Cue the butthurt Germans, decimating their own bread and butter industries by ridiculous policies like diesel and nuclear bans, immigration straight into the welfare state, then complaining that others - who did not commit economic suicide - fare better. Note that Germany vastly profits from the EU as well, as it allows Germany to push e.g. their established supermarkets into Eastern Europe, undercutting any competition. This is never mentioned when talking about "largest beneficiaries of EU funds"
We have to distinguish between the German industry and corporations and the German people. The German people do not benefit from Aldi expanding into Poland.
Eh, as an American I've spent many hours reading Europeans railing against the United States here on HN.
Not once has a European ever given the US credit for the Marshall Plan.
I actually look forward to seeing the EU become the global hegemon so they can learn about how much "fun" it is. The US can sit in the stands eating popcorn just like Switzerland.
> Not once has a European ever given the US credit for the Marshall Plan.
How can you honestly say that though. A blatant overgeneralization of a large group of people, but this has been a recurring theme on HN lately.
So I would agree that people spouting anti-US sentiment have been conveniently downplaying, leaving out, or haven't been educating themselves on, this important part of US-European history, but what's new.
In the meantime, streets have been named after Marshall, plaques and statues have been erected (including recent times) at least in the more Western parts of continential Europe where much of the Marshall Plan funds ended up, and its extreme importance is quite an ingrained part of WW2 school history education. Just as one example, Arnhem was largely rebuilt using these funds and has historically paid homage and still does today with such tributes and memorials.
>How can you honestly say that though. A blatant overgeneralization of a large group of people, but this has been a recurring theme on HN lately.
Perhaps there is a miscommunication. What I meant to say is, I have not seen it mentioned a single time over many hours of arguing on HN about the US/Europe relationship. It's not an 'overgeneralization', simply an observation.
>In the meantime, streets have been named after Marshall, plaques and statues have been erected (including recent times) at least in the more Western parts of continential Europe where much of the Marshall Plan funds ended up, and its extreme importance is quite an ingrained part of WW2 school history education. Just as one example, Arnhem was largely rebuilt using these funds and has historically paid homage and still does today with such tributes and memorials.
That is nice to hear. But it doesn't seem to stop US-bashing from being the continent's trendiest hobby. I never saw a European say to another: "Hey now, they did do the Marshall Plan for us. Maybe the Yanks aren't always bad."
The problem is that US establishment politicians have traditionally sold US foreign policy to voters as "a responsibility to uphold freedom and democracy" and so forth. Then Americans hear directly from the supposed beneficiaries of this "responsibility", and the sentiment is overwhelmingly negative. The American voter feels betrayed, and wants out of the arrangement. It contributes to (1) anti-establishment sentiment, and (2) isolationist sentiment.
The condescending attitude of Europeans ("NATO is mainly to benefit US interests, you American fool", without being very specific about those interests aside from vague handwaving towards the Middle East, where most of us want less involvement anyhow) is not helping matters.
As a Polish IT worker I feel that we enjoy hardwork too much. I'm talking here about "kultura zapierdolu" [0] which is what we call the specific Polish version of culture of unhealthy work/life balance.
I feel like one uberhard worker has an unhealthy return.
But a group of uberhard workers have a healthy return - they compound each others hard work and build a prosperous _environment_.
My wife and I work very hard, as do our colleagues. But together we've built a pretty healthy routine, home, and (for now at least) financial situation. This has enabled us to have kids more easily than most, travel, etc.
The hardest workers /busiest folks I know are farmfolk relatives, and they also have a level of social connection and family connection that I envy all the time. It's mostly from them showing up to help with _everything_.
They have a strong reputation as hard-working. After the liberation of Eastern Europe, Polish crews were all over Eastern Europe doing everything from restoring historic town centers to quickly and reliably putting a fresh coat of paint on apartments.
I guess it's anecdata. Polish engineers I've worked with weren't that good at technical stuff nor communication (in English). They're overprotective with "their" code and in general we've had more luck with western/southern Europeans.
I'm from Poland, but I worked in multinational place in Europe and I would rank polish people on average in the middle of pack in terms of working ethic.
Behind Germans, or Scandinavians, but ahead of most Mediteraneans.
I'm Polish, working for globally remote companies. I second the communication issue. Most Polish devs are so ashamed of their english(even if it's perfectly communicative) that it makes it hard to discuss technical ideas with them. As for technical knowledge, I guess that's cognitive bias, most Polish devs I met were far better at tech stuff than most f.e. Germans I worked with.
12% for software development, 8.5% for design/management. The caveat being, you can't deduct anything from tax, only VAT(under some assumptions). If you have actual expenses it's 12/32% progressive or 19% linear tax. Of course all of those are assuming you own a one man company and work B2B. Most devs here do. Otherwise regular contract of employment is progressive 12/32% tax, plus Healthcare and employer payments. Much less beneficial to both sides hence why it's not preferred by most.
This misses the obligatory health tax and pension fund contributions.
The pension fund is usually not considered a tax formally, but most people I know assume with our demographics and pension system we are just paying for current retirees (and our 'savings' will be impacted by inflation when it becomes impossible to maintain), so practically it's a tax.
Than there is 23% VAT (ofc much less than 23% because both the IT company and the contractor pass it to client and subtract some cost; so only a piece of it affects the contractor; it's a convoluted thing and I don't really know if I should treat it as ~22.9% or 2.3% tax on a contractor and it's client).
Which, to be fair, laid the foundation for the well-educated part.
The Soviets really valued STEM. They also quite valued emancipating women.
Just for context, in the 60s, around 5% of chemistry PhDs in the US were women. In the Soviet Union, it was 40%! [0]
Of course, that doesn't excuse all the other things they did, but the amount of badass female engineers from Eastern Europe I had the honor of working with is a direct result of the pipeline the Soviets built.
They don't if you mean STEM and emancipation, quite the opposite, actually (compared to West Germany).
In addition to the points of sibling comments, their respective starting posititions were drastically different: West Germany got the marshal plan, which benefitted their economy, the East had to pay reparations to the USSR, which meant whole factories, trains, even railroad tracks, all in all amounting to about a third of industrial capacity, were transferred to the USSR.
Without having firm data, I can see a few factors that are different. After the collapse of the GDR, it was easier for eastern Germans to move to west Germany than for Polish to move to a different country in the west. Mostly younger and educated people would have made that move, hampering future generations. With the Reunification also came the whole Treuhand issue which essentially sold off a good chunk of eastern Germany for pennies to western investors, because eastern investors had no capital. That meant the east lost out on the profits from its economy as they would accumulate in the west instead. Even today a large part of east German rentals are owned by western landlords or corporations. Then the industrial base of west Germany was setup far more for competing on the open world market with automotive companies in the NW (VW), SW (Daimler) and SE (BMW) plus the big industrial area Ruhrgebiet. So you naturally got an economic focus even after Reunification on the old BRD with the previous GDR requiring decades to hopefully catch up to the rest of the new country.
One factor in this may also have been the way the privatization of East Germany was handled. Its often overlooked, but the vehicle for it was called Treuhand[1]. Regardless of whether it was necessary or not or right or wrong, it did basically shift out a large amount of capital assets into West Germany (and still carries this sentiment of "opportunistic theft" today).
Quite a few educated East Germans have become West Germans as soon as they had the opportunity (or moved elsewhere in the world), but East Germany actually has a couple of high-tech 'hotspots' and good universities.
An East German state (Saxony) also consistently has the best education system among German states.
The headline figure of the article is purchase power (PPP) adjusted. I couldn't find any numbers for east German states where the purchase power adjustment happens per state.
Since housing is the largest component and housing costs differ between east and west Germany using a nation wide PPP adjustment factor gives wrong results for individual states.
Most educated and motivated Polish people were slaughtered by Germans and Russians in WW II then ones still alive working for or heavily oppressed by puppet soviet state.
Honestly, a lot of issues was that we needed to build up the necessary infrastructure in the first place.
And the transformation to market economy involved at least two periods of suicidal decisions in name of ideology that regressed the economy (by the same person, even)
We were. And “hard workers” is code for “easily exploited.”
Anyway the trick to explosive growth as a country is who you trade with and how you count things. We now sell things to Germany instead of USSR, of course there’s “growth.” There’s also some very real growth, quite a bit of it - but I wouldn’t put one bit of care in a “top 20 biggest economies” ranking. NL is one of the biggest food exporters in the world because it sells mediocre tomatoes to Germany instead of selling rice to Brazil and food exports are counted in euros, not calories.
I know that Ukraine takes Polish experiences into account and consults with Poles on what went well and what not during our post-communist transformation and later the EU membership. They are keen on not repeating our mistakes. There were many Ukrainians working in Poland long before the full scale work so naturally many Ukrainians were looking at Poland hoping that their country could eventually replicate polish success.
But I don't think our example has an effect on morale and spirit of resistance.
They weren’t occupied by Russia, but the USSR which was an authoritarian communist state. That entire economic system failed for a reason, and the Chinese were wise to pivot (and not try spreading its ideology by force).
Yeah, I really don't think this is why China doesn't try to spread its ideology by force. I don't think a passive authoritarian state exists, just ones that don't have the military power or background / weak enough targets to achieve this. The US very much keeps them in check from invading not "wisdom".
I get it, we are being gaslit and pyoped at a massive scale across all channels about China and their supposed intentions. But proof is in the pudding, China is cutting deals all over the world, building infrastructure - all without forced regime changes or ideological prerequisites nor bombs.
Irrelevant post, plenty of western spies working in China (and likely much better at it). Anyways, China never took a single dollar from my pocket nor bombed anyone in the last 30 years, so yeah - I’m going to push back on this idea of some inevitable clash with them that is being programmed into everyone.
Oh let’s just ignore the times Poland/ Lithuanian empire occupied east Slavic lands and force converted a large number of Orthodox in the West to Catholicism. And the kingdom/regime before soviets was quite different than Soviets or modern Russian setup in terms of ideology.
Again, that economic difference from last round was due specially to the failure of communism. And don’t forget that the US poured money into west Germany intentionally to show off their system. Look, I get some people don’t like Russia right now, but you can’t judge history through a modern lens; only through the zeitgeist of the time it occurred in.
So to counter my argument about Russian occupation from up to 1914 being irrelevant you bring Polish Kingdom from the times of The Holy Roman Empire?
And I assume that polish literature from 18 hundreds was already deeply prescient anti-soviet? Because the russian occupant in 18 hundreds had exactly same flavours as those during the communism.
Also the German occupation was in many regards as bad as Russian one but they had absolutely different face. But that is not part of the discussion really.
And the fact that russian communist occupation of Poland had been absolutely awful was fully clear in Poland as soon as late 1940s (according to my old family members). In parcitular - some part of my family was ended war in some prisoner / working camps in western europe and had a choice of staying in the west or going back to Poland. How terrible idea to go back it was - became clear in the first few years after stayed so until the end in 1989.
I remember vividly an interview one of the russian soldiers was giving in polish television on the day when Soviet Army was leaving Poland.
"You don't even understand what you're losing. You will soon realize how big of a mistake it is and regret it deeply."
Guess what? We don't.
Adam Mickiewicz, Dziady, 1823
"Nie dziw, że nas tu przeklinają,
Wszak to już mija wiek,
Jak z Moskwy w Polskę nasyłają
Samych łajdaków stek."
I’m not arguing that occupation was a good thing, clearly not. Anyways, look at modern Russia - they have many issues but now operate a mixed market oriented economy and have achieved #4 GDP by PPP and that’s under sanctions from hell, getting cut off from Swift and no German investment. There’s actually more in common with Russias rebound and Poland amazing growth vs the economic situation in much of the rest of the EU, they really could/should be trading partners but the EU won’t allow it.
Yes, that is cool. it doesn't change the fact how the Russians treated us for centuries, and not just during the Soviet Era and what were the outcomes compared to as some like say "EU or USA occupation". So we will thank you very much - not interested in it again, but honestly good luck to Russia being a peaceful prosperous country.
Also have you noticed how and why the trade stopped?
No, they don’t claim that - but they do see it as a continuous thing (Russian civilization and the genocidal threat they overcame). Also, it’s not just them who celebrate.
Authoritarian has nothing to do with elections, it has everything to do with the ability of people without positions of power to influence those in power without retribution. Most countries have elections, these days, but there is no lack of authoritarian rulers staying in power for decades and jailing or murdering their opposition.
Yes, I agree. I believe cultural norms dictated their rate of expansion. Without so many people who enjoyed hard work they like would not have been able to expand their economy as much.
7 years ago we got a Polish Hunting Spaniel, and did our first trip to Poland. Since then we've been back several times, and each time you really see the different - new and upgraded road, city buildings being renovated into new housing and commercial areas - also noticed the costs going up too.
But also you start to notice that definitely a lot of people who left Poland are coming back, and with that skills and new economic opportunities.
the EU funds argument works both ways. plenty of countries received similar transfers and didn't compound it the same way. the interesting question isn't where the money came from, it's what Poland did with it that others didn't.
Thank you. Many say our institutions are underdeveloped but I think it takes a certain maturity of the society to be able to execute projects successfully. It's not perfect, but I think we've come a long way.
I spent some time in Poland for work about 10 years ago. I remember the cities being very expensive and chic - on par with Paris, Berlin, etc but when you got out of the cities (my project was in Bydgoszcz) it's a completely different world - poor, rundown, etc. would be curious how it is now and also where most of the Ukrainian refugees settled.
Most Ukrainians (and Belarusians) settled in major cities, starting with Warsaw. In 2022 I had a Belarusian girlfriend, and at some point I tried convincing people coming here to target smaller towns, to no avail.
Still, most of them stayed here, work hard and make it, despite rents literally doubling since when the war started.
That's funny, I spent several days in Bydgoszcz in 2015 due solely to a marvelous and slightly misleading video from the tourism board: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiogaJADvPw
I learned on arrival that the city was not in fact color-graded and filled with beautiful slow motion video opportunities. Since then, every time I mention to any Pole that I've been to Bydgoszcz, the question is always "Why?"
All my memories of two fairly long trips around Poland are now ten years out of date, and I've heard only good things about its development since then.
You haven’t seen that much of the US if your only impression of small towns and rural areas is rundown and poor. There are some vibrant and beautiful towns scattered throughout “flyover country”. Plenty that are decrepit too, but rural America is not a monolith.
> There are some vibrant and beautiful towns scattered throughout “flyover country”.
In my experience, these places tend to be where rich people from cities own vacation property or can commute to a city for work. An example in Minnesota is the Brainerd Lakes area, which subsists almost entirely on people from the Twin Cities visiting their lake cabins from May to September. There are some nice small towns and plenty of beautiful homes, but it’s a result of outsiders bringing money in. Next door you have Aitkin County which is poor as hell because it’s basically a swamp/peat bog that has been partially drained for agriculture, 65% of the county is wetlands: https://www.mngeo.state.mn.us/maps/LandUse/lu_aitk.pdf
Most of rural America has been hollowed out to the point where local hospitals are closing. I’m not making any judgements about rural poor people, just that rural areas tend to be poor due to a lack of local economic opportunity.
So you brought up two examples that are right next door to each other. I think you are underestimating how big and diverse the US is, as well as the positive impact the tourism and service industry can have. Rich people aren’t the only ones who go on vacation.
You’re right about limited economic opportunity, which comes with its own problems. That doesn’t preclude towns from responsible use of their natural resources or using the tax base to reinvest in the town. Not all do, but some do, to varying degrees of success. This idea that the majority of the US outside of urban areas is in a state of rotting collapse simply isn’t true.
I think this is largely an east vs west thing. Rural areas in the west certainly arent rich, but theyre generally not dirt poor like rust belt areas in the eastern US are.
The hospitals are closing because there arent enough medical schools in the US so there is a doctor shortage and since doctors are highly educated the vast majority of them prefer urban living. Most rural hospitals have to pay around double to convince doctors to work there compared to urban hospitals.
I never said that was my impression, as I'm sure there are also some vibrant small towns in Poland as well.
But it's fallacy to think that lots of wealth hasn't further concentrated in cities over the last 50 years. A lot of my family is from upstate NY, and I remember visiting them as a kid and feeling like they were nice places. They have all deteriorated greatly since I was a child. E.g. people always complain about how expensive housing is in the US. Well, there are plenty of cheap places to live in upstate NY - housing costs in a lot of those places have lagged inflation for decades. The problem is nobody really wants to move to Cortland, NY.
The issue looks especially clear when you compare small towns in close proximity to big cities compared to further out. There are lots of vibrant, quaint small towns on Long Island, for example, because they get a ton of money from their proximity to NYC. I often think a lot of the upstate NY towns would look just like the "cute" Long Island towns (e.g. similar architecture and history) if they had an influx of money.
I haven't been to Poland but have a second home in Czech Republic (my wife's country) which has the same phenomenon. It has nothing to do with economics or poverty and everything to do with people. Young people move to where the jobs are which means the larger towns and cities (this happens worldwide BTW). This means old villages are entirely inhabited by old people, most of whom only worked during the days of communism. They can't and won't change. They don't want to renovate or live in a new house. So the village gets run down. Canada (where I was born) also has run down towns and even ghost-towns, you'll just never see them. In Europe secondary highways pass through every town it seems, so you do see them.
My wife's grandma, now in her 90's, lives in a >100 year old farmhouse that's crumbling and only 1/3 of the home is even heated. Hell installing the electric heaters and indoor toilet involved a ton of arm-twisting. She's been insisting she'll die any day for the last decade and refuses to move or renovate. Meanwhile my wife's cousin lives in the same town (is a remote worker) and lives in a super-modern new home that's built to a much higher standard than the average new home in Canada. Old people are just stubborn...
Anyhow the point is that things only get renovated when the owner wants to renovate it, it has nothing to do with wealth. In the city, land is worth $$$ so inevitably it gets bought and improved. In small towns, meh...
Mostly nodding along, with a few of these aged in interesting ways from where I'm sitting.
The drones bit hurts the most. There's a war an hour from our border eating FPVs by the millions, and Poland - sitting on batteries, motors, chips, a generation of engineers - has not stood up a real domestic drone industry. Money is there. Will is there. We just... haven't shipped. That should keep ministers awake.
EVs are worse. Izera is a punchline at this point. Noah literally called the play in 2024 - "don't bet on one champion, run a bunch and let them fight" - and the state did the exact opposite. We picked one horse and it never left the stable.
The Korea idea, on the other hand, Noah might have undersold. Framework agreement is for ~1,000 K2 tanks. By 2030 Poland will field more main battle tanks than Germany, France, the UK and Italy combined.
Rest holds up. "Try all the things" is right - we're just very uneven at the trying. Defense procurement: shipping. Civilian industrial policy: not so much. Software still works the way it always has: quietly, in apartments, mostly without the state in the loop. Which honestly might be a feature.
They have had good public education for the past decade or two and rank high in international student rankings. So, I would bet that high 'human capital' would be the cause here.
Polish education has a long tradition of excellence. Indeed, the last decade has seen reforms that have been heavily criticized for working against that.
You mean "MBA for a fee" Collegium Tumanum, or the best elite two universities which globally barely rank somewhere in the fifth hundred? Sorry it's not education. Poles are cheap and subservient, while cutthroat among each other.
Neither Poland, nor Romania or Iran are know for excellence in education. There is this specific niche in particular age group but that doesn't translate into meaningful industry or into anything really. They are relatively good at solving quizzes, that's it.
Romania is great and it's definitely punching above it's weight, just like Poland, just with the smaller population. Iran is 3 times larger than Poland in term of population so it's not an outlier like Poland and Romania.
And the point is, you should expect best results from China and US just by population alone. South Korea at 3rd place is a testament to their grueling education. But Poland and Romania (and Bulgaria) are something else. Those are not technologically advanced countries. They don't have particular stress on education.
IIRC Polish mathematicians were close to being the world's best prior to WWII, people like Banach and Tarski are remembered until today. Also, Enigma didn't get broken by Rejewski being cheap and subservient.
Given how strong Poland used to be in mathematical logic, I can see an alternate history line where WWII does not happen and first computers are developed in Krakow and Lwow.
But computer programming with Polish keywords would indeed be a bit of a hell ;)
> IIRC Polish mathematicians were close to being the world's best prior to WWII
That's right. The Lwów-Warsaw School, the Warsaw Schools, the Kraków School, and so on were big during the interbellum. There was a good deal of activity in the space of mathematics, logic, and philosophy within that scope (art, theater, film, literature, etc. had their respective flowerings).
However, what I had in mind was that education has always been important, with formal education beginning in the Middle Ages with the first cathedral/collegiate schools. And because Poland became increasingly republican in nature, demanding skillful articulation, argument, and diplomacy as a matter of statecraft, Latin culture was of such a high standard that, during the Renaissance and early modern period, foreigners would comment that they felt as though they were visting ancient Rome given the high level of Latin proficiency. I should also mention that the world's first ministry of education was founded in Poland in the 18th century during the reign of Stanislaus II Augustus, creating, among other things, the first comprehensive, state-mandated natural science curricula.
During the subsequent partitions and foreign occupations when germanization and russification campaigns were inflicted on the populace and severe restrictions on the Polish language were put in place, clandestine home schooling, underground education networks, and "floating universities" allowed the culture to survive. So it has a deeply-ingrained and special importance across a range of concerns, from Scholastic libertas to senatorial virtus to cultural survival to so-called "positivist" industry.
> Given how strong Poland used to be in mathematical logic, I can see an alternate history line where WWII does not happen and first computers are developed in Krakow and Lwow.
Indeed. Further evidence of this is that even under the restrictive and crippling policies of the communist state and Soviet influence, you still had a surprising amount of innovation in this space.
> But computer programming with Polish keywords would indeed be a bit of a hell ;)
What would really be delicious is an inflected, synthetic programming language. ;)
Stanislaus II Augustus was a Russian tool, nobody ever felt in Poland like in ancient Rome. The few scientific achievements from the interwar period are gone forever without heritage or even continuity, and they're not even that impressing comparatively to other European countries. Modern Poles put all money into real estate and crypto scams, that's their intellectual sophistication.
This is an ahistorical view lacking nuance. Stanislaus found himself in an impossible situation. He was not the Russian pawn you uncharitably make him out to be. Rather, he often used his position to strengthen the Commonwealth in ways that were at odds with Russian interest. Recall that he inherited the throne of a state that was already on its last legs. Russia held a knife at the Commonwealth's throat. He was walking a very thin tightrope with Russia. His efforts, at the very least, contributed to giving Poles a greater cultural ability to survive the subsequent partition, giving it focus.
> nobody ever felt in Poland like in ancient Rome.
I suspect you (uncharitably) suppose I mean everyone in the streets was walking around speaking Latin. That's obviously not what I meant. I am referring specifically to the educated class - sons of the nobility, magnates, clergy, statesmen, diplomats, senators, scholars, the royal court, even country squires. The szlachta's Sarmatian culture saw itself as a spiritual successor to the Roman Republic, and it showed.
> The few scientific achievements from the interwar period are gone forever without heritage or even continuity [...etc, etc, blah, blah, blah...]
> I am referring specifically to the educated class - sons of the nobility, magnates, clergy, statesmen, diplomats, senators, scholars, the royal court, even country squires. The szlachta's Sarmatian culture saw itself as a spiritual successor to the Roman Republic, and it showed.
The szlachta's "culture" under leadership of a Russian tool led directly to three partitions which quickly ended their sophisticated "culture".
There are 12000 in Poland, it was insane when I visited. You'd look down any given street and you were see at least one, sometimes more. Check out the map! [1] They are excellent though, much better than Canadian convenience stores. I wonder if the franchise saturation will lead to a crash à la Subway.
Two main reasons: Foreign direct investment, averaging ~5% GDP/year, largely to build and fully integrate Polish industrial base in to Germany. Secondly: an education system designed to create an economy on advanced manufacturing.
The same has been happening in Slovakia; GDP growth per annum very comparable to Poland since 1995.
As a typical example my very German car has many components with "made in <Poland/Slovakia/Hungary>" on the side.
I am French but travelled extensively to Poalnd and lived there for some time. This is a truly wonderful country.
The one thing that is a insurmontable barrier to go and live there (I considered that) is the healthcare sstem. It is completely broken.
You have free healthcare where people behave like beggars in front of the demi-god MD. They do not pay him for hs work, officially, but there is money slipped under he table to make things work. It is unbereable.
Then you have provate health care whichis not not bad, until you have a serious problem and you are back to the public system.
Finally the medicines/drugs are not refunded. You have to pay for them. This is wild for someone coming from France.
I think that if Poland upgraded that part of its politics it would be a country bringing in lots and lots of people useful for the country.
Having studied in the Netherlands it was somewhat difficult finding a job (10 years ago), and my first job was in Poland at a large Pharma company. I started working there for a wage lower than Dutch minimum wage when I started, just to get an in into the industry.
There is a while set of jobs in Pharma that got moved to Warsaw and no longer available in NL/DE.
There's a large set of jobs in everything that expanded operations in Poland, for salary reasons, e.g. automotive (Stellantis, Volkswagen, MAN) electronics (Electrolux, Whirlpool), food (Ferrero)...
But Poland did well capturing them and then growing new businesses locally, so now there's local brands and such that are expanding abroad on their own.
He means no brown and/or muslim migrants. The EU border would infamously let in even exchange students when the war heated up in 2022, except for those they did not want for clearly racist reasons.
Strange, that if you are from Norway or Switzerland, you cannot be a migrant anywhere, instead you are always a welcome citizen born afar who did not know it yet.
Racisms and other -isms seem to be a problem, let's hope it gets better, not worse, in Poland and on earth.
Norway and Switzerland are both Schengen area countries though and have been for decades, which is why there would be much less friction in getting in as a migrant, or no friction at all as a traveler.
But it feels (and smell) like a third world culture if you look at the air pollution level during 6 to 8 month a year (https://maps.sensor.community/#7/52.210/18.223): nearly everywhere people burn coal (among other biomass) the air is incredibly polluted.
One of the most underrated countries in Europe to visit if you’re a fan of history, architecture or food. I am so blessed to Be able to go every year and am hoping for continued prosperity for both Poland and the region.
Poland is an underrated European destination (and I assume most Eastern European former USSR-aligned countries are too). If you haven't been you should definitely visit.
I've been to both Paris and Warsaw recently and tbh I prefer Warsaw over Paris.
Warsaw is clean (little graffiti, little trash on streets), safe, no homeless, etc and is a relatively high-trust society (another comment in this thread also mentioned that). Police actually enforce laws. The worst I saw was a drunk man on the street (although not violent or anything), and within minutes 4 police officers came to him. Few tourists. Everyone knows English.
Paris: I won't go into the negatives here (like the Africans/gypsies trying to scam you, sell you useless stuff, etc), it was nice overall, a little dirty, but I actually liked Warsaw better.
Article totally missed the big immigration wave from Belarus in 2020-2021, after a heavy authoritarian crackdown there.
Contrary to immigration wave from Ukraine (war refugees), immigrants from Belarus were mostly political refugees. They we mostly composed of politically and economically active people (as non-active people had no reason to emigrate). So even with less total number, immigrants from Belarus have higher contribution to Polish GDP per immigrant capita.
I live here and I know why. It is also not solely connected to any EU funds. Not at all. We have a large tech sector here. IT, software engineering, embedded, agentic AI, genAI, backend, platforms, and consulting firms and startups. We have hyper growth that is actively sponsored with economic development teams from govt in each region. Mfg also. Cheaper labor and growth in many sectors and industries.
I am simply so happy for them. I used to have insomnia and in a music filesharing hub mostly Euros are awake around midnight Singapore time, so had so many online Euro friends mostly from Poland, Finland, Sweden, and especially Romania. It is from my Polish friends that I learned of so many great artists and authors, Beksinski and the nobel laureate Wislawa among many others. I memorized the Polish anthem once but I just know the first line now, Marsz, Marsz, Dabrowski! Polish diaspora especially Polish Americans are just too cool too, Mark Z Danielewski is a favorite.
Worked with many Polish developers for the last 8 years. Great group, very talented. However, the initial motivations to go there were to keep costs low. Eventually they saw their salaries increase 3x or 4x over the years. They totally deserved it, but the economics change if you're running a startup. Now with AI, not clear if the tech outsourcing dynamic will remain.
Anecdotal, but the company I work for offers to the juniors only +15% to what it used to offer 15 years ago. The salaries are growing mostly because previous government introduced huge increases to minimal salaries, but I don't feel the wages in IT grew significantly over the years. Which actually make sense - we used to have huge disproportion between regular worker salaries and IT ones, now the difference is getting smaller.
Why would they want to bear the burden of an "hostile environment" (as the UK Home Office named their policy towards foreigners) AND declining economic prospects due to an economic suicide they had no say in?
Poland has been booming for a long time even before Brexit. I think it was a latent force just waiting to be set free by Perestroika and free market forces.
I'd travelled to Warsaw a few times maybe 20 or so years ago, and you could feel the vibrancy and energy in the air.
Before and after Covid. It made a lot of people (in general - not thinking about Poles in particular) think about where they wanted to live. it was a pretty bad time to be away from home, family, etc.
To be fair the gap has been tightening for quite a while and it’s likely that adjusted by living expenses it’s not that hard for those engineers to find higher paying jobs in Poland compared to the UK.
This is because big corporations supporting Brexit figured out it will be better for their bottom line if they could source labour from wider pool and have it tied to visa. Something EU workers would never be comfortable with. Hence you had the so called Boriswave - an influx of workers paid below market rates supporting big corporations able to navigate Home Office corrupt system. Conservative party never told the public what it was really about - bringing in very much slave workforce to exploit - at the expense of working class and SMEs.
By the looks of it, Conservative party will never recover from this betrayal and soon followed by Labour who decided to maintain the status quo.
I think the bigger factor is that Polish immigration has effectively ended. We're seeing more Poles returning from abroad than leaving. With the prosperity and stability of Poland, coupled by living in your home culture, immigration is simply not that attractive.
(Traditionally, much of Polish immigration was meant to be temporary. A good number of Poles stayed abroad and assimilated, because immigration tends to be "sticky".)
Tbf, SWE salaries are constant across much of Europe, so anyone who is working in CEE feels less of a pull to work in London as a line-level engineer for roughly the same salary as they'd get in Warsaw. Funnily enough, even Bangalore salaries [0] are catching up to Italy [1] and Romania [2].
As a founder, it's a different story though - London is hard to beat from an entrepreneurship and capital access standpoint aside from parts of the CEE with strong ties to to American VC due to diaspora ties.
Edit: can't reply
> dzonga
Completely agree. I've O-1'ed plenty of European and British founders. But London is better than the rest of Europe from a raising perspective, which shows how bad the situation is in the rest of the continent.
The taxation is not though. It may be better working from Warsaw or Prague due to tax rules. In Czechia it's a sort of fake, but tolerated consultancy and self employment and I have heard there is a similiar status in Poland.
Yea. In Poland everyone is a contractor even if they are not in reality. This year Poland had started to indicate they will crack down on it though so a lot of companies are now turning their contractors into employees instead.
Wow, that sucks. Here in Czechia the politicians talk about cracking it down all the time, but in reality it is now more common than ever with no signs of stopping. Only higher execs at banks or in other regulated industries needs to have a normal employment contract.
The biggest drivers for tech employment in the CEE aren't those consultancies but American and non-European FDI.
Edit: can't reply
> Having 10-20% tax rate really helps though to have comparable or better pay rate to western europe with about 50% tax rate
At the employer end, if we offer enough FDI Western European governments do try to match support and subsidies that we could get in CEE.
Additionally, when investing in USD and used to American prices, it's a rounding error.
The drive to the CEE was partially government driven, but is now entirely due to the domestic ecosystem - you aren't going to find talent with the right attitude (business minded and independent) in Western Europe anymore.
At the same time though, out of 6 developers, my team in London has two Brits (including me), two Eastern Europeans (Hungarian and Romanian), and two South Asians (Indian and Pakistani).
My last team had two Poles and two Scandinavians (Swedish and Norwegian).
It's been a _very_ long time since I've had a team that didn't have significant Eastern Europeans representation on it.
but London VCs are poor quality compared to what you find in the States.
having had my run around with London VCs - poor terms, slow moving (btw this is at seed stage) - it's better to bootstrap unless you're in deep tech (which London VCs can help out)
bootstrap and either deal with US VCs once you have numbers to back you up - if you wanna redo & do the VC route.
Sorry, but this is wrong. Cheaper labor is pretty much the only reason for nearshoring from more expensive European countries to places like Spain or Eastern Europe.
As I've mentioned before, I've had intimate experience hiring across Europe and at the 75th percentile and above, the salaries tend to be extremely close when comparing Western Europe and CEE. The difference becomes attitude.
A German SWE wants a 9-5. A Czech or Romanian SWE wants to build the next JetBrains or UIPath.
I don't want to hire the former - they're useless and a headache. I want to hire the latter.
Pretty sure salaries at large tech companies are way higher in places like London, Zurich or Amsterdam than in Warsaw or Prague for example. Berlin may be closer to the eastern countries.
It might help to discuss actual ranges instead of "intimate experience" so we can tell if your experience matches reality.
I think Zurich is in a slightly different league than London or Amsterdam in that regard but especially if you go down to the median and below (low taxes are helpful as well)
For the ~500 million people of the EU, moving to Frankfurt means taking a train there, moving to London is a whole headache of visas, permits and permissions.
Founder visas are generally suffering from a chicken-and-egg problem, where only a successful company can sponsor anyone
Sure, but the entire VC and funding ecosystem that London has is nonexistent in much of the rest of Europe.
It's easier to raise rounds with better terms in London versus mainland Europe, aside from CEE where diaspora VCs in the US tend to step in to build the ecosystem.
But even then the entire ecosystem pales in comparison to the US.
A significant percentage of the polish population participated in what is labled today economic migration.
They went Germany, Ireland, UK experienced an influx of migrants taking up all the low pay jobs.
But that was before the Russian bots took over the news on the internet and Russia-sponsored extreme right parties entered the parliaments. So the political effect from the migrants was roughly equivalent to their impact on pop
Filed from Poznań, which is where I'm typing from. The dateline alone made me smile.
I've been building software here for almost 20 years. Started a software house, grew it to ~50 people, sold it, now back to bootstrapping from scratch. The fact that this is a normal sentence to type from a Polish city is, honestly, kind of the whole story.
That "institutional framework" line in the article is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Having run companies through Polish bureaucracy — it's fine. It works. A generation ago that bar was on the floor. Boring is a feature.
Politics aside, the 35-year arc has been quietly extraordinary. European to the bone, with old roots and a real appetite for what's next.
In the early 2000's I've read about the "next wave", after BRICS, where Poland and Turkey were leading the pack. It was mainly due to the population tree. Both countries did relatively well, as expected. Turkey a bit worse, probably due to politics, changing geostrategic pivots, and strained relations with the big EU market.
How it happened?
(Source: I'm working with polish companies)
1. Hard working people
2. Biggest recipient of EU subsidies used for projects which generates more profit. Infrastructure, internet, etc.
To compare, Czechia used it for stupid things like bicycle lanes, child playgrounds etc.
3. Building permit is very easy to get for basically anything. Yes, this way you can sometimes get chaotic new buildings, but this can be solved later. In comparison, in Czechia, obtaining a building permit is difficult and depends on the whim of the official. Also we have basically non-existent property taxes, so new homes are unaffordable for everybody and only used as an investment.
4. Not allowing imigration from countries where people don't want to work and with hugely different religions and customs. This worked for Czechia too though, our biggest immigrants are Ukranians which are also slavs and very hard working. Official statistics is, that they paid in taxes more than they got from social support.
I'd argue that creating infrastructure that allows people to move and take care of children isn't a loss, it's an investment in functional towns and cities, which leads to better outcomes in general (including economic).
As a Czech, I am fine with the playgrounds, but the infrastructure like bicycle lanes was quite often built in illogical places where it is underutilized, but where it was easier to build it.
Sort-of like the guy who lost his keys in a bush, but is looking for them under a streetlamp b/c there is more light there.
I feel the need to correct the record. The only reason, there is this racist stereotype in some western countries that such and such ethnicities are not working, is because those countries make it exceedingly hard for those ethnicities to gain employment. For example requiring language fluency and forcing immigrants to attend language school full time instead of giving them a mop and a bucket and a minimum wage. In places where this banal legislation does not exist those same ethnicities are working fine in mixed ethnicity factory floors alongside Poles and Romanians.
And btw those same countries who make it super hard for, for example Syrians, to gain employment, then made a whole bunch of exceptions for Ukrainians. For example in Germany, Syrians without full command of German were told to attend language schools, but when the Ukrainians arrived they suddenly made exceptions and suddenly in our department we had Ukrainian cleaning crew who spoke neither German nor English.
Some cultures legitimately are less hard working though. Ironically most of these cultures are western, the biggest examples are southern European cultures.
As far as immigrants though, approximately 100% of them wish to be productive members of society, I agree. You dont go through the effort of emigrating without an entrepreneurial spirit.
Living only a good hour away from the Polish border I must say that this is really great for our region, too. When the income difference was higher, there was a lot of property crime (mostly cars, but also other things) originating from Poland. I went to a Polish village just at border once and you could feel the crime there. Young guys driving too expensive cars despite houses being run down, suspicious looks if you drive by with your German number plates. But that is over. If you go to Szczecin or Bydgoszcz you feel no wealth gap at all and I am happy that it turned out this way.
I wish I could go back in time and tell my 10 year old self to knock it off with the polish jokes (which were all the rage at that time, although I can remember only one now).
Intresting systemic bias around the country despite large improvements. I would be curious if those views would be a signal for investment in some of poland's tech startups. I believe their economy is still growing and companies will flourish even more.
Investment, infrastructure, education. Same as China. Same as every other growing country.
What the US and most other western countries do are: Let infrastructure rot, defund education, reroute money to large corporations. This is how you end up with failed state.
The US spends over $1T per year on education, more than almost any other country on a per capita basis by a large margin. What is the rationale for characterizing this as "defunding"?
I would say that outsourcing and moving manufacturing to other countries is what has killed the US economy - now in a death spiral with interest payments on the debt starting to dominate government spending.
I can definitely speak for all German speaking countries (Germany, Austria, but also Switzerland). Absolutely the UK as well. But really, Austerity was a trend that was followed by pretty much all EU countries since 2008 and the trend has not been reversed. And the Chinese have been buying european key industrial companies left and right going back as far as 2010.
Instituations haven't been renewed, education hasn't been brought up to reflect the latest reality of life and digitalization of state workflows? Hah, no.
But if a fraudulent bank requires saving? Sure, 500 billions or more can be paid upfront. Multiple times if necessary.
This is generally true about how much damage austerity has done, but it's important to note that most of the bank bailout money was loans which have been mostly repaid.
(Yes, exceptions for Iceland, Ireland, Cyprus, and a few others)
Wow, since you're so well travelled you can also share examples of the US doing it, with the comparison to these other amazing utopian western countries.
As I hinted at in another comment, more money for education doesn't help if the culture doesn't value it. And largely, US culture does not value a good education.[2] Or more precisely, not possessing what many other countries consider "basic skills" is quite acceptable here.
Case in point: I've spent time in a poor country with terrible education. Over there, if you were slow doing arithmetic on paper (multiplication, division, etc), everyone considered you to be an idiot. Because of that, even mediocre students who merely graduated high school and didn't go to college have those skills.
Over here, you have Verizon Math.[1] After that crazy episode, I've seen this problem. And it's not just that interchanging dollars and cents is a custom, a lot of people genuinely don't understand the issue. I've been to yard sales where things are advertised as 0.25 cents, and asked them about it. I was expecting a response like "Yeah, yeah, it's sloppy but everyone knows what it means." Instead I got genuine confusion.
Verizon Math isn't an isolated quirk. If you come from any of these countries to the US, much of the US population will appear to be idiots to you (rightly or wrongly).
In one of my jobs, we had a bunch of Russian and other East European coworkers. They were appalled by all of this and started working on after-school tutoring activities for their kids. Because they came from a culture that viewed a lack of certain skills as "being idiots", they were really concerned that their kids would grow up to become idiots like the rest of the Americans.
My point isn't that one should know basic arithmetic. There are plenty of legitimate arguments to say it's OK not to.
What my point is that there is no baseline knowledge level in the US where being below it is socially problematic. Because of that, there is no peer pressure to retain the knowledge they learn in school. It's OK not to know how many days are in a year.
I used to tutor 3-5th grade students, and after I realized this, I gave up. The kids didn't need help understanding the material. They already did. They just didn't see a need to retain it. If their friends don't value the knowledge, and their parents don't value the knowledge, there's little I can do to help them.
Education hasn't been defunded. I don't know why so many people keep posting that misinformation when the opposite is true.
Inflation-adjusted funding per student rose from $14,969 to $20,322 over the past two decades.
K-12 funding rose $1,610 per student in real terms between 2020 and 2023 alone.
"Schools in the United States spend an average of $20,387 per pupil, which is the 3rd highest amount per pupil (after adjusting to local currency values) among the 40 other developed nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)."
Poland made the brilliant decision to protect its heritage and not allow unchecked immigration and illegal immigration. It is a very high trust society with far lower crime rates, especially violent crimes than other places like the UK and France that went the other way.
To add to the argument about European funding, Polish people are also very hard-working and probably have the mentality closest among European countries to what the USA had in the twentieth century with the pursuit of the American Dream. The only difference is motivation. Polish people suffered a lot in the past, so they do not want to experience poverty again; thus, their drive is powered by insecurity compared to an optimistic confidence that hard work would lead to prosperity in the future (this is also seen in the Polish sense of humour, which is much darker). I suppose it is mostly because of the post-communist Balcerowicz Plan transformation and the first generations travelling to the West for work, which further solidified the belief in upward mobility from the lower class to the middle class to the upper class through hard work.
Vacuuming working age population from Ukraine since 2014. Poland did everything right, while Ukrainian governments and businesses were smirking "What are you going to do?" during salary discussions.
Over the past 4 years, millions of Ukrainians have fled there because of the war — many of whom had businesses and money in Ukraine and are integrating seamlessly into the Polish economy. Almost the entire Ukrainian IT sector that used to operate on an outsourcing basis is now there. Before the war, Ukrainians were mainly a source of cheap labor there, while Poles were doing the same work in other European countries.
And since Ukraine is a bargaining chip in the current war, it is in the interest of all its neighbors for Poland to become strong, so that the Russians don’t cross the border.
"What are you going to do" was a phrase you could hear in Poland as well in 90ties and early 2000th. What differentiated PL w/ UA in my opinion is 2 things:
1. Lack of oligarchy - which in fact was not obvious outcome and little bit of luck on our part and little bit of cultural zeitgeist of 90ties and 00ths.
2. No east-west dithering - PL knew right away to which economic and cultural sphere wanted to belong
Not much I think. I had long discussions about it with my Ukrainian friends: we came to the conclusion that it was mostly the fact that Ukraine was part of the USSR (much harder crackdowns on opposition, actually including the church) - and that also built stronger ties with Russia. A lot of people forget that USSR really was a multicultural empire: you had families where in the 90s siblings abruptly woke up in different countries: Russia, Belarus, Ukraine.
Post-2022 some of those families stopped talking to each other, the propaganda is stronger than the family ties. Before the situation got clarified by falling bombs, the east/west choice was much harder.
> Post-2022 some of those families stopped talking to each other, the propaganda is stronger than the family ties.
I don't think it's a matter of propaganda. We're talking about totalitarian dictatorships on both sides of the barricades, where such communication with relatives on the other side have very real risks of decades in prison or even death.
Lack of oligarchy is starting to look like an absolutely critical ingredient, and it's lucky that Poland escaped from the PiS trying to turn it into an oligarchy.
This paragraph is really odd:
“As oppressive as it was, communism contributed by breaking down old social barriers and opening higher education to factory and farmworkers who had no chance before. A post-Communist boom in higher education means half of young people now have degrees.”
It feels like despite overwhelming evidence presented in the own article that communism was bad, they felt they had to say something vaguely nice about communism. But they can’t even keep it going for more than a sentence, because the next sentence says actually education was better after communism.
These days it’s forbidden to deny the horrors of nazism but quite fashionable to glorify the murders and confiscations of communism and to even justify Marxist murderers like Mangione.
And yet, their air pollution level during winter months is so bad that local government issues public alerts to encourage people to stay indoors. Every winter there are days when air is in top 10 most polluted areas around the globe.
My Polish coworkers say that's due to the senior citizens stuck in a Soviet occupation mindset, and they're doing things like burning plastic trash to heat their homes.
I really enjoyed Warsaw in December, the air seemed fine to me.
Some people are burning trash at home, but the air pollution is mostly due to use of local coal for individual heating. Funny enough, their coal is called Eko-groszek. Eco!
True. But this problem is fixable individually with a smog mask outdoors and air purifier indooes. Systemic issues in other countries are rarely so easy to work around.
And yet it's still not all roses in the actual everyday life given that we have higher prices than Germany (food, phones, computers) while earning 3x less. But it surely beats how we had it the 90s.
What's led to the higher prices than Germany? Usually substantially lower earnings would mean lower prices, even if not substantially lower (look at the UK, higher prices than much (all?) of Europe, average earnings slightly less).
I'm a red, white, and blue American, born and raised in the USA. My family is all from Poland, and made America a home. The other day, someone asked my ethnicity, I said American Polish. Each of us are from somewhere, that where my family happens to be from. Nice Polska.
Poland is basically Germany without the historical baggage and with less cultural cruft (to avoid trigger words). Having said that there is one Olympic discipline that they perfected even beyond German standards (which are quite high in that department already) and that is: whining.
Also, the Poles who I talked to have the feeling like money is going into the right projects and corruption is relatively low. This is quite different if you talk to people from Bulgaria, for example.
Even if for many years the net value of EU subsidies is close to 0, many people claim that money is still better spent, because of checks and balances forced by the EU system.
EvroSoyuz is just a better offer, comrade. Don't hate the player, hate the game.
PS. Ever since the full scale war started I finally learned Cyrillic, and I must say - there is something nice about this alphabet (if you speak a Slavic language, of course). Sadly we don't have an official Cyrillic version of Polish, though, my compatriots would have their brains explode if someone promoted one.
A family member told me they knew of someone who once visited Poland from Yugoslavia and found, in their opinion, that Polish was a Slavic language perfectly suited to the Latin script.
But yes, transliterated Russian doesn’t look quite right- rather cumbersome- and I assume the same would hold true for a Polish Cyrillic.
As an American that’s lived in Poland for the last decade:
- it was kind of inevitable once Poland stopped being oppressed by its neighbors. The USSR, Nazi Germany, the German Empire / Prussia, Austria, Imperial Russia, etc. have basically been dividing the country since the 1780s. Without these restrictions, Poland is a natural leader in its region purely on population alone.
- A general lack of ideological “mind viruses” that seem to plague the western world. Most Poles are pretty straightforward, common sense people. They might have opinions you don’t agree with but it’s not a country of extremists in any direction.
- the general openness to American culture and (over)work ethics. I think Poland probably looks more to America than it does any EU country, although this of course isn’t simple, especially lately. But in general it’s a pretty hardworking, business-open culture. My impression is that it’s much easier to operate a business here than say, Germany, Italy, or France.
- Something I need to read more about, but IIRC Poland dealt with its oligarch problems in a different way than Russia or Ukraine did post-USSR and so doesn’t really have this issue.
Polish-born person living abroad here.
There definitely ARE "mind viruses" in the polish psyche, and pretty nasty ones at that. You might not have noticed them because they are from a different nature than the ones that infected Wester Europe and North American.
For example, Poles by and large harbor an inferiority complex due to the decades of oppression and suppresson that makes them sell themselves short and act as people-pleasers to western nations and western firms (that's precisely what makes us so liked by those firms! and that's also your "looking to America" here). Poles as a nation are driven by romantism, not pragmatism, and that is the reason why we always get screwed on the world stage one way or another and have the reputation of being "dumb".
I am as happy as the next guy to see economic development, but our mental maps let us down regularly, and I am not particularly optimistic for a change on that front.
> A general lack of ideological “mind viruses” that seem to plague the western world. Most Poles are pretty straightforward, common sense people. They might have opinions you don’t agree with but it’s not a country of extremists in any direction.
I want to stray from the politics too much, but we definitely self-sabotage in canada. It's kind of an immature teenage angst to self-loathe to the point of punishing yourself all the time.
Yup, a lot of older folk with ruined health here because they overworked to "build a wealth" that eventually didn't materialize, but who at same time are criticizing younger gens of not wanting to follow in their steps.
> A general lack of ideological “mind viruses” that seem to plague the western world
Uhh, the Law and Justice party was packing the Polish Constitutional Court, filling the government with party loyalists, and placing restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly only a few years ago. I suppose veering close to a constitutional crisis isn’t ideological per se, but that framing doesn’t seem quite right
This didn’t start with PiS. PO, just before losing power, tried to elect five Tribunal judges at once, including two seats that weren’t theirs yet. The Tribunal later said: three OK, two not OK.
PiS then did the PiS thing: ignored the three valid ones too, and installed its own people. So yes, PiS behaved badly. But "PiS packed the court" skips the opening move.
American-ish version: lame-duck Senate tries to pre-fill future SCOTUS seats. Incoming side responds by throwing the furniture around.
> filling the government with party loyalists
For normal political jobs, what’s the issue? That’s politics. Republicans appoint Republicans. Democrats appoint Democrats.
> placing restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly
> For normal political jobs, what’s the issue? That’s politics. Republicans appoint Republicans. Democrats appoint Democrats.
You're presumably coming from a US point of view (the US has an unusual system where the entire top level of the civil service, pretty much, are always political appointees), but in Europe this often _would_ be seen as a sign of corruption (and honestly it should be in the US too; it has gotten way worse there since Trump I; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendleton_Civil_Service_Reform...).
I mean more in the sense of the people themselves. PiS did some shady things for sure, but ultimately most of their supporters are just old conservative people. I would describe that as a fundamentally different thing from the cause-of-the-day ideology and its backlash movement that sweeps through Western countries every decade.
I wouldn’t describe PiS and its supporters as a dynamic cultural movement in the way MAGA is.
"it was kind of inevitable once Poland stopped being oppressed by its neighbors"
No. Not at all inevitable. Poland might have descended into kleptocracy, e.g. Hungary. That this did not happen is worthy of investigation. I'm not holding my breath however; the findings would probably not be welcome.
"A general lack of ideological 'mind viruses' that seem to plague the western world"
Indeed. Poland frequently disappoints the rest of the EU with its stubborn indifference to obligatory Western moral panics.
Try 3city (Gańsk-Sopot-Gdynia up north on Baltic). Definitely better air quality then in other places in Poland. Do not know how it compares to other European cities though.
I'm Polish and I left because of the air quality. But, 15 years passed, and it got much better (obs. through holiday visits). People no longer heat with trash and coal isn't less of an option. Also, it isn't as cold in the winter so there is less need for heavy heating. Really thinking of coming back, to family.
It's getting better year by year but I suspect it'll take another decade before we'll have acceptable air quality during the heating season. During earmer seasons it's fine tho.
It certainly helps to be neighbor with an economically strong but demographically weak and overly beaurocratic country that hungers for eager, competent workers.
Who said that? It certainly helps. Poland has close trade and manufacturing ties to Germany and has rightfully developed from a "cheap" image to "quality that's still affordable" image.
Opinions will vary. Most people on that plane (not all) represented the equivalent of UK Reform party - isolationist, backward-looking, populist. That party, ironically called PiS (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, Law and Justice) brought in a lot of reckless spending and anti-growth measures. Still, GDP rocketed on under their government just as much as under the other ones. As did inflation.
In Poland, we have a president and a parliament, with parliament holding most of the power. It was the president who died in the crash, and he was most likely going to lose the upcoming re-election later that year. In short, I don’t think it changed much.
They've done well for themselves for sure . 20 years ago, Poland was sending seasonal workers to the UK to pick tomatoes.
Brexit largely won because of anti Eastern Europe immigration
It’s hard to believe those type of people actually wanted to replace it with non European immigration, though (which is what happened). Of course cause and effect is a complex concept to wrap ones head around..
Poles return to Poland and get to see results of their hard work. Brexit people get exposed to more cultures. I guess everyone got what they needed and deserved.
It warms my heart that my country contributed to ejecting Britain, and right before it turned completely to shit.
Not for any particular dislike, I wish that the actual brits actually take back the power from the scum government and fix it, just a sight of relief that their mess could be whole EU mess if Brexit didn't happen
Positive actions cited in the article: "independent courts, an anti-monopoly agency to ensure fair competition, and strong regulation to keep troubled banks from choking off credit"
While many in US say "liberal economics" means not interfering with businesses with regulations or anti-trust.
I suppose people have different definitions of "classical liberal", "neo-liberal", etc.
It turns out it's not that hard to grow an economy once countries all around you stop trying to kill your culture, exterminate your population and steal your lands.
Surely there are more than 20 countries that have been in a position where their neighbors aren’t all trying to exterminate them for at least as long as Poland.
When you lose 20% of your population and then spend 50 years under communist rule because your allies sold you out, there’s really only one direction left to go—up.
A lot of people either forget, or never learned, that Poland was once one of the largest and most influential states in Europe.Yes it was long time ago, but the potential was always there. The real challenge was surviving the consequences of being caught between neighbors whose ideologies gave rise to two of the deadliest systems of the 20th century.
Sure, but the explanation is still Poland’s potential and its capacity to fulfil it. You could be free all you want and still plateau on some immediate post-war rebound gains.
Which in some ways is what happened here in Slovenia. We used to be doing much better than other communist countries (as a part of Yugoslavia), exited relatively peacefully, entered the EU, and everything seemed to be going great until the 2008 financial crisis.
Then it seems our politicians stopped being pragmatic and started bringing up ideological issues more often, which divided the population, while IMO not doing nearly enough to promote further development of the economy.
So now we have a population split on ideological issues, while Poland and Croatia are overtaking us economy-wise. We have had every advantage (geographically at the crossroads of multiple trade routes, sea access, EU funds, hard-working population, didn't turn into a Russia-style oligarchy...) but mostly slept on it.
Well there are plenty of countries that aren't facing those conditions now, or in the recent past and still have shitty economies. It undersells how hard it is to build a strong economy and therefore undersells how hard Poland has worked.
Hundreds of billions in subsidies and Polish workers displacing West European workers inside and outside of their country have nothing to do with the success of course.
The EU is based on greedy West European corporations maximizing shareholder value at the expense of their own populations.
The EU is too big and should be reduced to the Western core countries. I wonder how Poland would fare then.
I don’t understand why people constantly mention EU subsidies and not mention the billions of wealth destroyed or taken during the world wars, partitions, or the deluge.
That is not true. Poland run substantial trade deficits (as opposed to China) up to very recently giving sizable marked for products manufactured by western Europeans and thus __helping__ and not hindering West European workers. And this trade deficit was enabled by mainly external investments (and little but by subsidies). Also since PL was converging this investments were more profitable then in the west.
Also I am of not very popular anymore opinions that not distorted trade help both sides of the trade and immigrants really help economy of country that they immigrate into. Including workers.
Most of the subsidies go back to the western Europe in the form of cheap products, and cheap labor. Also these subsidies were used to buy technology, machinery and goods from the West. Let's have Germany pay few trillions in reparations, and we can give back the billions in subsidies. Deal?
Sure, Germany pays reparations, Poland gives back Pomerania and Silesia (which were part of the reparations) and Western Europe forms a new EU so we don't have to deal with Poles any longer. Deal?
Germany lost the war. That's just small price they should be paying for exterminating millions of people and destroying many countries. And these lands were Polish, and Czech way before there were Germans. That's why Prussia had a systematic depolonization going on in the 1800s on these lands. They wanted remove the inhabitants of these lands for a long time..
Not at all surprising. If you look at the history of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth it was very similar to the dynamism of the Holy Roman Empire in what we now think of as the German speaking lands. Except you combine that with some even more modern ideas including minimal centralization of power and you realize there was a real renaissance era there. Kosciusko contributing greatly to the American Revolution is a wonderful example of this.
Of course being sandwiched between two extremely powerful regional hegemons did not serve Poland well. It's wonderful that it is now able to pick up the pieces. The poles no more than anyone the terrible realities that we must continue to be willing to fight for
> “I get asked often if I’m missing something by coming back to Poland, and, to be honest, I feel it’s the other way around,” Kowalska said. “We are ahead of the United States in so many areas.”
Poland is the best example of using the best capabilities of access to EU funds and the large EU economy. Its sucess case should be rubbed up the noses of the arrogant UK establishment and its Eton driven Brexit disaster.
Worst healthcare among developed countries, which every ranking of healthcare systems confirms. Average people receive 19th century level of coverage and care for 21st century price. The only people on employment contract are public sector and some of the outsourcing and nearshoring, industries which are moving out of the country. Milllennials are 40 years old now and every reform which had been made, made sure they didn't have enough income neither housing to have children. Polish miracle is over, deservedly.
I'm pretty sure I got prescribed an antibiotic at least once :)
Also, my father has been through 5 cancer "journeys", all successfully treated via public healthcare, last few caught "too early to operate" due to early detection PET scan programs.
I don't know much about 19th century medicine, but it seems off.
Polish people are some of the most pragmatic, straight-forward, hardworking and intelligent people on the planet in my opinion.
They have all the fundamental human-capital strengths of economies like Germany. It's really no surprise they're doing so well.
Sensible smart people working hard will get a lot done over time.
For what it's worth Poland is the only place I've ever visited where felt I could easily see myself living there. It doesn't surprise me that a lot of Poles are moving back.
> Kowalska works at the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center, which is developing the first artificial intelligence factory in Poland and integrating it with a quantum computer, one of 10 on the continent financed by a European Union program.
I don't think quantum computing currently is able to help in the AI industry, I don't think this is having any impact.
WIG20 is essentially 5 banks, 3 energy providers, clothing, small shops + Allegro + CD Projekt Red. I don't think any of this has major world impact.
> ... While most enterprises were nationalized, authorities gave permission to small-scale private workshops like his to operate
Fun story: the city of Nowy Sącz (80,000 habitants) has a very high percentage of millionaires compared to other cities. One of the reasons was that as the city is in a mountainous region hence not well communicated, the communist authorities were less strict there and allowed for private businesses to grow. As the communism ended, the region basically had a head-start compared to the rest of the country.
updating my anecdotal views on Poland has been one of my biggest changes over the last few years
I think they're doing everything right and for their people
Have yet to visit. but even by just 2018 or 2019 I only would have jokes and a confused face if someone was telling me they had chosen a job or life in Warsaw as opposed to a bustling city in a Western European country. Now, I think I get it. Modern and cosmopolitan veneer, safety, opportunity, educated population, nationalist pride that isn't delusional, a sensical immigration policy being enforced before enforcing it becomes a human rights problem. I like it.
In fact, Poland gets the most money. So, before we can evaluate the net
worth, this number would have to be deducted, which would instantly make
Poland drop more than 5 ranks in that chart if you look at it. Just
compare the numbers for yourself, the calculation is trivial to do.
(You have to compare the same year of course; my calculation above is
for the year 2024. Poland is now ranked higher than in 2024, but the
net subsidies still are given in. Those "Poland is now rich" never
take that into account.)
My mother (early 50s) still remembers clay houses that had two rooms, one for the people, one for the cows and the chickens.
She never lived in one, but her grandmother did and she would visit for summer.
She would help her parents stand in line in the evening, waiting for a shipment of pasta or coffee to arrive in their local grocery store in the morning.
My father (similar age) didn't have an in-house bathroom until he got married.
Both of them had black-and-white TVs, where they'd see wonders like microwaves, answering machines or game consoles. Those were things that rich Americans had in movies, not things normal people had in their homes.
If you were well--off enough to go on vacation, you'd probably go to a seaside town, or maybe a village in the mountains. Certainly not abroad. A passport was an extravagance, not easy to get from the communist government.
People who lived in big cities, as opposed to much smaller villages, which were and still are a big thing in Poland, were a bit better off, but not by much.
In the 90s, My parents' village got wired up for telephone. Around that same time, Vietnamese NES clones (here called Pegasus) started popping up on the market. They may have been 15 years behind what the Americans had, but they were available at a price that almost any family could afford.
Shortly after I was born, they got a computer. At that time, computers were still expensive, not something every single family had, but definitely not something unusual for a working / middle class family to purchase. Satellite digital TV soon followed, and then came ADSL internet; because of no flat-rate calls, dial-up never really took off here.
As kids and young teenagers, we looked on iPods and iPhones with envy, those were for the rich, but knock-off mp3 players and cheap Nokia phones were things that many kids had.
Our train company, PKP, was famous for delayed trains and poor service. We used to expand the abbreviation as "Just wait, it'll arrive eventually."
None of this is true any more. Go to any Polish city now, and it's no different from any other European country, maybe except for being a good bit safer. You will see people with iPhones; we're still majority Android, but now that's mostly choice and habit rather than financial necessity. You will see people order food on Uber Eats using their gigabit fiber internet, and then Uber back from a night out. They may not even need to do that; both men and women feel pretty safe on the streets here, even at night. You will see kids playing their favorite games, on their PS5. You will see college students, working on weekends and after classes to make some money, take their boyfriends and girlfriends on trips to Greece, Italy or Spain. By airplane, of course.
That train company? In theory, the reputation is still there, but in practice, the statistics say what they say, we've far surpassed Deutsche Bahn in terms of punctuality.
In the United States, Red/Right leaning States typically receive more federal funding than Blue States. Red States get 'propped up'.
I bet a lot of people here criticizing that EU funding went to Poland are typically Right Leaning, and think they are making a some killer point about socialism, when back home they are also taking in the hand out money.
This is a poorly supported take, once you factor in the productive parts of the economy.
If you have a lot of farmland in a red state and the profits are reported in a blue state, then counting the reported profits on the corporate balance sheet will give a distorted picture of what is happening.
Look at e.g. General Mills, based in a blue state, but a great deal of what they buy are ag inputs from red states.
> Look at e.g. General Mills, based in a blue state, but a great deal of what they buy are ag inputs from red states.
Are the businesses from who they buy ag inputs in the red states not compensated at market rates for the raw materials they provide?
Do the red states also not receive massive taxpayer funded farm subsidies for the corn and wheat they grow from the federal government?
Minnesota's GDP is higher because it has a larger population and a more diverse and greater value-added economy than it's its ag focused neighbors.
It's GDP per capita is actually lower than its very sparsely populated neighbor, North Dakota, but the economic power of a jurisdiction ultimately comes from its population*productivity.
Wouldn't the red states be profiting off of blue states in your example? Why would General Mill's purchase of red states' outputs not show up as profits in the red states? This makes no sense.
This is a clear display that we need free trade, sensible economic polices and a common ground of what humans need to thrive. "Sovereignty" is overrated.
For example, for the US to have a chance in the EU, it would first need to fix its YOLO fiscal policy of sustained 5.5% debt/gdp deficits.
We shall see in a few years as US's debt balloons and the average American becomes pseudo-slaves from a few overlords... to see if the EU is really bad as some Americans believe it to be.
french and german working class tax. and obviously great leadership to use EU and that money well to win. unlike france for instance that got outplayed by germany that itself got outplayed by their dear ally the USA and are now going into energy obsolescence.
German working class is actually benefiting from this as Poland it one of their biggest importers now. And they are still benefiting from slave labor, stolen precious metals, and art they got during the WW2. Not to mention the Marshall Plan. They really can't be complaining.
> German working class is actually benefiting from this as Poland it one of their biggest importers now.
Yes they do.
> And they are still benefiting from slave labor
Not sure whether that really matters now-a-days for the economy.
> stolen precious metals
One of the cores of industrial and mine centers that made the German Empire thrive during the Belle Epoque, are now owned by Poland.
> Not to mention the Marshall Plan.
Half of Germany, didn't got to get it but where instead paying reparations for whole Germany. Sorry, I'm a bit tired of acting like Germany only got the history of being on the west side of the iron curtain. It got both treatments.
> Sorry, I'm a bit tired of acting like Germany only got the history of being on the west side of the iron curtain. It got both treatments.
Well glass that has half of water is still better that glass fully empty. Poland didn't get any war reparations and after being more destroyed during the war than germany (warsaw burned to the ground) and pretty much occupied for many decades after the war then how polish companies supposed to compete with any western economy including germany?
German working class is displaced or has their salaries driven down by either Poles or Romanians working in Germany while their families live cheaply at home or by corporations moving factories to Poland and Romania.
You have no clue what you are talking about. I wonder why this sort of obnoxious reasoning always comes from Poles and never from Czech people for example.
I believe this is called competition, encouraged since the EU markets are open and freedom of migration is guaranteed. If it wasn't for those guys, you'll have migrant workers from Ukraine, or India or some other place. However, I suspect that before the Poles and Romanians came to DE, you already had quite a bit of migration from Spain, Italy and Turkey, isn't that right?
So, countries inside a large, free-trading, economic zone, with a diversity of economic standards, tend to do well from central investment and all the many benefits that accrue from said economic zone.
Shocking.
Well done, UK. You really shat the bed and, by the look of it, still are. Diarrhea, possibly.
It's the South Korea model and road, people are working hard to chase constantly and quickly moving goal of securing extremely expensive home, basic setup for having the family. But process itself is exhausting and depleting.
It's not prosperity, but consumerism. Consumerism causes demographic decline, because it unhinges people's priorities. Their conception of the purpose of life becomes more materialistic, and children compete with that kind of materialistic, self-indulgent consumption.
In that sense, the Poles have been seduced by consumerism.
First time I hear this explanation of why demographics is in decline in Europe and it kind of makes sense, every so often having this discussion about having children people bring up that they wont be able to enjoy things anymore, like travel, which in itself is a form of consumerism - buying the "experience"
This is very simplistic and I would say there is more reason than only consumerism. People still might have kids they just have it less - they are happy to have only one kid because they fill fulfilled and also they cannot afford 2 or 3.
Standard and expectation also increased and even thought I grew up with 2 siblings in 2 bedroom apartment in Poland today nobody would want that - or good luck finding a partner that want that. You would expect to have house or at least 3-4 bedroom apartment to raise 3 kids.
Today also probably you need 2 cars instead of 1 family car because your partner also have to work. You probably also need extra money for babysitter or kinder garden because again your partner is working and probably less likely your parents nearby to help since most young people had to move to big cities to get a job.
Indeed. People also like status. If consumerism ties status to consumption, then children constrain that consumption and thus constrain status.
It also used to be that having a large family was a source of honor. Today, it makes people uncomfortable. They may even take a condescending view of those with many children. People have formed a strange association between having many children and poverty.
What you find is that the highest fertility in the developed consumerist world tends toward the poor and the rich. It's the middle class that has the fewest children. This makes sense through the lens of consumerism: the consumption of the rich is not constrained by having more children, while the poor can't consume all that much anyway, so having more children doesn't really change their buying power meaningfully where conspicuous consumption is concerned. It is the middle class (especially the upper middle class) that is anxiously keeping up with the Joneses and engaged in aggressive and petty consumerist competition. They have just enough to consume conspicuously, but not enough that they don't need to prioritize their spending. Consumerism simply prioritizes conspicuous consumption to the detriment of fecundity.
It's crazy to think that a 21st century genocide could be as simple as extending massive amounts of credit to your victims for a long enough time to obliterate their social order.
The story is longer: Poland was the first country to make a remarkable peaceful transition from a bankrupt, failed Soviet satellite state. The shock therapy, plus NATO and EU aspirations, paved the way.
It is a story of a country that made a lot of the right decisions along the way. Managed to keep consistent high growth, not a pony trick or boom/bust mode.
Poland should be a role model for many other countries.
Recommend a book: https://www.amazon.com/Europes-Growth-Champion-Insights-Econ...
And Noah's blog post: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-polandmalaysia-model
>> Poland was the first country to make a remarkable peaceful transition from a bankrupt, failed Soviet satellite state.
In what sense? Czechia is richer per capita. Almost all of the former Soviet satellite states in eastern Europe have had largely peaceful (since 1991) sustained economic growth. The exceptions are exactly those countries which continue to have Russian troops occupying portions, namely Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova.
Poland's first partly free election was on 4 June 1989, preceded by the roundtable negotiations.
The protests in Czechoslovakia came later, called the Velvet Revolution, from 17 to 28 November 1989. In June 1990, Czechoslovakia held its first democratic elections, a year after Poland.
Poland paved the way for the whole of central and eastern Europe. The Round Table produced the negotiated-exit template that Hungary built on in its own talks that summer, and that Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and the Baltics drew on as their regimes fell within months.
And it did so from the deepest macroeconomic crisis of any of the satellite states: hyperinflation running into the hundreds of percent by late 1989, an unresolved sovereign default from 1981, and chronic shortages.
Since then Poland has converged fastest of any of them. From a low base it has climbed to the upper-middle of central and eastern Europe by GDP per capita PPP, overtaken Hungary, and is now closing on Czechia and Slovenia.
I'm curious what this means in real terms from the perspective of a Pole.
GDP/capita is often a relatively useless metric in modern times. For instance Ireland has one of the highest GDP/capitas in the world -- around 50% higher than the US. But that's because of economic games with their working as a tax haven to enable corporations to avoid paying taxes to their home countries. It doesn't translate to anything for the average Irishman.
As a Polish millenial the perspective is a rollercoaster. In one way the transformation of absolutely everything over and over and over is mind blowing in a positive way. OTOH we're also all paranoid running on what feels like a never ending hamster wheel of inflation, raises and mortgages. And then Gen-Z's feel straight get up locked out of everything.
We visit western European countries and it's like WTF it's cheaper here?
The multi-generational spread is wild - my boss remembers being raised in 80's scarcity culture verging on 2-3rd world hunger. But our entry level employees are running around demanding everyone to be up to date with everything they see and hear in these little glowing rectangles. It's like two separate progressions have been superimposed on top of each other.
Just as a quick note, the “second world” would have been the Eastern Bloc countries, so by definition, living in Poland in the 80s would have been 2nd-world conditions.
Vibecession at country scale. Seems like growth feels like instability for many citizens.
Same story in Lithuania
Also economic inequality is quite differently shaped across ages
People over 60 are poor, 40..60 are a mixed bag, 20..40 are struggling to keep up.
The Baltic states are a pretty odd mix, Estonia could be any western European country while Latvia next door still feels in places like the Red Army has only just pulled out. It was quite a jolt going from one to the other.
Mind you since we'd started from Russia both of them looked pretty good in comparison, that place was dire.
>We visit western European countries and it's like WTF it's cheaper here?
Warsaw is the only place in Europe where a casual search out of curiosity brought 15-20K euro/month developer positions.
> GDP/capita is often a relatively useless metric in modern times.
"Often" is the wrong modifier. GDP/capita aligns very closely with material standard of living for the median person. If you look at the GDP/capita growth in India and China since 1990, or South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, since 1950, that reflects very real increases in material standards for ordinary people.
There's two, relatively well-understood situations where GDP/capita isn't reflective:
1) Countries where the economy is dominated by resource extraction or tourism 2) Tax havens
But it's pretty easy to tell whether one of these exceptions applies. It doesn't in the case of Poland, which has a broad, diversified economy with a high level of industrial production.
Isn’t GDP pretty easy to boost with deregulation and government overspending, at least in the short term? Neither of which benefits the people.
You can’t really keep that up over 35 years though, which is what Poland has achieved.
Deregulation does benefit the people, at least if it's done in ways that lead to sustained economic growth.
> GDP/capita aligns very closely with material standard of living for the median person
GDP is an average, not a median, so it might align with the average person, not the median. The average/mean can hide many things (see Anscombe s quartet) which is one of the problems with GDP IMO.
It depends what you’re using the data for. If you’re comparing across countries, or looking at a developing country over time, it’s a relatively small factor. The ratio between the average and the median isn’t that big even in the U.S. (about 1.3). Meanwhile, Poland’s GDP per capita has tripled since 2005: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location....
> The ratio between the average and the median isn’t that big even in the U.S. (about 1.3)
Being off by 30% might not matter for some usages, but it is not a small amount. It seems the median is more accurate to report and we agree.
I don’t know that there is any way to calculate a median value of GDP/capita. You can look at income distributions and find a median income and compare that to a mean income, which could allow an estimation, but beyond that, GDP is an intrinsically composite number which cannot be easily (at all?) broken down to individual contributions. I assume income is what the parent commenter is basing the median-mean comparison on, but it’s kind of out of nowhere with no explanation.
For purposes of comparing countries to each other and the same country over time, it’s not 30% off. The average skews higher than the median everywhere, so it’ll be 1.3/1.x.
If you have reported median incomes that are calculated the same way across countries and over time, that would be better. But many countries don’t reliably track that data, and the ones that do calculate it in completely different ways.
That all sounds reasonable. My concern was with your quote
> GDP/capita aligns very closely with material standard of living for the median person
GDP per capita is an average. This means it does not align with the _median_ person, but with the average. I believe this is factual and undeniable. No doubt it is interesting too to try to find other metrics for different usages as well.
> For purposes of comparing countries to each other and the same country over time, it’s not 30% off
You said the ratio for the same country between gdp mediand and average is 1.30. That means it is 30% off. Again, we can keep moving the goalposts and I could agree, but for the quoted statements i believe the above is true.
I'm Irish. Well northern Irish. The Republic Ireland seems a lot richer than when I was growing up in n. Ireland. Ireland is the second biggest exporter of software in the world now. I'm pretty certain the tax paid by both corporations and their well paid staff definitely translate to something for the average Irish man. Even if he thinks it doesn't.
Within a short time, especially since the EU accession, the development of Poland is just remarkable. I have personally spent a lot of time there and I think the quality of life, safety, access to healthcare, is excellent. Sure, it’s not perfect, but - I know, capital city bias, but I can’t think of a better place. Macro data, as imperfect as they are, reveal a dramatic trajectory in Life expectancy, HDI, while the gini-coefficient remained relatively stable.
The protests in Czechoslovakia came earlier, in 1968! The Soviets rolled in the tanks in response.
Poland had a mass solidarity movement rise up in 1980. The USSR didn't decide to send in the military then; they were lucky.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_reaction_to_the_Polish_...
There was a lot of unrest in Poland, and general strikes. Martial law was imposed.
If you were an immigrant from Czechslovakia in a refugee camp in Austria at around that time, you'd be learning to speak Polish.
So 1990 Eastern Europe freed itself thanks to... 1968 Czechoslovakia?
Of course not (but we can't say it didn't matter, either).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1956_Pozna%C5%84_protests
Even earlier in Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_uprising_of_1953
Here in Germany they very often talk about the importance of what happened in Poland for the reunification
I'm enjoying the way this dispute reflects on the USSR. We were the first to try to escape! No, we were the first, years before that! No, you're both wrong, it was us!
In chronological sense.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989
Round Table agreement, which paved the way to the partially free elections in 1989 won by the opposition, preceded similar events in other countries by several months including Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia and the Fall of Berlin Wall.
> Czechia is richer per capita.
Are you sure about that? I'm Czech but have lived in Poland for 8 years and visit regularly. Poland used to be way poorer than Czechia, but these days it looks the other way around. I think the stats are either lagging behind or computed wrong. Note I regularly visit both the cities and the countryside in both Czechia and Poland.
Btw, the article has a "GDP per capita growth in post-communist countries" table, with Poland at the top and Czechia at the bottom.
>Czechia is richer per capita
This is a very bad measure of anything, especially wealth.
The OP shows the per capita GDP growth of the former Soviet bloc states since 1990. Poland is #1 at 252%, Romania #2 at 148%; Czechia is last at 72%.
Ukraine didn't have Russian troops occupying anything but the leased Crimean bases before the war started (and I do count the start of the war as being immediately after Euromaidan)... Yet in 2013, it was the second poorest country in Europe. (Ahead of Moldova, which has been occupied for decades, but significantly behind Belarus and Bulgaria)
> Ukraine didn't have Russian troops occupying anything but the leased Crimean bases before the war started
Do you seriously believe Russians would leave Crimea if Ukrainians didn’t renew the lease?
Whether they were going to leave or not if it wasn't renewed decades down the road isn't particularly relevant to why Ukraine's economy was in the pits. It's not like those sailors were 'foraging' the countryside for their upkeep.
"It's much like Russia but with no oil or gas" was the better explanation for why it wasn't doing well. It's also why Belarus isn't topping the development indexes.
They didn't need troops till Maidan. They had the government already.
Orange revolution in 2004 changed the Ukrainian government.
And how long does weeding out corruption take?
I think 35 years since the Ukraine declared its independence is long enough time to stop blaming Russia for any problem in Ukraine. It just doesn't fly
De-russification didn't really start until the Orange Revolution, though. It's a long and painful process for Ukraine as reducing corruption requires shedding all the Russian influence. Before that, a lot of the problems genuinely are because of Russia.
All states escaping the Russian curse improve speedily once they join the EU, and I expect the same to happen in Ukraine.
>De-russification
Oh, please, please elaborate on that. How do you link corruption to ethnicity and language?
Romania?
Romania is still occupied by Russia. Unlike with Germany, where the East and West reunited, Romania failed to reunite with Eastern Moldova (Western Moldova is in Romania) because of Russian interference in the 1990s. The Russians invaded Transnistria (which was never Romanian) and expanded a bit west. So the Russians still occupy part of the land that is by right Romanian and still have political influence in R. Moldova. That is slowly being eroded.
> Romania is still occupied by Russia? I'm a Romanian and never heard such nonsense. We have nothing to do with what's going on in Eastern Moldova nor with people from that region. We do not consider them Romanians at all. While a lot of them come here and integrate well, as a general feeling in these areas, they are more russians than romanians and I assure you, should it be to a vote, we wouldn't join.
And btw, Romania is not occupied by Russia stop spreading such nonsense.
To those who do not know about this subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_of_Moldova_and_Rom...
(My external barely informed understanding is that proponents of unification are largely right wing nationalist, pro-Russians call for a unification with Bessarabia while ceding Transsinistria to Russia; Moldovans are largely against union in polls.)
Why wouldn't the story be that they succeeded despite the shock therapy? Honestly asking, I am not an expert on Polish economy, but I heard bad things.
Maybe all of those hardworking people could have done even better with a different macro strategy?
The rapid and successful conversion to market economy was the main reason we are where we are. Human cost was extremely high, crime went up quickly and lots of money was lost. I'd argue this was corrected by joining EU and by adjusting the plan to polish reality.
What made it a success was also the social capital in Poland, a lot of people worked extremely hard to pull it off, but still high unemployment was alleviated only by joining EU and people leaving to find employment elsewhere
Not to forget tens of billions in EU subsidies. Not trying to diminish the polish efforts, but not every country gets this opportunity of massive, predictable transfers without much conditionality.
I wonder how far Poland would be without the years of PiS corruption.
I think you got it backwards.
Over the last 20 years, the SLD govt used to literally sell new legislation for bribes, PO (currently in charge of Poland) literally has right now a guy in their ranks who has likely stolen 100s of millions PLN from a public company, but is the prime minister’s BFF so the prosecutor canceled the investigation. The stuff PiS has done is nothing compared to those.
I actually think that the Anti- Corruption Bureau that PiS founded is one of the core reasons Poland was able to mostly weed out the post-Russian corruption (corruption is unfortunately the main export of Russian culture, every country they invaded ended up extremely corrupt).
Yes. Piss is holier than holy and didnt run Justice Fund as its own private piggy bank stealing for PIS election campaigns and surveillance software to intercept PO politicians private communications. There is no reason whatsoever for former PIS prosecutor general last 7 months hiding in Hungary together with his co criminal deputy Marcin Romanowski who has been hiding there for almost two years. Former state-owned Oil giant Orlen CEO also spend some time hiding from prosecution in Hungary, what a coincidence.
Did we forget about pushing for illegal mail elections? Using state-owned companies filled with PIS politicians to finance bribes and promoting PIS? $25 billion pumped out straight to PIS coffers.
Notably, only five years have passed between last Russian solders leaving Poland and the country joining NATO. Quite a speedrun.
And it was about the only period when Russia was so week it did not meddle internationally. Putin ascended to power in 1999.
It was mainly thanks to two men who decided to give up their future: the prime minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki and the minister of finances Leszek Balcerowicz.
Today's politicians look like angry toddlers in a sandbox in comparison.
There ware other great people of course, but these two paid the price.
Solidarność was funded by the West, though you may credit Polish/Eastern European capture of US foreign policy and the Polish Pope, too.
It is true of course that they were the most persistent and brave. I don't think it would have been possible in East Germany for example, which ran a tighter regime until Poland managed the peaceful revolution.
I'm sure that some people claim that but I would be grateful for evidence that solidarnosc received significant material support from the west.
> The story is longer: Poland was the first country to make a remarkable peaceful transition from a bankrupt, failed Soviet satellite state. The shock therapy, plus NATO and EU aspirations, paved the way.
The story is told in much more detail in the OP. What do you feel is missing from it?
I live in Poland. This headline is misleading. Poland didn't build a top-20 economy. Western Europe and the US built their economy in Poland, because the labor is educated and cheap.
There are almost no globally competitive Polish companies. The "growth" is branch offices of German and American corporations taking advantage of engineers who'll work for 40% of Berlin rates. Remove the foreign-owned sector and you're looking at a mid-tier economy running on EU structural funds.
It's a great place to live, genuinely. But calling this "Poland's economy" is like calling a McDonald's franchise "your restaurant"
That is how all economies grow. It is unnecessary to remove credit from Poland. You say labor is educated, for example. Is that also not their merit?
Didnt USA benefit from mostly not being bombed during ww2? Didnt Germany benefit from cheap Russian gas and educated immigrants after 2008 crisis in EU? In the end, we can keep going back looking for pthers to thank but the country did it, and it is fair to say so.
P.S. I also live in Poland, not Polish. I also lived in Berlin, and I dont think the salaries are always so different.
> P.S. I also live in Poland, not Polish. I also lived in Berlin, and I dont think the salaries are always so different.
Anecdotally this is also my experience. Several countries in eastern Europe have vastly lower taxes, and as a result international companies can pay salaries that are on par with western Europe but still cheaper than an equivalent worker in Germany or France because the cost to the employer is much lower.
FDI is a legit way of increasing an economy's size and health. The fact that Poland created a safe country for foreign investments is great merit.
yeah it's great if you want to be dependent on US and German political interests
> It's a great place to live, genuinely. But calling this "Poland's economy" is like calling a McDonald's franchise "your restaurant"
Economically? Yes, if you ignore the fact that we're one of the most overworked populations in the first world and pretty much all low-level jobs(restaurant/call office/etc) have abysmally poor working conditions.
Culturally? Developed cities in Western/Northern Poland and Warsaw, sure. But everywhere else is shades of shitty and if you're LGBT+ a third of the country has legislation against your very existence.
Poland has made a lot of progress but calling it a great place to live is - while not altogether untrue - a statement of privilege more than universal reality.
> But everywhere else is shades of shitty and if you're LGBT+ a third of the country has legislation against your very existence.
Source?
Yeah I think this what most miss. FDI is good, great if eventually lead to domestic brand to capture more % of value, like Asian Tigers. I'm not sure if the case in EU, some GDP accounting can grossly conflate actual FDI contribution, i.e. when PRC captured $6 labour for each iphone assembled but it was counting full device cost $100s towards GDP instead of just value add. Same concept as Ireland GDP & corporate tax laundering.
Cursory search shows 1% companies in Poland are foreign enterprises which drive ~40% of output, ~30% of workforce and ~70% of exports. These are companies that will dip if Poland gets too expensive or geopolitics, in the meantime what is Samsung or Hyundai or Huawei of Poland. At end of day, countries need national champions committed to their own midstream industries who end up capturing the rents.
Samsung, Hyundai, or Huawei never happen without starting as FDI or cheap outsourcing.
FDI itself is not enough. Modern national champions happen because state protectionism, typically under autocratic industrial policy (Asian Tigers), in combination with FDI. Hyundai was suppose to be Honda, you can throw TSMC in there. There's no sign Poland is going to get national class to world class champions, because democracies more easily captured and EU forbids tier of subsidies and protectionism that enable giants that compete with established incumbents. Is there any strategic Polish company on road to being world class?
On paper countries can build giants without FDI, but can't build giants without industrial policy Poland can't adopt due to EU trap (which basically designed to keep west euro industrial incumbents on top) and (IMO) if Poland ever tries, FDI tap going to stop. Structurally Poland is periphery not core, allowed to prosper but not overtake, which puts ceiling. Exception being defense, but even then stepping on west euro toes.
EU trap? How far do you think Poland would have come economically without access to the EU common market and without EU subsidies?
Not far, but the EU trap is about the ceiling, it's about how far Poland can potentially go.
The comments have already mentioned CD Projekt and elevenlabs which I would call world class companies even if not huge scale.
Cd Projekt made around 200M$ revenue last year. It's a small company by world standard.
Small, but exemplary, and given the context of the post and arguments, developing exemplary leading companies is a sign that Poland is developing a deep base beyond mere outsourcing, even if there are a small number and they're not huge yet.
It's like comparing a 6-year-old soccer player to Lionel Messi - you're looking at early signs of development, and the progress to getting there, not saying Poland is already there, but there are positive signs it is on that path.
> strategic Polish company
Keyword being Strategic, i.e. industrial pillar industries that sustains entire local industrial chains / ecosystem.
foreign dollars and euros being spent in the country definitely counts as growth no matter how you slice it and regardless whether you like it or not.
Foreign investment isn't fake growth and money being spent in the country is definitely a good thing. It's how Singapore managed to kickstart its economy in the 1960s. Lee Kuan Yew tried very hard, and succeeded, in getting foreign corporations to set up shop in Singapore. The key is to capture value and move up the chain over time rather than getting stuck as a "cheaper back office".
Yep, and today the situation is completely reversed. Through acquisition and business development Singapore is the country which owns the brands and invests in other countries. Poland just needs to stick to the formula. It's citizens are building global-class professional, managerial, and business development experience. Soon if not already those employees will start itching to build their own businesses. Poland just needs to maintain a competitive environment, and not let international companies suppress local startups by lobbying for anti-competitive laws and policies that favor the big guys, foreign or domestic. If it wants to give local companies a leg up, do it indirectly by investing in education and research.
Of course it counts, and should count. Foreign money enters an economy if that economy is producing something the foreigner wants.
A simple bank transfer into the country does not count as domestic Product.
It is local resources extracted, not foreign spent.
This is zero sum thinking. The foreign companies benefit and the local Polish people benefit. Wealth is created in the process and everyone benefits. What if those companies never came and never employed Polish people? Would Poland be any better off?
if spotify employs an american and they become more experienced over their tenure were american resources extracted? human capital tends to get better with experience, particularly when dealing with high quality foreign management.
Those foreign companies still have to pay Polish taxes,and Polish wages. All that money gets spent into the local economy.
Let’s be honest. If anyone would be building a brand new company in Poland or any other country with the intention of raising capital or IPOing they would still incorporate in the US or a handful of other countries. So any successful Polish company would count as American/ German / Singaporean / etc anyway.
I don't see that it matters where the capital is raised.
CD Projekt is listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. Is that an American/German/Singaporean/etc company?
see elevenlabs as a prime example
My understanding is that Poland is also seeking smart win-win arrangements with some of these foreign sources. For example, Poland has initiated several big equipment buys from South Korean military suppliers on the condition that most of the manufacturing is done in Poland and that there is technical sharing for future self-sustainment.
It's basically importing expensive R&D for "free" while helping establish a heavy industrial base (which has also proven very fruitful for South Koreans). I'm sure there are other examples like this. You also get a better trained workforce, and then the import of the technical knowledge later where it is slower to digest but with the ability now to turn that knowledge into working production.
It's the first step to building the top companies: You first need enough agglomeration of that labor so that, whenever there's a recession, you can scoop up some of that labor for a startup.
And as demand of those cheap engineers go up, salaries rise. It's not just Poland: Go see what happens to engineering salaries in, say, Spain vs Berlin. You find Capgemini opening offices, because the labor is that cheap. New grads making as little as 20k in some regions.
So compared to that, having big tech moving over and paying over local market rates, and expanding enough so salaries end up rising is much better than the alternative: They don't come, there's no money, the engineers emigrate, and the country becomes poorer.
What kind of dev salaries are you seeing in Poland?
I have family in Poland, they are from smaller villages and they ALWAYS complain about EU and the economy. I wonder if things are similar in large cities.
> and they ALWAYS complain about EU and the economy
That's funny because Poland became dramatically richer after joining the EU, it allowed them access to one of the richest markets on Earth.
I understand that if you're from a smaller village you might also have missed the enormous infrastructure investments (highways, airports, sewage systems, etc.) that have only been possible because of EU money.
Then there's all the foreign companies that you mentioned whose investments have provided jobs directly and indirectly - as a EU member, Poland has become a lot more attractive for foreign investors.
And arguable, Poland carries a much bigger weight in international policies then it used to.
These points are not to say that there's nothing to criticize about the EU. As a matter of fact, there's not shortage of things to criticize. But it's unfair not to see the enormous gains Poland got since joining.
I would go so far as to argue that Poland is one of the biggest success stories of post-1989 Europe.
> I understand that if you're from a smaller village you might also have missed the enormous infrastructure investments (highways, airports, sewage systems, etc.) that have only been possible because of EU money.
That's the key. There wasn't enough done to ensure that everyone can enjoy the benefits. That why at some point populists won the vote and ruled the country for 8 years. They are still kicking. Recently elected president of Poland is from the populist camp. They still have support even though they didn't really hide their kleptocratic tendencies. Fortunately somehow they didn't manage to do significant macroeconomic harm. But they stalled development of renewables for a decade.
You really ought to call out Nawrocki and PiS by name (populist president/party), for all the non-Europeans out there.
For anyone new to Polish politics, here's an easy mnemonic: PiS = piss.
>Fortunately somehow they didn't manage to do significant macroeconomic harm.
Yay for parliamentary systems with proportional representation.
That's how.
this is Poland for you. everyone complains about everything. perhaps that's the secret to success - there's always something to complain about and one in a hundred (or thousand) people actually does something about it.
> this is Poland for you. everyone complains about everything
That is western Europe for you, not just Poland. Same in the Netherlands, same in Sweden, same in Belgium, same in Denmark, same in Norway, same in France, same in Germany, etcetera. Descartes claimed that he thought, therefore he was. A more realistic and equally erudite quote would be Queror, ergo sum which translates to I complain, therefore I am.
(also, q.e.d. because I'm complaining about people complaining)
> this is Poland for you. everyone complains about everything
Must be the proximity to Germany...
It's quite incredible how close Poland and Germany are culturally. And how unaware both countries are about this.
Are they really unaware or do they actively deny the cultural connections? Prussia was a thing not that long ago - it is still used as a slang term for Germans in parts of the Netherlands ("de Pruisen" of "die Preußen"). Anyone who had a bit of history or who has looked at an older map sees that Prussia was divided between what is now Germany and Poland. Of course both countries went through a lot of upheaval between then and now but there's still plenty of people alive who will remember living in Prussia.
Joining the EU meant giving up some measure of sovereignty, so they're living under a regulatory regime that's probably more extensive than it would be if Poland were independent.
Also, people like to complain.
>I have family in Poland, they are from smaller villages and they ALWAYS complain about EU and the economy
Ah, the Polish MAGA.
Probably Russian-influenced as well.
Typical salary for a senior dev is around 20-30k PLN per month, which translates to $65k-$100k per year (gross). Also, a lot of devs do a little bit of tax avoidance that is currently not persecuted, which allows them to pay total taxes below 20% on that amount. So, your take-home pay is $50k-$80k.
This website says Senior Java Developer is 20kPLN-27k PLN (64k USD per year after taxes) (employment contract) and 25k PLN-30k PLN if you agree to lose employee rights.
https://bulldogjob.com/it-report/salaries/java
30k PLN per month on employment contract would be 71k usd per year after taxes
That's a good salary, better than Romania on average. And if you also have lower prices (at least that's what I heard), even better then.
> Typical salary for a senior dev is around 20-30k PLN per month
Typical, yes, though it's possible to earn way more than that. Not that 20-30k PLN per month is bad, the average Polish salary is perhaps around 9k and the median around 7k.
20-30k PLN goes a long way in Poland. Some seven years ago, I was spending around 7k PLN a month, living in the beautiful Warsaw old town, 50 metres from Kolumna Zygmunta, eating out all the time, and generally felt I was living like a king. Good times!
It does go a long way, but note that 2019's 7k PLN is today's 11k (or 15k if you use the Big Mac index).
That is a decent salary! I guess it could be an option for me one day if I get tired of the US.
These were typical salaries 2+ years ago. Things changes substantially since. New hires earn less across the board, irrespective of experience.
First: if you compare rates (salary, wages,...) you also always must consider rents, cost of living etc.
Second: You can't just pick Berlin for comparison.
Third: Take away foreign owend companies from Berlin, you get a cheap, dirty poor capital.
How do you think China grew so much after 1990? A lot of FDI, a lot of protectionism. And look where they are today.
> Western Europe and the US built their economy in Poland, because the labor is educated and cheap. > There are almost no globally competitive Polish companies.
Same issue in all southern and eastern European countries.
Grossly incorrect and unfounded. There are no Googles there, but there are plenty of mid tier companies delivering quality products. For a blatant example see e.g. Shelly in Bulgaria. Or depending on how you count South, e.g. Vinci or Eni or car producers in Italy.
And not everyone needs to succeed in industrial household names, that e.g. much of southern European economies come from tourism is not a bad thing.
Shelly is anything but quality and also a niche product, when juxtaposed with car manufacturers you mention.
Why stop there. Make it all Europe and the Marshall plan.we can probably go back to the Roman empire if we try.
Poland has also the lowest fertility rate of the EU. This growth came at a cost and may be short-lived when the cheap workforce dies out with no replacement.
Providing educated labor is a kind of build.
Yes and we see what happens to countries after doing this, they start developing their own domestic industries and economies. It's not a bad strategy to organically build a robust economy either.
saying foreign investment is a bad or invalid growth strategy is wild
are you one of those anti-trade people where the only real ""growth"" doesn't involve foreigners
It's one thing to say they don't want immigrants taking their jobs. But its a whole other thing to discount foreign investment, giving your people jobs, under your rules...
Allegro is Polish, large and successful, no?
But I only know of them because they bought some successful small companies in my country and shut them down to reduce competition, for which they are universally hated around here.
It was founded in Poland and by poles by I think it’s owned whole by foreign capital - hard to call it polish even though still listed on polish stock exchange. Google branch in Warsaw we wouldn’t call it polish either.
Examples of significant shareholders include:
* Permira Advisers LLP (UK) * Cinven Group Ltd. (UK) * BlackRock (US) * Vanguard (US)
Czechia? I always have to explain that Allegro is not a bad company per se, just absolutely messed up the attempt at conquering Czechia...
There are plenty of polish companies, but like in Germany many are more in the middle of the spectrum, so they might be well known in their sector but not much beyond. I've seen e.g. plenty of polish building materials and furniture across shops on western Europe.
You gotta have "A" to do "B".
This is one way of having "A" that isn't "massive internal natural resources" like USA, China, Russia, Colonialism, or Oil States (I'm sure I missed other kickstarters here).
It terms of the IT sector there is not much difference to the rest of the Europe. America has dominated the field, China is catching up, especially in global giants category.
I don’t live in Poland, but this is like comparing a thriving metro area to Silicon Valley. Just because the metro isn’t coming up with the latest ideas doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its own economy - it’s just different. From my outsider perspective this is very much a positive step for Poland and should be celebrated.
> There are almost no globally competitive Polish companies.
there ought to be, but EU capital is taking bad bets. it would be the easiest early stage play in the world
I don't think that's a good way to think about the modern economy. Large companies aren't American, German or Polish just because they're founded in one place. The surplus value that a country like Poland adds or that all the producers in the supply chain of Apple or Tesla add are real and contribute to their national economies.
Singapore isn't a "fake rich" country because most of the companies that have settled down there are international businesses, the money is as real as anywhere else, so are the jobs. Always strikes me as a bit atavistic when people talk about companies as if they're owned by a country despite the fact that the value creation and supply chains run through two hundred countries.
just like israel. even india is similar
Reading the article it attributed institutional strength to poland, which is great, but it sounds like this was something the west decided not to sabotage. The oligarchs taking over in e.g. Russia was engineered by the clinton administration and Larry Summers as "shock therapy" when the soviet government fell.
> Western Europe and the US built their economy in Poland, because the labor is educated and cheap.
Yes, for the benefit of their stock markets and at the expense of their own populations.
A rising tide lifts all luxury yachts.
Years ago I bought some really nice brushless motors and was surprised to see they were made in Poland. I had no idea they were manufacturers of things like that.
Later I bought even nicer motors, meant to provide exceptional control and feedback for tactile/haptic behaviours, and they were from Poland too.
Then I got to work on a robotic arm which contained a bunch of components from Poland. At this point it was clear to me that it wasn’t coincidence.
Finally, I built a drone with my kids and again, the motors are Polish. And they’re excellent.
They went from being a place I would only expect to encounter cultural food items from to a place that entered a high tech supply chain which seems to produce high enough quality components that I see them without seeking them out.
As a Canadian it made me very envious. We should be able to do this. I’ve seen a handful of Canadian motors in my life, and they were all blower motors a long time ago. Our ability to build cutting edge technology seems to be so limited as to be virtually irrelevant in most cases.
As A Finn I’d like to see Canada figure out that “oh shit we could be a world superpower with all the smarts and natural resources we have” and start trading culture and goods with Nordic countries. We would rule!
Most of the AI scientists powering the current AI revolution (or apocalypse) are Canadian.
If your banking system is conservative and you don’t have a venture capital backed risk taking infrastructure - it’s systemic issue. It is the same problem with Europe.
Ironically, most of early OpenAI engineers and scientists were Polish
There is a saying I've heard: "Silicon Valley is powered by Waterloo Grads"
The problem with Canadian innovation is that our best and brightest tend to complete their education in Canada, then emigrate to the US. The brain drain is a real issue for us.
One of the "positives" of Trump's hostilities towards Canada is that perhaps this would slow the brain drain for the current generation.
Love waterloo grads. They're 2 years ahead of other college grads. They come to the internship ready to ship. They definitely power stuff.
But Stanford grads all take moonshots.
Which would I rather have? Waterloo, they're great workers. Not sure they've been crushing it long enough to be in charge everywhere, time will tell.
Far north hemisphere, unite? A Canadian-British-Nordic partnership.
Britain, well… I’ll take Scotland, they’re sensible. But rest of you, we can’t just look what you are doing to yourself. Please Britain, get some help.
Hm Finland, with the 38th highest suicide rate in the world? Well above the UK, in 117th place. I think you need our help :(
I was referring to how you have selected post-2008 government after another to completely tank the economy and destroy key British institutions, but Finland has a goverment that does exactly the same, so we do kinda need help as sell. Maybe we should go to some 12-step-program together.
(PS. Finnish suicide rate has fallen through the 2000’s from 1200 per year to about 750)
> how you have selected post-2008 government after another to completely tank the economy and destroy key British institutions
Yup. Thanks Russia.
Well, the coming AMOC collapse will at least align the climates.
Don't forget Russia and USA!
I have to admit, I feel the same envy about industry and economic growth. But there also seem to be many explanations of why Canada continually fails to attract large cap business other than resource extraction. The cost of living / skilled worker wages / tax structure / high levels of regulation means that if you have large cap, you could just build your factory somewhere else and make more money. We've got golden handcuffs in many ways. Still, that 'envy' or ambition is what keeps me coming back to HN, I think it is still possible to start something successful and innovative in this country.
There's also a massive and constant brain drain down south
Absolutely. For a lot of my career I worked from west coast Canada for US companies in California. After a few years of earning $80k CAD and working as hard as anyone I'd meet at conferences in the USA, I realized I was being an idiot. It was transformative. I only know a couple people personally in software here who work for Canadian companies apart from where I work.
I earned ~2–3x more than I do now working for a Canadian company, doing the best work of my career. I'm so unimportant here, they would readily discard me and laugh if I asked for a raise. This is Canada. But, I like this place, the people, and the work. I think it's important work. I'm at a stage where I prefer that over cash.
I don't think many of my peers feel the same. There's a sense that there's no point in working for Canadian companies if you don't have to. On balance they perform worse, pay less, have less interesting opportunities, and work you as hard as any American counterpart would.
Some anecdata: in the area I'm from in the northeastern US which has a large number of manufacturing/tool & die companies of all sizes, and with a large Polish diaspora, 80% of the most skilled machinists are Polish (or 2nd or 3rd gen descendants), at least that was the case when I was working with these business between 20-30 years ago. Many of the best engineers at these business are Polish as well.
Would you happen to know any of the motor companies by name? I’m often trying to find quality motors and it’s surprisingly difficult.
This was the best one I dealt with https://www.mabrobotics.pl/ma-actuators
It's been a while and I can't recall the other big one. I know some engineers from one of them went on to work for Clone Robotics, which seems to be doing interesting stuff with other types of actuators.
Rockwell Automation has a facility in Katowice, Silesia which was/is a major centre of coal mining and locomotive manufacturing since the 1800s when it was part of Prussia, and continuing through the Polish Republic, WW2 era and beyond.
The industrial heritage is strong.
I interviewed there in 2012. Great people and culture, but salary was shite. Kinda regret, though, from all companies I interviewed, they suit my area of interest and experience the most.
> We should be able to do this.
That would require work. Canadians just want to buy real estate, watch it go up 10x, then sell and retire in Mexico.
You're describing something that some Canadians did (and very few still do), but this is not reflective of the vast majority of us. For most Canadians, especially as our economy declines, our extremely expensive homes are more like death sentences for our financial futures. We're not going to profit off of these things—ever—unless decades-long trends rapidly begin to reverse rather than accelerate.
I'm aware of the current economic state.
The point is that capital holders decided doing risky things isn't worth it, so they invested in unproductive low-risk assets, then the government juiced the immigration rate, said assets rose, capital holders are making off like bandits leaving Canadians behind in a stagnant economy holding the proverbial bag...
It's those god damned boomers, man
(more so terrible policy-making, which we're still very good at doing poorly today)
Who elects the policy makers?
Fact is, only ~25% of Canadians are net tax payers. The rest work for a government, are unemployed, disabled, retired, or receive more funding from the government than they put in. So yeah, it's the boomers, the government workers, unemployed, disabled, etc...
The status quo is what Canadians want. It's why anyone with ambition (ie. wants to work and/or be an entrepreneur) leaves.
some audiophiles feel that the best transformers are made by https://sklep.toroidy.pl/en_US/index in poland.
I bought furniture, and i was surprised it came from poland actually. The website was something like a polish ikea.
Btw great furniture, it’s still in my living room many years after, pretty much still pristine.
Do you recall the name of the manufacturer?
Not arguing for this one way or another, but as countries become more economically developed, they invariably move off of manufacturing and more into services because it's a higher value part of the economic food chain (wish I could find the research article with all the data - I remember reading it as part of a post arguing that Trump's attempts to "bring back manufacturing jobs to the US" was doomed to fail)
So, the reason you can buy motors and robotics components from Poland and not Canada is because Poland has lower costs (i.e. people make less money because the economy is less developed), not because Canada doesn't know how to make them.
Again, I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing, and I think we've certainly started to see problems as the manufacturing know-how of advanced countries deteriorates as they outsource much of their manufacturing to lower cost locales. But having an economy with a lower percentage of economic activity from manufacturing isn't some sort of failure, as it just means that economy has moved into more profitable activities.
> So, the reason you can buy motors and robotics components from Poland and not Canada is because Poland has lower costs
I hear you, and I partially agree. What I worry is that this made more sense ten or twenty years ago, though.
Living in Canada for 40 years, I'm no longer confident that we can continue using economic levers to allow ourselves to output less and buy more from poorer countries. We're stagnating, and the numbers are clear and directional.
We are not a very productive country compared to a younger version of ourselves, and our productivity only falls. Our most recent GDP increases belie population increases that outstripped wealth creation, leading to decreases in GDP per capita. We're growing and yet doing less.
At this rate we will need to be more resourceful, and our relative wages will continue to fall. We should be prepared and capable in all manners of wealth creation, industrial and otherwise.
Our government has stated it will do things like focus on tax competitiveness, internal trade barriers, and AI investment. To me this is depressing as hell. It's nowhere near the fighting spirit we need to make real progress. And frankly, what is AI investment? What the hell is Canada going to do with AI? We have some decent schools and interesting companies, but our government has no business speaking about the matter as an economic opportunity. We may lead the G7 in terms of research outputs here, but our spending plans on AI-related infrastructure and policy are a rounding error on singular US tech firms' balance sheets. We need to be serious. The gap between rhetoric and realistic outcomes is so absurd as to seem irresponsible.
Canadians are getting poorer quickly and at this rate we will eventually have those lower costs, but no trajectory leading us to developing better industrial and high tech manufacturing. We should have been finding ways to leverage our higher cost labour force for advanced manufacturing 20–30 years ago. Now we will have to leverage our middle-cost labour for barely-competitive products in industries with far more competition.
So I agree completely 15–25 years ago, but today I believe Canada's not doing so well, those costs will collapse, and we're going to wish we got ahead of this.
FWIW, my cousin lives in Canada and feels similarly to you. He structured his business deliberately around maximizing his exposure to the U.S. economy and minimizing his exposure to the Canadian economy. He tries to work for American clients, getting paid in American dollars.
> they invariably move off of manufacturing and more into services because it's a higher value part of the economic food chain
Folks seem to be trying like heck to minimize the services jobs though with AI, etc. Maybe countries should retain a healthy mix of these jobs.
I think there's an even more salient issue. Manufacturing is the backbone of any economy. When you outsource it, you end up creating a dependency on a nation that is ostensibly less developed. I say ostensibly because what does "less developed" even mean when the other country can not only do fine without you, but now also has the power to destroy your economy if they wanted to?
> they invariably move off of manufacturing and more into services because it's a higher value part of the economic food chain
What part of the economic food chain are government employees?
> Most Canadian employment growth is now reliant on the public sector. Public sector employment climbed 0.9% (+41k jobs) to 4.45 million in July. Annual growth shows 4.8% (+205k) jobs added, a rate 8x greater than private sector growth. Canada’s now so dependent on public sector growth that government workers represent 1 in 4 employed workers.[1]
[1] https://betterdwelling.com/a-quarter-of-employed-canadians-n...
I love the polish, but credit where credit is due:
„Poland is the largest beneficiary of EU funds 2014-2020, with one in four euro going to Poland“
https://www.gov.pl/web/funds-regional-policy/poland-at-the-f...
Update: The comments below this are strange.
I ment: „Poland gets money, Poland transforms it into more money”.
Is Poland more efficient in it than other countries? I do not know. Would Poland have generated less money without it ? Probably? Is an annual investment of the 2-3%of the GDP into a country a lot? I think so?
Think of it as an investment. The rest of the EU also benefits from their hard work, and economic prosperity. Other countries in the EU have also enjoyed economic growth and support over the years.
I'm old enough to remember internal borders with passport checks in Europe, before the wall fell and Poland was still on the other side of that. Nice to see them moving on from that.
Thanks to the EU free movement of people, I've now studied, worked and lived in four different countries. I know people all over Europe. I currently live in Germany. Germany benefits a lot from the EU. Yes it costs money. But there's trade, access to skilled labour, etc. as well. And if you look at Poland, it's what sits between Germany and Belarus & Ukraine. So, there's a strategic relevance as well. Poland doing fine is good for everyone else in the EU.
> The rest of the EU also benefits from their hard work
I don't know. I want to agree with you, but a large part of the economic growth in Poland is off-shoring and cheap tax (~12% on contract) for tech workers. The average tech wage there now is pretty similar to the UK, and I don't really see many startups there - probably in part because of how bureaucratic their business system can be. I don't know if this influx of foreign money from off-shoring and surge in real estate pricing is sustainable or good in the long run.
Other than a massive influx of overdevelopment of flats in the cities (sometimes too rushed, I've seen reports of flat blocks subsiding because of cutting corners), I'm not sure where else the increase it.
Do you have any sources for the claim that a large part of growth is off-shoring?
Because that seems extremely implausible, and actually very insulting to the incredible success of Eastern Europe, before and after joining the EU, in closing the gap to Western Europe over the last 3 decades.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...
I’m so confused. At least in tech all the big companies I work with are hiring in Poland because it is about the same as India after losses around fake hiring and the quality averages better.
It is absolutely a huge offshoring target at least for the US.
What exactly is confusing to you?
Anecdotes from your bubble inside one particular industry, that represents a small fraction of the economy of a nation, do not adequately explain the post soviet transformation of economies containing hundreds of millions of people. That's all.
Specifically I asked for evidence that current GDP growth is significantly driven by this specific type of foreign investment, as claimed. None has been forthcoming.
Everywhere is an offshoring target for US tech. Tons of US tech companies have Canadian offices because Canadian rates are far below US rates.
The reason for the growth over different time frames can differ. Anecdotal, but most of the IT people I know from Poland worked for, as they call it, "big corpo" and generally it's offshoring either directly with companies such as DXC/Luxoft or n-ix, or through local offices (Akamai for example). If you look at the average salary in Poland (in general), and the average tech salary + the number of tech workers there, it's easy to say a large part of the GDP is tech.
Whether or not it's offshoring is a little less obvious, but I can't think of more than 2 or 3 successful Polish tech companies.
There are other countries in the world or even in the EU where salaries are lower than in Poland. Why don't they see the similar growth? I guess this is more nuanced than just lowered salaries can explain it. Surely, that's part of the equation but to develop highly innovative economy, one needs to start with something. That's how China started, how Korea started etc.
It's easy to say but it's also wrong. I had Claude look for actual sources.
https://emerging-europe.com/it-sector-in-focus-poland/
The IT sector is 4.4% of GDP. Poland has seen 3% of GDP growth year on year.
What is the average salary, the average tech worker salary, and the number of tech and other workers in Poland?
Large part is due to offshoring, but not the IT. Offshoring the manufacturing.
Also some companies are moving their offices from Poland to India now.
China was the offshore haven and built their own domestic economy off the expertise while still maintaining very low income taxes and 15% corporate tax for tech companies.
You dont have money, you complain. You (as in your country) get the money, yet you still complain.
Sure, its not ideally distributed, but nowhete is. Such economic success will drag many parts of the country up. Yes, jobs not paid the best will have to commute from further. But compared to where Poland was 2 decades ago (been there many times), its great growth and success.
Plus you guys have correct mentality to by far the biggest threat to Europe - russia. Not so common in eastern Europe, russian-paid politicians are quite successful in some places. But of course Poland has a history with russia to remember so thats luckily not an option.
Russia with conventional weapons is no longer threat to anyone.
>Think of it as an investment.
An economic investment as well as one of solidarity. People forget that the EU is a peace project that ensures peace via economic cooperation. This nuance seems trivial but is actually massively important. I can see trust degrading in the US but being fortified across the EU.
Look at Hungary recently, they did a 180 not because of Brussels or Berlin saying they should. Hungarians are sceptical of both. However they do trust the Polish people who they see as genuine peers who are very pro-EU.
Hungary is massively pro-EU as shown by polls (86% in 2025).
They didn't do a 180 at all. Tusk basically shares Orban's entire platform, particularly vis-à-vis the EU. Orban just got caught in corruption scandals.
Orban is a Russian asset. Tusk isn't.
I wonder if that's part of why the US is a superpower: the richer states being forced to invest in the poorer ones.
In the early 20th century Texas for instance was a poor state, a recipient of federal funds, but now it's an economic powerhouse. (To be precise I still think it's a recipient of federal funding but it holds its own now.)
> Think of it as an investment. The rest of the EU also benefits from their hard work, and economic prosperity. Other countries in the EU have also enjoyed economic growth and support over the years.
It is for as long, as the EU exists in its current form. The rise of anti-EU parties in both Poland and Germany makes it a risky investment.
Thankfully most people have learned from the absolute shambles of Brexit and either of these countries leaving is extremely unlikely.
Have they? https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c1428pev1n0t
Be careful about reading too much into that. Our elections yesterday were for local and sometimes regional representatives - not our central national government. The result might still prompt a change in our unpopular Prime Minister but the high vote for Reform won't necessarily translate into voting for them at the next general election. We often see protest votes for alternative parties in local politics and everyone was expecting one this time.
Surveys here have been showing a trend towards greater public support for the EU. Its advocates have been pushing for closer integration and even talking of a referendum on rejoining. Although of course this also has to be viewed cautiously because the polls before the Brexit referendum had also pointed towards remaining and one of the biggest fans of the EU recently has been that unpopular PM who might not be in office for much longer.
Also Hungarian change of government has cut off some of the "dark money".
There is pretty common trend of people complaining about X being bad coz EU but most of the time it turns into one of
* It was pretty sensible EU directive implemented badly by national govt * It was pretty sensible EU directive implemented okay but communicated badly * Outright lie about the problem and the scope of it.
One example: The people complained that "EU will force them to pay to scrap solar panels"
The truth: Some countries added price of recycling into price of the solar panels, some didn't. Those that did had free recycling, those that didn't needed owner to pay a fee when scrapping it. So, naturally, buying solar panel from country with no fee was cheaper and scrapping it in country with fee was free. EU noticed that loophole and forced countries into including the fee in panel cost:
The truth: Poland applied it by just applying fee to panels bought before the rule unification
The lie number 1: EU forced that implementation on Poland. Nothing was forced, that way of "fixing it" (vs eating the cost was what Polish govt chose
The lie number 2: (and I have no idea where it came from) "You will have to scrap your panels made before this date AND pay for it".
Sometimes I suspect most of that is just russian propaganda using anything to undermine EU
> Outright lie about the problem and the scope of it.
One of my favorites was “EU is banning juice”, when the definition of juice was being standardized and local producers of fruit-flavored sugar water couldn’t keep selling their beverages as “juice” anymore.
There's the classic "bendy banana law" which British tabloids pushed a lot to paint the EU as an inefficient bureaucracy.
In reality it was a way to harmonise banana grading, no one was forbidden to sell abnormally shaped bananas, it would just be classed lower than the "Extra" class.
I a sure it's Russian propaganda that the EU has basically tried for the last 3 years to ban encryption so that it can access all your personal messages without a warrant?
Or is it also Russia propaganda that it wants to force VPNs to collect data on their users or force everyone to use their real identities online so that it makes it easy to prosecute anyone for wrong speech?
https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/the-eu-pr...
Nah, you are right the EU is good for us. No issues there at all.
Thinking about that risk increases said risk.
Also, for Germany, and I assume, other EU countries, cohesion and economic strength of the EU is the most important value that exists.
Yes, this is an important aspect of the EU, and other countries like Spain and Ireland benefited in the same way.
And it's a good thing, but I wish Eastern European countries would recognize this and become more of a team player instead of shitting on EU.
Poland waited for Trump 2nd term, threatening the take some of the EU territory by force to finally transition from buying US weapons to buying from other European countries.
Not to mention a stronger economy means stronger defense against the Russian threat.
Okay, but Poland taking all / most of the credit is just strange in that light.
> I'm old enough to remember internal borders with passport checks in Europe, before the wall fell and Poland was still on the other side of that. Nice to see them moving on from that.
Europe is the outlier here. The rest of the world checks your passport when you come in their country because they like to know who comes and who goes for a lot of reasons including public safety, biosecurity and so on.
The fact that Europe has basically given up on trying to filter who comes in is not necessarily a model that is desirable for the rest of the world.
> Thanks to the EU free movement of people, I've now studied, worked and lived in four different countries.
You can do that without Europe as well. Do you think people did not move to another country or studied in another country before the European countries decided to remove borders? What about now with all the students moving to the US/UK/Australia/Canada?
I’m not very familiar with deep EU politics. But I’ve heard a lot of complaints from colleagues in countries like Germany and the Netherlands about feeling like their taxes mainly help countries like Poland.
While what you’re saying may be true, and this prosperity may be good for all of Europe, I think there is a lot of resentment about who the beneficiaries of the EU structure are.
This is how it works. Ireland was a net beneficiary until 2018, and now it is a net contributor (one of only 10 net contributors). These are decades long investments, Poland joined in 2004. Per capita Poland is not the "greatest" beneficiary but I don't think that will help win any arguments for those already resistant to facts or reasoning. https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/12/09/eu-budget-who-p...
> Think of it as an investment. The rest of the EU also benefits from their hard work, and economic prosperity. Other countries in the EU have also enjoyed economic growth and support over the years.
This is something I tell people I am generally politically/socially align with (liberals/progressives) when they start talking about “handouts for red states.” California and other areas were not developed on their own, they required years of sustained federal investment and interest in the area.
It obviously goes without saying that conservatives in the US need to stop demonizing taxes so much for the same reason/they need to recognize that as the some of the largest beneficiaries of federal tax dollars they are cutting their nose to spite their face (I believe Kentucky is still the most subsidized state in the US).
All of us should want our states cooperation with the federal government so we can all rise together, and we need to view investing in our neighbors as a collective good.
The argument that red states receive handouts is essentially a myth. Almost the entirety of the "handout" is social security/medicare based on where retirees live (notably the sunbelt), where military bases are located (rural areas of less populous states), and where most Federal land management offices and employees are located (the mountain west). Ironically, it counts Federal employment as "welfare" with more steps.
Two of the three are intrinsically tied to the locale. You can't move the National Forests to Manhattan. They closed the military bases in the most expensive areas like California decades ago to save money so they are mostly located in flyover country now.
Social Security actually is a welfare handout but retirees are choosing to move to red states. Unless one is arguing to forcibly prevent retirees from moving to the sunbelt, Social Security dollars will disproportionately flow into those states.
There is no red state "handout".
This [0] mentions that social security, medicare, public assistance and military and other federal wages were a wash, as of 2018-2022 data:
> Digging deeper into the component parts of federal contribution, red and blue states received similar dollar amounts in direct payments on a nominal ($6.9 trillion) and per capita ($42,900) basis, much of which come in the form of payments from Social Security, Medicare, and public assistance programs, such as the earned income and child tax credits. The red and blue states also receive similar amounts for military and non-military wages (excluding the U.S. Post Office, which is self-funded) on a nominal ($650 billion) and per capita ($4,900) basis.
Tax receipts were listed as the most significant difference, and after that other things like military bases, block grants, federal contracts and highways, some going one way, and some the other.
The numbers were interesting. They added it up to $1 trillion going from blue to red states.
[0] https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/118494/documents/...
They show their true colors when blue states need FEMA funding for natural disasters and they balk at any one else getting federal aid.
A cursory search indicates an even split of red/blue states put in more than they get, but that 7 of the top 10 receivers of federal aid are red states. But ultimately my point doesn’t hinge on the ratio: everyone should support solid investments in all states.
You can give all the caveats you want but my point is it doesn’t matter what the reason is, these states rail against taxes and the federal government despite leaning heavily on their investment and “donor states” need to see it as a positive for all of us.
Why does it matter if it’s national parks or military bases or whatever? Do you think these states would gladly give it up so they can “liberate themselves from federal intervention” or whatever? Fat chance.
People need something to resent or hold in disregard. Government and taxes are a good target. The problem only really begin when someone actually tries to reduce or eliminate that target. It's the old "be careful what you ask for, you might just get it".
>This is something I tell people I am generally politically/socially align with (liberals/progressives) when they start talking about “handouts for red states.” California and other areas were not developed on their own, they required years of sustained federal investment and interest in the area.
If they were to ask where you think this "federal investment" funding came from, what would you reply?
It’s a fair point, but there is a significant difference between investment in infrastructure and education versus just supporting states that are intentionally degrading their infrastructure and education.
Upwards spiral versus downwards. Money pours in for both cases, but only one is really an investment.
Much of it would come from borrowing, which would be paid back using tax revenues in later years from the regions developed using that investment. Just like most investments.
Equating investments in California with the welfare state that is Louisiana is a take
The West Coast of the United States, California, Washington, and Oregon. will just move on like the rest of the world is moving on away from the United States. Turning your back on infrastructure useful infrastructure medicine education, science, schools is not a winning hand long-term.
If you look at a map of the American South Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia will just move on. Actually it’s already happening and has been happening for the last 30 years. Other parts of the American South are however, stuck more firmly in the past and getting further behind and that also applies to some of the Midwestern states.
Louisiana has another ongoing long-term problem the gulf of Mexico is eating away at the bottom half of the state lands end is moving further north that involves scientific observations oh boy thems fighting words.
Preferably your taxes in particular.
A rising tide lifts all boats
> California and other areas were not developed on their own, they required years of sustained federal investment and interest in the area.
In a similar way, Western Europe benefited from a lot of investment after WW2, while Eastern Europe didn't receive the same investment then.
So the recent investment OP mentioned is just balancing the scales.
World War II significantly contributed to the development of the West Coast of the United States mid century. San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle harbors became crucial to the war effort in the pacific, leading to industrial expansion and the establishment of the UC system and the junior colleges in California, which eventually led to Silicon Valley, also the large water projects built 50-60 years earlier and the the transcontinental railroads built 50 years prior also didn’t hurt the expansion and growth of the West Coast of the United States either.
Building useful infrastructure, in the can do America of the past worked, the parasitic AI data centers currently, however, appear to be a financial dead end.
That era of America appears to be gone at the Federal level, infrastructure, schools, science, medicine, college, vaccines, voting etc. etc. don’t appear to be on the current menu.
The question is not whether it is an investment or whether it is not.
The question is whether growth is objective and fair or whether it is not.
For comparison of wealth in Poland, ALL net-subsidies would have to be deducted, because this is essentially wealth taken from other countries, and distributed to poorer areas in the EU. I am not disputing that this leads to more growth; I am disputing the "country xyz is now rich" while not even mentioning the subsidies. And that reuters article does not mention that at all.
It also has to be mentioned because the crazy bureaucrats in Brussels want to aggressively expand eastwards. They think that the richer areas in the EU need to pay for that expansion. I simply fail to agree with that "logic" at all and I also consider it hugely unfair to richer areas. The richer areas made good decisions; now this is being negated by bureaucrats in Brussels. That is unfair. (This is not meant against Poland, but against the constant expansionistic agenda from Brussels.)
Economic zones are NOT zero sum.
I agree, but people are very weary of these things because of the (correct) belief that their appropriation is guided by unaccountable bureaucrats. It stands in need of justification that Europeans feel they never got to hear
> but people are very weary of these things because of the (correct) belief that their appropriation is guided by unaccountable bureaucrats.
People believe this because every single member state is using EU institutions as a punching bag whenever they have issues locally. The people have no idea how the EU work, they only hear about it when used as a bogeyman
And the EU wants to insulate itself from Russia with friendly, ideologically-compatible countries. Can't put a price tag on safety
That also works the other way around: Eastern European countries wanted to join the EU (ok, more importantly NATO, but also the EU) to make sure they never ever again slid into Russia's "sphere of influence". Notwithstanding certain populist EU-skeptic right wing parties that don't seem to mind that anymore (some would say because they are financed by Russia), that's generally still true...
I agree, but subsidies aren't free as well. Simply making the overall cake bigger doesn't necessarily pay out for everyone - some have to foot the bill.
Why not? If the increase in cake size is bigger than the subsidies then it can be a net win, even for the people paying the subsidies.
It also ignores the fact that absent the EU, countries would still have a lot of subsidies.
Because the total increase of the cake can mostly be transferred to those that receive the subsidies. It's not that hard to understand: if you redistribute 10% of total wealth from the top quartile to the bottom quartile for 1% in additional total growth, then even if that additional growth went completely to the top quartile, it would be a net -9% of total wealth for them. I don't say that's a bad thing per se. But it doesn't help to willfully ignore that fact.
Edit: I just now got the part "If the increase in cake size is bigger than the subsidies" – that's a ridiculous assumption. EU total growth in 2025 was 1.5% or 295 billion USD. From 2021-2027, the EU budget committed roughly 370bn € each for Agriculture subsidies and for Cohesion Policies, totaling 720bn € over 7 years; 2025 has seen ~130bn USD from those two buckets alone. Germany alone has paid another 60bn in subsidies the same year. Oh, and there has been a total of 417bn USD in energy subsidies in europe in 2023 (most recent data available). Even if we could attribute all total growth to subsidies alone, we'd have a factor below 0.5 – and that doesn't include any growth through private investmen, PPP, or any kind of increase of regular public spending.
OTOH, the more developed EU countries want the less developed countries to be reasonably well-off, so they can keep buying stuff from them. E.g. 56% of Germany's exports went to other EU countries in 2025. And, while Trump and Xi Jin Ping are around, that's only going to become more important...
"56% of Germany's exports went to other EU countries in 2025" - because those products are no longer competitive in the open market.
Yeah, they're so uncompetitive that Trump had to introduce tariffs to keep them out. China is a different topic, but I wouldn't generally call German products uncompetitive...
The tariffs put on the US by Germany were higher than the other way around in some cases, even though the US wasn’t exporting such products in any significant amount.
Trump introduced tarrifs because of insane economic and political illiteracy and for no other reason.
The Holocaust was a decision taken by one of the two pillars of the EU, Germany, so countries nowadays being rich or poor has nothing to do with past “good” decisions of those countries populaces. And before anyone commenting that the Holocaust and the German economy are two orthogonal subjects, just look at the corporate history of German industry giants VW and Bayer.
Neither VW and Bayer are rich because of the Holocaust. They are rich because of good business environment and good corporate decisions after 2nd world war.
From a purely economic viewpoint Holocaust and 2nd world war were very very stupid decisions.
Worse, Germany has one of the worst upward mobility stats in the EU. If you look at the filthy rich families in Germany, most of them have ties to benefitting heavily from WW2.
"I'm old enough to remember internal borders with passport checks in Europe"
Did you recently crossed borders? On many the checks are there again, because of fear of immigration terrorism or something, so the people could see, politicians were doing something to make them feel safe (but what I could see when passing borders, especially between poland and germany, were looong lines of trucks, so much for free flowing goods).
Not sure of the current situation, though, but last summer and autumn was horrible with checks (probably still better than what was before, but having experienced the real open border situation, having them restricted again is frustrating).
Not the same extent like it was before… Now most of the times is just slowed down traffic (quick glance who's in car and move on), and more than that I was maybe stopped two times for quick chit-chat (where/why I'm heading). And I crossed, multiple times, borders of DK (they had checks since 2018?), DE, A, IT, CH, CZ…
Quick ID check happened once - when I was traveling with bus across border.
Back in a days it was a lot, lot slower and more detailed.
If you miss the old days, try the bus from Vilnius to Minsk. It’s a full on border control just like in the times of the Soviet Union. Only 35 km away from an European Union capital city.
"Back in a days it was a lot, lot slower and more detailed."
Oh for sure, I have childhood memories of the really dark time, but it is way worse now, than it was back in 2015. I missed flixbus connections because of intense checks and changed vacation plans avoiding long waiting times at borders within EU (my recommendation, cross at night).
Flixbus are a primary target for those inspections...
Is this something new within the last year? I just travelled on Flixbus across Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland and received no checks.
Is it only certain countries?
> Is it only certain countries?
Every country can choose independently, and for each border. From a cursory search, it appears e.g. Poland currently only checks the borders with Germany and Lithuania. You'd have missed any checks on your specific trio, if this list was true at the time:
https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/schengen/schengen...
Your current state is how Canada used to be from the US. Early 2000s we just showed drivers licenses. Went camping, up to Nelson. Then it got less friendly (US side) then passports required. To the point we stopped going. It sucks when politicians make our world smaller as in 'we have access to less' instead of smaller as in 'it's a small world after all'.
Not just Canada but all of North America. I used to go into Mexico with my friends as a teenager to find trouble. No passport or adult supervision required.
I'm surprised how quickly people have forgotten that North America was a giant open border zone until very recently. You only needed a passport to travel overseas. In hindsight that was actually a pretty unique arrangement.
Try going to Switzerland by car (from France for example), and you'll see what an actual border check is.
Pretty different from having a chance to be stopped by a random check while crossing.
Hm, I went there multiple times from different directions, including france last year and at most had to show ID, but was usually waived on. It really depends I guess.
I was just in Europe this February. I took a bus from France to Germany and customs checked the passports of everyone on board.
Yes, this is how European social welfare works. And it is fantastic! Because the entirety of the EU is benefitting from it. Polish people have larger spending power, interesting and safe places to visit, etc.
This is not a "present" given to Poland. This is ensuring a better life for all Europeans.
In the 1980s, EU money was flowing to Spain, Portugal and Greece. And people complained about that too.
But the result is inarguably positive. Those countries had only recently become democracies after decades of military dictatorships or otherwise unstable third-world style governments. Today they're the most dynamic economies in the EU in many respects, and their democracies are well established and functioning.
The EU doesn't get nearly enough credit for how it transformed the continent. People have forgotten how nearly all European countries were in a very bad shape after WWII. Fascists had remained in power in Spain and Portugal. Soviets were orchestrating communist takeovers in countries like Italy. It's a small miracle that the liberal democratic economic order won so quickly and decisively.
I think this is the hidden reason why the American alt-right/far-right/MAGA/techbro types hate the EU with so much apoplectic rage. For all its problems, big-picture-like it actually works to gradually coalesce a huge rich continent with a bigger population than the US into something increasingly more coherent, and if it continues to work it will mean that the Western world now has two heavyweight leaders, not one. For people who tend to view the world as a giant zero-sum dominance competition, this is of course a big threat. One more big player = one more competitor.
(The techbros hate it for a different, if related, reason - they aren't nearly as successful at capturing regulators, astroturfing and controlling discourse, and otherwise taking charge of that second entity as they are with the hapless US federal government).
> (The techbros hate it for a different, if related, reason - they aren't nearly as successful at capturing regulators, astroturfing and controlling discourse, and otherwise taking charge of that second entity as they are with the hapless US federal government).
I'd propose a different reason - the techbros disassociate with the EU because if someone want to work in tech that means getting fairly intimate with US culture, companies and markets. There is a reason this conversation is happening on a message board backed by a US company (moderated to US standards, I might add) - the Europeans don't have the ecosystem to sustain something similar.
If Europe were capable of building the ecosystems needed to fielding a large number of competent tech companies then techbros would start turning up there too.
Don’t make shit up about people you don’t understand.
>American alt-right/far-right/MAGA/techbro
Bucketing these all together doesn’t even make sense. A “techbro” has completely different reasons to dislike the EU (regulatory regime unfriendly to tech startups) than some MAGA focused on US competitors.
As someone from the tech industry, I’m disappointed in the EU as it falls further and further behind on innovation. I love the EU though and frequently visit it (which is not something a MAGA would do).
Europe is the birthplace of democracy, socialism, feminism and secularism.
Ofcourse Christ conservatives hate it.
And remember Christianity come from the middle east.
Jesus would have foreseen the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz before launching a war of choice on the Persians.
Good thing we are a Democratic Republic :)
All non-monarchies in Europe are republics too. It’s by far the most common type of democracy. It’s unclear to me why some Americans insist on making a distinction that doesn’t exist.
So your measure for success is how people get to put a piece of paper in a box every four years whilst their issues get ignored.
What... are you really belittling democracy
That’s not what I said. I said there are more important things to increase the wellbeing of the citizens of a country than democracy. In other words, a country can use democracy as a tool to destroy itself.
Maybe. But I don't think you will find any of those things without strong democracy.
Counterpoint: China from Deng and onwards is an autocracy with rapidly improving material conditions
Its population will halve this century thanks to their autocratic policies so we’ll see how that unfolds
Singapore says hi.
Singapore is a "managed democracy". The PAP plays dirty, but if they genuinely stopped delivering the goods, they would get voted out.
which things? care to be more specific?
>Today they're the most dynamic economies in the EU in many respects
In what sense are they "dynamic economies"? Their GDP per capita has barely increased at all over the past two decades, they're mired in debt, and haven't produced a single new company that's significant on the global stage.
Spain is currently the fastest growing state in Europe, is the largest source new job creation in Europe, and is currently benefiting from its large scale investments in renewables and grid infrastructure sheltering it from the worst of the Iran war.
Inditex, Mercadona, Movistar?...
That is incorrect for Portugal. We didn't took part on the WWII and came out with a rich country that kept growing on double-digits. Eventually it was attacked simultaneouly by the US/Russia proxies for 10 years until 1974.
It was after that US/Russia sponsored this communist takeover of our country that the new puppet governments have thrown the natives into extreme misery until someone from the EU decided to reduce the levels of corruption and misery. We simply swapped one master for another and hasn't been good for our land.
So please don't compare our country to whatever "solutions" brought by the same entities who caused our problems in the first place. We needed almost 50 years to remove socialism from this country and reduce the venezuelan/cuban style poverty forced upon us.
Spain is often given as an example of a failed economy ruined by socialists. GDP per capita is basically flat over the last 2 decades, $30K. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/esp/spa... vs Poland that tripled or let's say Israel that had the same GDP as Spain and now has double.
So you’re taking from others who earned it and give it someone that didn’t? Got it.
As noted in the other comment Poland is not even getting that much money per capita, it’s just a fairly large country.
They are still getting half of what Belgium is getting and unlike the overwhelming majority of bureaucrats in Brussels Polish farmers actually produce something useful.
Yes, in the EU they call it 'sharing'
That's like the entire point of the EU yes, most people agree it's better than what we used to have, considering how it went in 1914 and 1939 for example
Money is a claim on future work - it only works if the system works.
So few people understand this about money. That it's not a resource. It's just accounting system.
This is what capitalists literally do with workers. It's not like capitalists are creating anything valuable, they're just leeches extracting wealth.
I rather have workers get the money than more corporate welfare.
> It's not like capitalists are creating anything valuable,
Some capitalists create enormous value, some destroy it, some are essentially passive recipients of returns generated by others.
Capitalists provide real productive functions like capital allocation, risk-bearing, founding, governance, monitoring, etc.
No capitalists just provide money, something other entities can as well. Often better too.
Capitalists are completely useless when they have no workers, so I don't understand your points outside of "wow capitalists require a lot of workers to exist."
Hence the rush towards LLM systems, the dream of perpetual labor machine is too enticing.
There is also no risks for capitalists, do we live on the same planet where the stated US economic policy isn't to socialize the risks and privatize the gains?
> There is also no risks for capitalists
So you argue no capitalists ever lost money? It happens all the time, the risk is real.
The risk is absolutely real, and varies immensely, as does its significance.
Consider the risks of VC backed initiatives, which far more often than not, return less than market salary to entrepreneurs, and less than the S&P 500 to capitalists.
For a shot at the jackpot, entrepreneurs are risking substandard salaries, and capitalists substandard returns.
You could argue that the capitalist’s risk is more significant than the entrepreneur’s. Even in failure, a VC initiative can afford the entrepreneur greater networking and professional experience than other roles, which increases their future earning potential and offsets their risk of substandard salary.
Hard to say the same for the capitalist, who is also, of course, risking a far greater amount of currency than anyone else.
But a risk’s significance is not determined by the amount wagered; it is determined by the consequences of losing the wager. As well as the consequences of participation, or lack thereof.
Median American lifetime earnings are somewhere between one and two million dollars; let’s say an entire life costs two million. A capitalist capable of investing a billion dollars could risk an entire lifetime’s money on a venture every other month, for eighty years, cradle to grave, and if they suffered complete losses every time, they’d still die with enough money for 1600 years of life in a wealthy nation.
The sum risked is immense. But the consequences of losing it are null.
It is, of course, more nuanced than that. Many businesses are funded by people with far less than a billion dollars, and many of them fail. There's also 3,000 billionaires, and an overwhelming majority of human lives that cost far less than American's.
They're also the 3rd smallest net recipient of EU funds per capita:
https://i.imgur.com/VlRkDMy.png
You mean 13? You have to count the net contributors as well or its very misleading...
But that's not really meaningful in a "largest economy" point of view.
WTF is up with Luxembourg on that graph?
It is a tax haven, with one of the highest GDP / person in the world, why is it, by magnitudes, the biggest recipient of EU largesse / person??!
Lots of people who work in Luxembourg don't live there so anything "per capita" is a bit misleading.
Additionally a lot of the EU's institutions are based there or have offices there, some of which might count as investments as well.
Lastly, everything there is really expensive. So you need to invest a larger amount to achieve the same thing as elsewhere.
These are reasons why it might not be the largest provider of funds per capita, not why it would be by orders of magnitude the biggest recipient.
I have been to Luxembourg and to Hungary, Bulgaria & Greece - the otherwise obvious contenders for "poorest" in the EU and Luxembourg should not be in the picture.
If it gets funds for restoring one railway bridge or something of that sort the fact the population is tiny makes the per capita investment look huge, just usual tiny country effects.
A bunch of foreign companies also incorporate their EU subsidiaries there (presumably due to some tax benefit). I imagine that distorts their GDP quite badly as well.
I presume this is because of the EU institutions there and that expenditure to maintain those institutions counts towards receipts (and this effect is then exaggerated due to Luxembourg's small population). Certainly no one in the EU is under any illusion that Luxembourg is poor, much less vastly poorer than the next poorest EU country.
Notoriously difficult to portray correctly in EU money-shuffling statistics. Some money not granted to the grand duchy still filed under "beneficiary country: Luxembourg" due to some program or institution being headquartered there. And it is essentially impossible to compare apples to apples what happens in actual EU budget and what happens in Kirchberg, home to EIB.
Small population plus lots of EU institutions.
Exactly. Which proves that people who keep saying that Poland's growth is only due to EU's money should finally stop.
Another argument: Poland's GDP had already been growing at a similar pace before it joined the EU (but after it got rid of communism).
The largest EU benefit is that it makes democratic and rule of law backsliding unlikely. So if you invest money in Poland you can be reasonably sure that it won't get stolen from you. Hungary was a demonstration that this works over the long term.
In the EU, money gets stolen from you in a more subtle way. For example, the COVID situation, with unlimited money-printing was a tax on the people who had savings, and supporting a specific subset of the economy, or, delaying the tax in the essence.
There is no lesson of "democracy" to give. At best it is a guided democracy, and this is very generous.
For example, VPNs are going to be forbidden, and the free speech compared to the US is a little toy.
Elections are often a facade in many EU countries.
In France for example, it's always the "right" (btw you can be socially or jailed if you support them by using the wrong words) against the existing party, and communists are begging it's better to vote for the existing party, than support the newcomers.
It's a loop, this is why there is this joke that voters are "beavers", because at every elections they are asked "build a dam" against competition.
There is the same beaver thing, over and over again for 30 years.
Even people that are actually elected you have nowhere your word near their decisions (and even less near Von der Leyen and similar people).
Poland understood long time ago that it needs a safe country, and that they need to make sure that the people in their country are fine and safe before helping the whole planet.
Hungary and Poland are a little bit in the same boat, their relative independence saves them (e.g. refusing the EUR currency, refusing some policies) that allows them to have more leeway to support the local people, while benefiting of the funds from the EU and Schengen.
The EU prevents your money from being stolen, except when the EU itself decides to withhold or deduct it. Hungary has lost over a billion euros in ECJ daily fines...
If you push it even further, this is forgetting about the hundreds of billions that are centrally distributed to third-parties (and this is just Ukraine!). So, your money, our decision.
> unlimited money-printing was a tax on the people who had savings
US printed so much that basically entire global economy had to pay for it in huge inflation in the years that followed. And all that freshly printed money ended up in pockets of US billionaires.
> The largest EU benefit is that it makes democratic and rule of law backsliding unlikely.
On the contrary. Since the EU has no meaningful penalty mechanism other than withholding funds, and enormous capacity for shared damage absorption, once a country passes a certain threshold of development membership in the EU actually encourages government misbehavior including democratic backsliding, because it insulates the government from many potential adverse consequences.
For example, governments around the world have to fear violent revolution. But in the EU, the shared desire for law and order is so strong that the rest of the members are likely to support a member state in repressing such a revolution with essentially any degree of brutality, regardless of the condition of that state’s democracy, because the alternative (a successful coup in an EU member state) is impossible to contemplate.
Yet you can see crowds of young anti-woke Germans on X claiming that Poland's been growing only because of their (i.e. the Germans') money.
Also, the reason you've given doesn't explain why it worked so much better for Poland than for Czechia, Slovakia and a few others.
> doesn't explain why it worked so much better for Poland than for Czechia, Slovakia and a few others.
It's hard to see the other paths they could be on tho. One person's failure is another's raging success. It might be a bit like the way we take a peace for granted, because we can't internalize the cost of all the ways it could have been worse.
> Yet you can see crowds of young anti-woke Germans on X
There are also crowds of young anti-woke Poles claiming that Poland should leave EU because we would be better without it and claiming that EU is puppet of Germany. I've also seen opinions that Israel is a puppet of Poland, aimed at Israelis. If you want to, you will see all opinions you could imagine.
This all started with Facebook. Those "opinions" are partly manufactured in russia and for russian money amplified through US owned social networks. Any "opinion" that sows discord in the West is used. Content is pretty much irrelevant. The outcome is what matters. Divisions, reduction of trust in institutions and leadership. It works because there are people in the west who opportunistically politically capture audiences created by this discord. And they do it, by repeating same "opinions", often even for free.
I wonder how many of those accounts are sock puppets like we have in American social media.
If you look at election outcomes you can see there are a lot of real ones, no need for sock puppets.
> Yet you can see crowds of ...
The "logic" of xenophobic nationalism is that narratives are selected for how well they (1) cast "us" as victims, (2) cast some convenient "others" as villains, and (3) fire up "our" feelings of hatred. Neither logic nor truth are particularly desirable - and narratives which are particularly defiant of logic and truth may be a way of virtue signaling within xenophobic national social circles.
Yes - main benefit of EU is regulatory stabilization and open market. Ironically also this was working also before joining EU (most of the adjustment happening as requirement to join EU and implemented before joining).
A lot of it also was behind a requirement to basically "fix your shit".
You could get the money but you had to get bureaucracy to be right and transparent to cut down on fraud, and that helped the rest of the govt to have less fraud.
Much of the stabilization was due to the strong domestic market. Recall that Poland was the only country to avoid the 2008/2009 recession. It is tight global integration that causes recessions to spread.
Brazil also famously avoided the 2008-09 recession to a great extent, to name one example.
Tight global integration is not a bad thing. Even if we took at face value your argument that a strong domestic market protected Poland in that case, you can't cherry pick the one instance in which lower-than-expected integration was beneficial without also considering all the other times in which it was harmful.
Poland's growth does well when everyone is in the dip. Even in 2020 crisis Poland dipped less than other. Although the difference was less that time. 8 years of populist rule did harm Poland a bit.
But this was largely the particular cause in this case... The strong domestic market insulated the economy from international economic shocks.
The US also has a very strong domestic market and yet it was not "insulated"
That's because the shocks came from the domestic US market!
Indeed. The self-congratulatory narrative around "EU funds" is obnoxious and ignorant. As you say, Poland's economic growth was similar before it had joined the EU. (Many economists then thought Poland's accession in 2004 was premature and should have been postponed.) Causes were cultural (there is a strong, traditional entrepreneurial streak in Polish culture) and related to the economic reforms undertaken during the transition from the centrally-planned economy of the socialist period. People need to remember that Poles did not choose the communist regime after the War. It was thuggishly and violently imposed onto Poland by the occupying Soviets. Poles merely endured a provisional acceptance of the regime, because they had no choice.
Furthermore, as the GP hints, EU funds earmarked for Poland don't necessarily remain in Poland as investment. Much of that money circulates back into the pockets of contributing countries. You have to look at the entire paper trail to understand where money is actually ending up.
Also worth noting: Poland didn't receive a dime of reparations after the War. Germany (and with later contribution by the Soviets) had unleashed such mind-boggling destruction on Polish cities, towns, cultural inheritance, industry, etc. that only the so-called Swedish Deluge matches or exceeds this devastation.
The EU presents certain clear economic benefits for member countries. Nobody disputes that. But the patronizing and paternalistic narrative of some countries - reminiscent of their goofy rationalizations for their occupation of that region during the 19th century - need to go away.
Can't agree more. Given its geography and population, one would expect Poland to be a major economy, but it's been occupied or even completely erased from existence for large stretches of industrial modernity. The period since 1989 is the longest stretch of true sovereignty that Poland has had since the 18th century.
The fucking krauts (both the German/Prussian and the Austrian/Hapsburg varieties) can and should toss them a few złoty for economic development as recompense for the horrific treatment they've dealt Poland over the centuries. It would be nice if the Russians would too, but that's not the reality we currently live in.
Not really, the old smaller European Community should be restored and Poland can become the 51st US state for buffer purposes.
Times were much better.
"Not really" what?
>Also worth noting: Poland didn't receive a dime of reparations after the War.
Poland received virtually all of the lands that were considered Prussia though.
If you peer into the (un-tendentious) history of much of those lands, you might take a slightly different view of them and their role and importance in Polish history, culture, language, and statehood, beyond just the 20th century... But perhaps more to the point, Poland lost nearly half of its prewar territory, east of the Curzon line. Poland is territorially smaller today than it was before WWII.
Indeed it received Pomerania and the industrial center Silesia. Russia got East Prussia.
Probably worth more than the EUR 1 trillion fantasy figure that Polish right wingers demand.
It also "received" several million of its own people killed, including the highly educated Jewish community. While we are crunching numbers, let us not forget that loss of human capital matters in economy as well.
You greatly overestimate its significance. The benefits are roughly 1% of the GDP. In 2023 Poland netted 8.2 bn€ [1]. The GDP was 751 bn€.
[1] https://www.pap.pl/en/news/poland-largest-recipient-eu-funds...
You are naming a year outside those he named, it might influence significantly the result.
1% of the GDP is a considerable amount of money. The GDP is not a country's profit, not even its revenue. If we stick to 2023, Poland had a budget deficit of 5% of the GDP, which makes 1% a very welcome gift.
At one point, don't remember when, the money sent back home by Polish immigrants was about 8% of Poland's GDP. So 1% is not that much.
> I love the polish, but credit where credit is due
> I ment: „Poland gets money, Poland transforms it into more money”.
I have noticed that absolutely every time Poland's success is mentioned, someone from EU steps in to downplay it. A self-serving bias. Seriously, that type of comment is absolutely everywhere. Any YouTube video. Any Reddit post. In last couple days I have seen it about dozen times, last time today here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ArchitecturalRevival/comments/1t6k7...
And each time it's some unsubstantiated remark, not once do those people actually bother to check what the actual amount of subsidies did Poland receive over the past 22 years, or how does Poland fare against other EU members. They always imply that ALL THIS SUCCESS is thanks to EU.
For the record: Poland received in total about as much as its yearly budget is in 2026. Other recent EU members also received more-less the same or, per-capita, much more! Did you bother to see how other EU countries developed in that time?
Growth-wise, since 1990, Poland's economy grew substantially each year (even before joining the EU in 2004) and is only behind China: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F5Z8u1mWMAAHtUU?format=png&name=...
Seriously, look at that damn map. Find other EU members on that list.
Ergo, Poland must be doing something EXCEPTIONAL if its combined growth FAR SURPASSES not only any other recent EU members but ALL BUT ONE country worldwide? It can't just be that relatively small amount of the EU money, or the EU membership itself, can it?
So, for f*ks say, how about western EU shuts up and acknowledges IT'S NOT ALL THANKS TO THE EU, will it?
I am personally a big fan of the EU, but those downplaying comments are so annoying I can't but think it's some sort of jealousy. Credit where credit is due to POLES themselves.
You could just as well claim the growth is thanks to NATO membership because, if you look at Ukraine and Belaraus, it's quite plausible as well.
Based on my limited experience, Polish are incredibly workaholic and work-focused people. It's really no surprise they elevate themselves economically.
That's not really my experience as a person born and raised in Poland.
If anything the decades of communist occupation destroyed the work ethic.
We have a famous saying "whether you stand or lay down, you deserve 1000zł".
And intelligent, hence the Nazi stereotype.
Nazi stereotype?
Poles have also the lowest tfr of the EU. This growth comes at a cost : the future.
The EU is working as intended then.
Even without funds distributing EU cash, a common market works as a leveller this way and pulls up the poorer countries, because if you can live work and operate anywhere, people naturally pick the cheapest and easiest places to start a business serving the EU.
Spain and Portugal were the previous beneficiaries and everyone benefits really as jobs are created everywhere.
This is far better than a situation where larger economies dominate all others forever.
I don't understand the number of people here who repeat the official EU elites line.
Would you say that The US and Mexico should be forced to implement free movement of people, goods, services and industry with a new North American Union capital in Mexico city?
If not, what is the difference?
Mind you that Polish workers are the next in line to be screwed if Ukraine joins the EU.
NAFTA was pretty beneficial until people went nuts about it.
> Mind you that Polish workers are the next in line to be screwed if Ukraine joins the EU.
So when German workers got screwed when Poland joined EU it was fine, but Poland is where you draw the line?
Since you seem to be implying causality here, I would assume that the other major beneficiaries have enjoyed a similar period of growth?
If there was a correlation you would see the same trend in Slovakia, Hungary and such
Well, you do see the same trend in gdp per capita in Slovakia. The problem is that Poland has 30m more people.
https://georank.org/assets/img/charts/economy/poland/slovaki...
Per capita Slovakia and Hungary are getting way more than Poland so its the other way around if anything (of course the Baltics are a good counterpoint)
Slovakia growth wasn't doing too bad, for Hungary we know the reason why it's the poorest EU country, Orban stole everything.
Conservative estimates put the embezzled amount around 60,000,000,000 Euros. The upcoming government says it’s at least the double of this.
Which you do, except they're a lot smaller than Poland.
The article on AP literally has a graph showing outsized growth of Poland compared to these countries (measured in GDP per capita).
"GDP measured in constant 2021 international dollars, adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP) to account for differences in the cost of goods and services across countries"
Meh, idk what magic maths they pull, but any other sources I find do not corroborate their graph.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352708343/figure/fi...
https://dimiter.eu/Visualizations_files/cee/gdppc_country.pn...
that is a graph of growth, but they started from different baselines, e.g. Hungary was famously known as "the happiest barrack in the communist camp".
Slovakia and Hungary have trailed % growth compared to Poland, but they are far richer countries now that they were 20 years ago, and the GDP per capita for Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia is quite close to each other[0].
I'm not trying to say Poland didn't do well, it did! I'm just saying the advantages of being in the EU outweigh any national merit by a lot, which should be quite self evident.
[0] GDP, nominal, per capita: 31,336 / 28,430 / 31,242 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
> „Poland is the largest beneficiary of EU funds 2014-2020, with one in four euro going to Poland“ https://www.gov.pl/web/funds-regional-policy/poland-at-the-f... Update: The comments below this are strange.
The comments are questioning what you wrote, which implies without evidence, that a small amount of EU money relative to Poland's own GDP, in just 6 years, is somehow entirely responsible for Poland's growth.
Not surprised to see "German" quotation marks in this petty complaint...
Polish people have such a fear of Germans, thinking Germans are constantly scheming to screw Poland over. Whereas most Germans barely know Poland even exists.
As someone who has lived in both countries its such a hilarious anxiety.
Indeed hilarious considering my grandparent still remember being put into a german nazi concentration camp.
> As someone who has lived in both countries its such a hilarious anxiety.
What's hilarious about it? It seems pretty well-rooted given the actual history of the two areas.
- 1939: Germany invaded in 1939, officially starting World War II.
- 1941: Germany occupied the rest of Poland after attacking the Soviet Union, which had previously occupied Eastern Poland.
- Teutonic Order/Prussia: Throughout the 13th–16th centuries, the Teutonic Order fought numerous wars against Poland.
- Medieval Period: Records show invasions by Margrave Gero (963), Margrave Odo I (972), Emperor Otto II (979), and multiple campaigns by King Heinrich II between 1003 and 1017.
It’s been barely two generations since the death camps. My grandma, who is still alive, can tell you stories of seeing trains take half her village away.
Intergenerational trauma is a real psychological phenomenon.
A „hilarious anxiety” is an incredibly naive world view.
Germans probably won't attack anyone anymore, that is true.
But Germans making huge mistakes out of misguided idealism is still a problem. And given the size and influence of Germany, the rest of the continent has always to process those mistakes as well.
There are many countries in the EU that get many more funds per person than Poland and have much worse outcomes.
Some moron always show up with the "but it was all the EU subsidies" talking point, which is quite frankly part of racist tropes of eastern Europeans being dumb and worse than westerners. Could you imagine them accomplishing anything on their own? That's ridiculous. It's us, the western saviors, who did this with our penny subsidies!
Perhaps I wouldn't use such harsh words, but it is a noticeable phenomenon when interacting with _some_ Western Europeans that if Poland's success comes up in a conversation, they immediately "offer insight" that it was in fact all outside help that made it possible. (There are also, in fact, some folks further east of Poland, who like to repeat that narrative as well, but it doesn't happen nearly as often as with Westerners.)
And yes, my own take why this does happen is that there was certain order to the region in the past centuries - the West was modern and wealthy, the East was backwards and poor and all was in its natural place. This new situation is unfamiliar and needs a sort of explanation that would preserve the balance somehow. In short, they cope.
> Some moron always show up with the "but it was all the EU subsides" talking point, which is quite frankly part of racist tropes of eastern Europeans being dumb and worse than westerners. Could you imagine them accomplishing anything on their own? That's ridiculous. It's us, the western saviors, who did this with our penny subsidies!
Ireland were in a similar position for instance (received €40bn in EU subsidies in the first 45 years of membership; now a net contributor).
I'm wondering how much of the net contribution comes from tech companies and how it compares to the loss of taxes due to Ireland acting as a tax haven for tech companies.
EDIT: Net contributions seem to be $3bn/year (total, independent of tech) while loss for other EU countries due to corporate tax evasion is $6bn/year.
idk who's racist but you didn't research this topic even 5 minutes on google apparently, you see the exact same trends everywhere, the GDP per capita rose pretty much in the same manner in Poland vs Slovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria for example.
Of course these countries have 5-10m inhabitants so in term of raw GDP and industrial power they can't compete
https://georank.org/economy/bulgaria/hungary
https://georank.org/economy/poland/slovakia
https://georank.org/economy/bulgaria/poland
Many (especially Germans) try to wrap it falsely as charity and throwing numbers without context.
It is not true for the entire EU budget: the 2014–2020 MFF allowed up to €959.99bn in commitments, so Poland’s €77.6bn cohesion allocation was about 8.1% of the whole EU long-term budget.
For context this is like 0.7% of yearly German overall public expenditure go to Poland. And this money per year is also like 5% of state budget spending.
a big share of this money goes back to foreign companies in form of sales and contracts.
Poland had a relatively clear idea of what they wanted to do once the Russians were out unlike some of the other countries in the eastern block, and it didn’t hurt that some of their neighbors to the north Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia also had pretty good idea of what they wanted to do once they were out from under the Russians, it’s just too bad that the Ukraine when they had the brief chance, they didn’t take advantage of it hopefully they’ll get a second chance.
> I ment: „Poland gets money, Poland transforms it into more money”.
It's not trivial that this works. In Hungary we messed this up big time, hopefully it can get fixed now.
And 90 cents of every euro returning to the Old EU. Not to mention tax avoidance schemes, western companies transfer their profits out.
Finland has been an EU net contributor since 2001. Now it has among the highest unemployment rates in the EU and is going through austerity, while Poland is visibly building and converging. I understand the logic of cohesion funds, but from Finland it increasingly feels like: we cut, Poland builds.
This is no charity, this money largerly comes back to the countries that are biggest spenders on these funds. It's basically an equivalent of FDI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_rising_tide_lifts_all_boats
Since one of the major donors is Germany, I also like to consider this as reparations for WWII. I wish people in Poland would realize more how generous the EU has been to them.
Migrant donations with fake / fabricated Biedronka receipts and all! TYTY
The Baltics and the Balkan states probably get just as many handouts as Poland, and still show lesser rate of economic growth.
Institutions aside, Poland is well placed geographically to be a manufacturing hub for Germany and the rest of Europe. You can't do that in Baltics or the Balkans.
In 2023 they got a measly 10% (8.2Billion) of the GM and Chrysler bailout that will never be repaid ($85Billion)
The EU gets huge benefits for that investment, the CEO of GM gets a multi-milion dollar pay packet.
Definitely not the largest per capita though. There's a lot of people in Poland.
Per capita tho it isn't the largest beneficiary. The funds were just well spent.
Oh no, other countries have been in that position but it did not go well
Countries don't mechanically convert inputs into development. There are many examples of countries with large capital inflows and/or strong capabilities that still fail to become strong economies. Corruption is one of the major frictions that prevents those resources from translating into broad economic success.
But be fair: Poland had to rebuild after WWII and 40+ years of communism.
When Western countries got money via the Marshal Plan:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan
Poland had... "friendly" Soviets "supporting" their country for almost 44 years...
This is such a bad take. I'm impressed how often this gets parroted online.
Next time, please check how many Poles left Poland for western EU since they joined.
It’s a factor that’s not any more significant than the Marshall Plan was in your Wirtschaftswunder in the 1970s, which, oddly enough, a lot of Germans have no issue attributing to a domestic merit alone. Funny how that works!
If it was the EU contributions that were the dominant force here, Germany could… simply do the same and prop up its own struggling economy with money printed by the ECB. Instead, it prefers to see it crumble under an obese welfare state that largely funds inactive third-world fake asylum seekers. So clearly, there’s way more nuance to economic success than simply having funds redirected from one account to another.
Britain received more from the Marshall plan and did a little worse. The Marshall plan also did not involve the US having completely free access to Germany economically and move all their companies to Germany for cheaper wages.
If you talk about asylum seekers (which may be a valid point), notice also that German social security institutions are filled to the brim with Eastern European claimants.
> Notice also that German social security institutions are filled to the brim with Eastern European claimants.
Utterly false: nationals of Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania account for approximately 4.9% of all SGB-II Leistungsberechtigte (~256,000 of 5.24 million as of December 2025).
> The Marshall plan also did not involve the US having completely free access to Germany economically and move all their companies to Germany for cheaper wages.
This is such a bizarre point. The openness of the common market goes both ways, you do realise that, right? For more than the first decade after the accession of the Central Eastern European countries to the EU, Western European countries saw an influx of workers that were well educated (or skilled in trade professions), which helped fill the gaps in their labour market. So if you were going to try to draw an analogy here, you’d also have to point out that the US didn’t import millions of Germans after the war into its own labour market. Well, barring some rocket scientists who had built weapons of mass destruction and death for Hitler.
Anyway, yes, that’s how the common market works: companies can move operations to countries where labour is cheaper (in Poland), but other companies have encouraged labour to move where they already operate (in Germany). And what’s forgotten in this discussion is that the cohesion subsidies are in fact a form of compensation for the inherent imbalance that a pure common market would exhibit. That’s why it took years in negotiations for those poorer countries to decide under what terms they’re actually willing to open up their markets, and in many cases it’s been a very controversial issue.
You are arguing from the point of capital and the industry. West Germany was fine without an influx of educated Poles. The capital and the industry benefit, not the employees.
You are by the way underestimating the credit that the Marshall Plan gets in Germany. It is taught in schools and not commonly denied.
Well, Germany had their own EU funds when they raided other countries. Today, noone bats an eye?
At least Poland does it legally.
No one can deny EU funds have helped, but putting credits only there is pure misinformation. Take a look at what part of GDP are EU funds and what is the size per capita. Hard work and open market were actually the biggest contributors to the development of Poland.
It seems to be almost universally agreed across the former Soviet Bloc that Poland indeed used the EU funds more wisely than anyone else.
> „Poland is the largest beneficiary of EU funds 2014-2020, with one in four euro going to Poland“
The lion share of this budget has been defrauded, fraud is only slightly less widespread than in Hungary. Piles of (only) documentation are produced by professionals then funds are funnelled to the families of local authorities. Honestly I'm confused, maybe that's indeed how EU funds are suppoused to work?
It's important to understand the difference between handouts and investments with an expected ROI.
It's unfortunate that 0th order thinking jumps to this framing, it's one reason I always laugh when people talk about SpaceX taking 'government handouts' without these folks realizing the 100x ROI the government got out of their investment. All investments are 'hand outs' but not all 'hand outs' are investments.
Clear thinking at a large enough scale will prevent a populace from self destructing due to stupidity about this topic.
Honestly, it’s not why their economy has grown. That money is just wasted on government projects? Has it hurt? No, but it is a small amount when it comes to the entire Polish economy.
it's far from enough given they didn't pay reparation yet for wwii
Government investment works. That's why America's billionaires are mostly just people stealing as much of it as they can.
It's a first line buffer state against Putin.
Think of it as defense spending
Buffer implies it's void of meaningful content. An unfair word to describe an industrialized nation and member of the top 20 largest economies.
Cue the butthurt Germans, decimating their own bread and butter industries by ridiculous policies like diesel and nuclear bans, immigration straight into the welfare state, then complaining that others - who did not commit economic suicide - fare better. Note that Germany vastly profits from the EU as well, as it allows Germany to push e.g. their established supermarkets into Eastern Europe, undercutting any competition. This is never mentioned when talking about "largest beneficiaries of EU funds"
We have to distinguish between the German industry and corporations and the German people. The German people do not benefit from Aldi expanding into Poland.
>credit where credit is due
Eh, as an American I've spent many hours reading Europeans railing against the United States here on HN.
Not once has a European ever given the US credit for the Marshall Plan.
I actually look forward to seeing the EU become the global hegemon so they can learn about how much "fun" it is. The US can sit in the stands eating popcorn just like Switzerland.
> Not once has a European ever given the US credit for the Marshall Plan.
How can you honestly say that though. A blatant overgeneralization of a large group of people, but this has been a recurring theme on HN lately.
So I would agree that people spouting anti-US sentiment have been conveniently downplaying, leaving out, or haven't been educating themselves on, this important part of US-European history, but what's new.
In the meantime, streets have been named after Marshall, plaques and statues have been erected (including recent times) at least in the more Western parts of continential Europe where much of the Marshall Plan funds ended up, and its extreme importance is quite an ingrained part of WW2 school history education. Just as one example, Arnhem was largely rebuilt using these funds and has historically paid homage and still does today with such tributes and memorials.
>How can you honestly say that though. A blatant overgeneralization of a large group of people, but this has been a recurring theme on HN lately.
Perhaps there is a miscommunication. What I meant to say is, I have not seen it mentioned a single time over many hours of arguing on HN about the US/Europe relationship. It's not an 'overgeneralization', simply an observation.
>In the meantime, streets have been named after Marshall, plaques and statues have been erected (including recent times) at least in the more Western parts of continential Europe where much of the Marshall Plan funds ended up, and its extreme importance is quite an ingrained part of WW2 school history education. Just as one example, Arnhem was largely rebuilt using these funds and has historically paid homage and still does today with such tributes and memorials.
That is nice to hear. But it doesn't seem to stop US-bashing from being the continent's trendiest hobby. I never saw a European say to another: "Hey now, they did do the Marshall Plan for us. Maybe the Yanks aren't always bad."
The problem is that US establishment politicians have traditionally sold US foreign policy to voters as "a responsibility to uphold freedom and democracy" and so forth. Then Americans hear directly from the supposed beneficiaries of this "responsibility", and the sentiment is overwhelmingly negative. The American voter feels betrayed, and wants out of the arrangement. It contributes to (1) anti-establishment sentiment, and (2) isolationist sentiment.
The condescending attitude of Europeans ("NATO is mainly to benefit US interests, you American fool", without being very specific about those interests aside from vague handwaving towards the Middle East, where most of us want less involvement anyhow) is not helping matters.
Now compare that number to this number:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_material_losses_during_...
And don’t forget the Partitions and The Deluge, too.
Crazy how people just like to pretend that wealth acquired before 1950 somehow just appeared there naturally.
Educated AND motivated workforce will do the trick.
All the polish I know that work in IT enjoy handwork as well. They are hard workers.
As a Polish IT worker I feel that we enjoy hardwork too much. I'm talking here about "kultura zapierdolu" [0] which is what we call the specific Polish version of culture of unhealthy work/life balance.
[0] https://lubimyczytac.pl/ksiazka/5124728/czesc-pracy-o-kultur...
I always take minor issue with this.
I feel like one uberhard worker has an unhealthy return. But a group of uberhard workers have a healthy return - they compound each others hard work and build a prosperous _environment_.
My wife and I work very hard, as do our colleagues. But together we've built a pretty healthy routine, home, and (for now at least) financial situation. This has enabled us to have kids more easily than most, travel, etc.
The hardest workers /busiest folks I know are farmfolk relatives, and they also have a level of social connection and family connection that I envy all the time. It's mostly from them showing up to help with _everything_.
handwork != hardwork ;)
They have a strong reputation as hard-working. After the liberation of Eastern Europe, Polish crews were all over Eastern Europe doing everything from restoring historic town centers to quickly and reliably putting a fresh coat of paint on apartments.
I guess it's anecdata. Polish engineers I've worked with weren't that good at technical stuff nor communication (in English). They're overprotective with "their" code and in general we've had more luck with western/southern Europeans.
I'm from Poland, but I worked in multinational place in Europe and I would rank polish people on average in the middle of pack in terms of working ethic.
Behind Germans, or Scandinavians, but ahead of most Mediteraneans.
I'm Polish, working for globally remote companies. I second the communication issue. Most Polish devs are so ashamed of their english(even if it's perfectly communicative) that it makes it hard to discuss technical ideas with them. As for technical knowledge, I guess that's cognitive bias, most Polish devs I met were far better at tech stuff than most f.e. Germans I worked with.
Looking at other comments it seems like your experience is less representative.
All the Polish engineers I've worked with have been top notch.
They also enjoy 15% tax, through some arrangement I’m still not convinced is legal for IT contractors…
But yeah, some of the most skilled and passionate engineers I’ve worked with have been from Poland and the surrounding countries like Czechia.
12% for software development, 8.5% for design/management. The caveat being, you can't deduct anything from tax, only VAT(under some assumptions). If you have actual expenses it's 12/32% progressive or 19% linear tax. Of course all of those are assuming you own a one man company and work B2B. Most devs here do. Otherwise regular contract of employment is progressive 12/32% tax, plus Healthcare and employer payments. Much less beneficial to both sides hence why it's not preferred by most.
15%? With some legal footwork you can get to 10 or 5%, depending if you count general medical I surance as a tax or not.
So called 'IP BOX', but it's very rare, as most people consider it risky and it requires a lot of paperwork. It's also frowned upon a lot.
This misses the obligatory health tax and pension fund contributions.
The pension fund is usually not considered a tax formally, but most people I know assume with our demographics and pension system we are just paying for current retirees (and our 'savings' will be impacted by inflation when it becomes impossible to maintain), so practically it's a tax.
Than there is 23% VAT (ofc much less than 23% because both the IT company and the contractor pass it to client and subtract some cost; so only a piece of it affects the contractor; it's a convoluted thing and I don't really know if I should treat it as ~22.9% or 2.3% tax on a contractor and it's client).
Were they not educated and motivated before?
Poland was sort of occupied until 1989
Which, to be fair, laid the foundation for the well-educated part.
The Soviets really valued STEM. They also quite valued emancipating women.
Just for context, in the 60s, around 5% of chemistry PhDs in the US were women. In the Soviet Union, it was 40%! [0]
Of course, that doesn't excuse all the other things they did, but the amount of badass female engineers from Eastern Europe I had the honor of working with is a direct result of the pipeline the Soviets built.
[0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/soviet-russia-had-...
With all that Chemistry talent, they could have built and dominated battery industry.
A large country that kept their communist party in charge actually does.
> The Soviets really valued STEM. They also quite valued emancipating women.
Try telling this to my mother, I'm sure she'll be excited to hear how emancipated she was.
How come eastern germany does so poorly?
They don't if you mean STEM and emancipation, quite the opposite, actually (compared to West Germany).
In addition to the points of sibling comments, their respective starting posititions were drastically different: West Germany got the marshal plan, which benefitted their economy, the East had to pay reparations to the USSR, which meant whole factories, trains, even railroad tracks, all in all amounting to about a third of industrial capacity, were transferred to the USSR.
Without having firm data, I can see a few factors that are different. After the collapse of the GDR, it was easier for eastern Germans to move to west Germany than for Polish to move to a different country in the west. Mostly younger and educated people would have made that move, hampering future generations. With the Reunification also came the whole Treuhand issue which essentially sold off a good chunk of eastern Germany for pennies to western investors, because eastern investors had no capital. That meant the east lost out on the profits from its economy as they would accumulate in the west instead. Even today a large part of east German rentals are owned by western landlords or corporations. Then the industrial base of west Germany was setup far more for competing on the open world market with automotive companies in the NW (VW), SW (Daimler) and SE (BMW) plus the big industrial area Ruhrgebiet. So you naturally got an economic focus even after Reunification on the old BRD with the previous GDR requiring decades to hopefully catch up to the rest of the new country.
One factor in this may also have been the way the privatization of East Germany was handled. Its often overlooked, but the vehicle for it was called Treuhand[1]. Regardless of whether it was necessary or not or right or wrong, it did basically shift out a large amount of capital assets into West Germany (and still carries this sentiment of "opportunistic theft" today).
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01475...
Quite a few educated East Germans have become West Germans as soon as they had the opportunity (or moved elsewhere in the world), but East Germany actually has a couple of high-tech 'hotspots' and good universities.
An East German state (Saxony) also consistently has the best education system among German states.
https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/201453/umfrag...
In general, East Germany (economically) mostly only does poorly when compared to West Germany, but not to the rest of Europe ;)
The headline figure of the article is purchase power (PPP) adjusted. I couldn't find any numbers for east German states where the purchase power adjustment happens per state. Since housing is the largest component and housing costs differ between east and west Germany using a nation wide PPP adjustment factor gives wrong results for individual states.
Incomes in the former GDR are comparable to those of Poland. They still lag behind West Germany, however (as does Poland).
I think mostly due to the bungled reunification that was basically an asset-stripping followed by enormous brain drain.
Quite simple. They all left.
MBAs and company owners do not come from stem education.
Are you saying engineers and scientists don’t own companies? That’s an odd thing to say on a forum that’s basically dedicated to exactly that outcome.
Most educated and motivated Polish people were slaughtered by Germans and Russians in WW II then ones still alive working for or heavily oppressed by puppet soviet state.
One of the examples:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre
Honestly, a lot of issues was that we needed to build up the necessary infrastructure in the first place.
And the transformation to market economy involved at least two periods of suicidal decisions in name of ideology that regressed the economy (by the same person, even)
We were. And “hard workers” is code for “easily exploited.”
Anyway the trick to explosive growth as a country is who you trade with and how you count things. We now sell things to Germany instead of USSR, of course there’s “growth.” There’s also some very real growth, quite a bit of it - but I wouldn’t put one bit of care in a “top 20 biggest economies” ranking. NL is one of the biggest food exporters in the world because it sells mediocre tomatoes to Germany instead of selling rice to Brazil and food exports are counted in euros, not calories.
Do you think the example of Poland is helping Ukraine resist and move towards the west?
I know that Ukraine takes Polish experiences into account and consults with Poles on what went well and what not during our post-communist transformation and later the EU membership. They are keen on not repeating our mistakes. There were many Ukrainians working in Poland long before the full scale work so naturally many Ukrainians were looking at Poland hoping that their country could eventually replicate polish success.
But I don't think our example has an effect on morale and spirit of resistance.
Yes, but being occupied by Russia has not traditionally been a motor for growth
They weren’t occupied by Russia, but the USSR which was an authoritarian communist state. That entire economic system failed for a reason, and the Chinese were wise to pivot (and not try spreading its ideology by force).
Yeah, I really don't think this is why China doesn't try to spread its ideology by force. I don't think a passive authoritarian state exists, just ones that don't have the military power or background / weak enough targets to achieve this. The US very much keeps them in check from invading not "wisdom".
I get it, we are being gaslit and pyoped at a massive scale across all channels about China and their supposed intentions. But proof is in the pudding, China is cutting deals all over the world, building infrastructure - all without forced regime changes or ideological prerequisites nor bombs.
"cutting deals" lol this was just yesterday: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0m2wjlkzplo
Going by your history, you clearly have a strong bias for China but adding spyware or putting countries into debt isn't virtuous.
Irrelevant post, plenty of western spies working in China (and likely much better at it). Anyways, China never took a single dollar from my pocket nor bombed anyone in the last 30 years, so yeah - I’m going to push back on this idea of some inevitable clash with them that is being programmed into everyone.
Big parts of Poland have been occupied by a regime in Moscow for much longer than soviet empire existed, with roughly same outcomes.
Most than century after Poland gained independence age WW1, you can still see the economical differences from being occupied by Germans and Russians.
Oh let’s just ignore the times Poland/ Lithuanian empire occupied east Slavic lands and force converted a large number of Orthodox in the West to Catholicism. And the kingdom/regime before soviets was quite different than Soviets or modern Russian setup in terms of ideology.
Again, that economic difference from last round was due specially to the failure of communism. And don’t forget that the US poured money into west Germany intentionally to show off their system. Look, I get some people don’t like Russia right now, but you can’t judge history through a modern lens; only through the zeitgeist of the time it occurred in.
What has one to do with another?
So to counter my argument about Russian occupation from up to 1914 being irrelevant you bring Polish Kingdom from the times of The Holy Roman Empire?
And I assume that polish literature from 18 hundreds was already deeply prescient anti-soviet? Because the russian occupant in 18 hundreds had exactly same flavours as those during the communism.
Also the German occupation was in many regards as bad as Russian one but they had absolutely different face. But that is not part of the discussion really.
And the fact that russian communist occupation of Poland had been absolutely awful was fully clear in Poland as soon as late 1940s (according to my old family members). In parcitular - some part of my family was ended war in some prisoner / working camps in western europe and had a choice of staying in the west or going back to Poland. How terrible idea to go back it was - became clear in the first few years after stayed so until the end in 1989.
I remember vividly an interview one of the russian soldiers was giving in polish television on the day when Soviet Army was leaving Poland.
"You don't even understand what you're losing. You will soon realize how big of a mistake it is and regret it deeply."
Guess what? We don't.
Adam Mickiewicz, Dziady, 1823 "Nie dziw, że nas tu przeklinają, Wszak to już mija wiek, Jak z Moskwy w Polskę nasyłają Samych łajdaków stek."
I’m not arguing that occupation was a good thing, clearly not. Anyways, look at modern Russia - they have many issues but now operate a mixed market oriented economy and have achieved #4 GDP by PPP and that’s under sanctions from hell, getting cut off from Swift and no German investment. There’s actually more in common with Russias rebound and Poland amazing growth vs the economic situation in much of the rest of the EU, they really could/should be trading partners but the EU won’t allow it.
Yes, that is cool. it doesn't change the fact how the Russians treated us for centuries, and not just during the Soviet Era and what were the outcomes compared to as some like say "EU or USA occupation". So we will thank you very much - not interested in it again, but honestly good luck to Russia being a peaceful prosperous country.
Also have you noticed how and why the trade stopped?
According to Russians they are the contineuation of USSR. heck they are celebrating victory day claiming they were the red army.
No, they don’t claim that - but they do see it as a continuous thing (Russian civilization and the genocidal threat they overcame). Also, it’s not just them who celebrate.
Also USSR was never an authoritarian communist state. They had elected leaders!
Unless Moscow is not part of russia you can't say they weren't occupied by russia.
Authoritarian has nothing to do with elections, it has everything to do with the ability of people without positions of power to influence those in power without retribution. Most countries have elections, these days, but there is no lack of authoritarian rulers staying in power for decades and jailing or murdering their opposition.
So, who elected Stalin? He was the head of the USSR after all.
Motivation requires incentive. Probably hard to do when you're a communist bureaucrat offering an extra potato.
Yes, I agree. I believe cultural norms dictated their rate of expansion. Without so many people who enjoyed hard work they like would not have been able to expand their economy as much.
7 years ago we got a Polish Hunting Spaniel, and did our first trip to Poland. Since then we've been back several times, and each time you really see the different - new and upgraded road, city buildings being renovated into new housing and commercial areas - also noticed the costs going up too.
But also you start to notice that definitely a lot of people who left Poland are coming back, and with that skills and new economic opportunities.
the EU funds argument works both ways. plenty of countries received similar transfers and didn't compound it the same way. the interesting question isn't where the money came from, it's what Poland did with it that others didn't.
Thank you. Many say our institutions are underdeveloped but I think it takes a certain maturity of the society to be able to execute projects successfully. It's not perfect, but I think we've come a long way.
Yep. Looking at Hungary.
Hungary and Poland charts look almost identical
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...
I spent some time in Poland for work about 10 years ago. I remember the cities being very expensive and chic - on par with Paris, Berlin, etc but when you got out of the cities (my project was in Bydgoszcz) it's a completely different world - poor, rundown, etc. would be curious how it is now and also where most of the Ukrainian refugees settled.
Poland 10 years ago and Poland today is night and day.
Most Ukrainians (and Belarusians) settled in major cities, starting with Warsaw. In 2022 I had a Belarusian girlfriend, and at some point I tried convincing people coming here to target smaller towns, to no avail. Still, most of them stayed here, work hard and make it, despite rents literally doubling since when the war started.
That's funny, I spent several days in Bydgoszcz in 2015 due solely to a marvelous and slightly misleading video from the tourism board: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiogaJADvPw
I learned on arrival that the city was not in fact color-graded and filled with beautiful slow motion video opportunities. Since then, every time I mention to any Pole that I've been to Bydgoszcz, the question is always "Why?"
All my memories of two fairly long trips around Poland are now ten years out of date, and I've heard only good things about its development since then.
That basically describes the US as well.
You haven’t seen that much of the US if your only impression of small towns and rural areas is rundown and poor. There are some vibrant and beautiful towns scattered throughout “flyover country”. Plenty that are decrepit too, but rural America is not a monolith.
> There are some vibrant and beautiful towns scattered throughout “flyover country”.
In my experience, these places tend to be where rich people from cities own vacation property or can commute to a city for work. An example in Minnesota is the Brainerd Lakes area, which subsists almost entirely on people from the Twin Cities visiting their lake cabins from May to September. There are some nice small towns and plenty of beautiful homes, but it’s a result of outsiders bringing money in. Next door you have Aitkin County which is poor as hell because it’s basically a swamp/peat bog that has been partially drained for agriculture, 65% of the county is wetlands: https://www.mngeo.state.mn.us/maps/LandUse/lu_aitk.pdf
Most of rural America has been hollowed out to the point where local hospitals are closing. I’m not making any judgements about rural poor people, just that rural areas tend to be poor due to a lack of local economic opportunity.
So you brought up two examples that are right next door to each other. I think you are underestimating how big and diverse the US is, as well as the positive impact the tourism and service industry can have. Rich people aren’t the only ones who go on vacation.
You’re right about limited economic opportunity, which comes with its own problems. That doesn’t preclude towns from responsible use of their natural resources or using the tax base to reinvest in the town. Not all do, but some do, to varying degrees of success. This idea that the majority of the US outside of urban areas is in a state of rotting collapse simply isn’t true.
Poverty rates in urbanized vs nonmetro areas are only a few percentage points apart: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy-population/rur...
I think this is largely an east vs west thing. Rural areas in the west certainly arent rich, but theyre generally not dirt poor like rust belt areas in the eastern US are.
The hospitals are closing because there arent enough medical schools in the US so there is a doctor shortage and since doctors are highly educated the vast majority of them prefer urban living. Most rural hospitals have to pay around double to convince doctors to work there compared to urban hospitals.
I never said that was my impression, as I'm sure there are also some vibrant small towns in Poland as well.
But it's fallacy to think that lots of wealth hasn't further concentrated in cities over the last 50 years. A lot of my family is from upstate NY, and I remember visiting them as a kid and feeling like they were nice places. They have all deteriorated greatly since I was a child. E.g. people always complain about how expensive housing is in the US. Well, there are plenty of cheap places to live in upstate NY - housing costs in a lot of those places have lagged inflation for decades. The problem is nobody really wants to move to Cortland, NY.
The issue looks especially clear when you compare small towns in close proximity to big cities compared to further out. There are lots of vibrant, quaint small towns on Long Island, for example, because they get a ton of money from their proximity to NYC. I often think a lot of the upstate NY towns would look just like the "cute" Long Island towns (e.g. similar architecture and history) if they had an influx of money.
US cities don't look chic lol, they are universally dirty (if economic giants)
Eh rural areas are quite beautiful in the US depending on the aesthetic you like.
I haven't been to Poland but have a second home in Czech Republic (my wife's country) which has the same phenomenon. It has nothing to do with economics or poverty and everything to do with people. Young people move to where the jobs are which means the larger towns and cities (this happens worldwide BTW). This means old villages are entirely inhabited by old people, most of whom only worked during the days of communism. They can't and won't change. They don't want to renovate or live in a new house. So the village gets run down. Canada (where I was born) also has run down towns and even ghost-towns, you'll just never see them. In Europe secondary highways pass through every town it seems, so you do see them.
My wife's grandma, now in her 90's, lives in a >100 year old farmhouse that's crumbling and only 1/3 of the home is even heated. Hell installing the electric heaters and indoor toilet involved a ton of arm-twisting. She's been insisting she'll die any day for the last decade and refuses to move or renovate. Meanwhile my wife's cousin lives in the same town (is a remote worker) and lives in a super-modern new home that's built to a much higher standard than the average new home in Canada. Old people are just stubborn...
Anyhow the point is that things only get renovated when the owner wants to renovate it, it has nothing to do with wealth. In the city, land is worth $$$ so inevitably it gets bought and improved. In small towns, meh...
Noah Smith had a good article about this in 2024 for those interested in reading more: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/six-ideas-for-poland
Mostly nodding along, with a few of these aged in interesting ways from where I'm sitting.
The drones bit hurts the most. There's a war an hour from our border eating FPVs by the millions, and Poland - sitting on batteries, motors, chips, a generation of engineers - has not stood up a real domestic drone industry. Money is there. Will is there. We just... haven't shipped. That should keep ministers awake.
EVs are worse. Izera is a punchline at this point. Noah literally called the play in 2024 - "don't bet on one champion, run a bunch and let them fight" - and the state did the exact opposite. We picked one horse and it never left the stable.
The Korea idea, on the other hand, Noah might have undersold. Framework agreement is for ~1,000 K2 tanks. By 2030 Poland will field more main battle tanks than Germany, France, the UK and Italy combined.
Rest holds up. "Try all the things" is right - we're just very uneven at the trying. Defense procurement: shipping. Civilian industrial policy: not so much. Software still works the way it always has: quietly, in apartments, mostly without the state in the loop. Which honestly might be a feature.
I don't know much about Poland
Why was other comment flagged and dead???
The guy has a ghost ban on Hacker News. He was banned for some other comment. He doesn't know that no one else can see his post.
Probably not hellbanned, maybe spam filters gone wrong. I vouched them back into the land of the living :)
Thank you :)
My best guess is people think it's AI written? I mean, I kinda get such vibes from it, but it (IMO) could also be human written.
They have had good public education for the past decade or two and rank high in international student rankings. So, I would bet that high 'human capital' would be the cause here.
> They have had good public education for the past decade or two and rank high in international student rankings.
I suspect good public education is a symptom, not the cause.
The cause likely is valuing a good education. Culture always wins. You can give people who don't value it a good education and they'll barely benefit.
Polish education has a long tradition of excellence. Indeed, the last decade has seen reforms that have been heavily criticized for working against that.
You mean "MBA for a fee" Collegium Tumanum, or the best elite two universities which globally barely rank somewhere in the fifth hundred? Sorry it's not education. Poles are cheap and subservient, while cutthroat among each other.
Poland is fifth in the world with gold medals in informatics Olympiad
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Olympiad_in_Info...
But yeah, it’s just cause they’re cheap and subservient right.
Romania is 6th, Iran is 8th, and your point is?
That Romania and Iran also have strong education in STEM.
Your point is these countries don’t? What point exactly are you trying to make.
Neither Poland, nor Romania or Iran are know for excellence in education. There is this specific niche in particular age group but that doesn't translate into meaningful industry or into anything really. They are relatively good at solving quizzes, that's it.
Romania is great and it's definitely punching above it's weight, just like Poland, just with the smaller population. Iran is 3 times larger than Poland in term of population so it's not an outlier like Poland and Romania.
And the point is, you should expect best results from China and US just by population alone. South Korea at 3rd place is a testament to their grueling education. But Poland and Romania (and Bulgaria) are something else. Those are not technologically advanced countries. They don't have particular stress on education.
Laughed hard about Collegium Tumanum
IIRC Polish mathematicians were close to being the world's best prior to WWII, people like Banach and Tarski are remembered until today. Also, Enigma didn't get broken by Rejewski being cheap and subservient.
Given how strong Poland used to be in mathematical logic, I can see an alternate history line where WWII does not happen and first computers are developed in Krakow and Lwow.
But computer programming with Polish keywords would indeed be a bit of a hell ;)
> IIRC Polish mathematicians were close to being the world's best prior to WWII
That's right. The Lwów-Warsaw School, the Warsaw Schools, the Kraków School, and so on were big during the interbellum. There was a good deal of activity in the space of mathematics, logic, and philosophy within that scope (art, theater, film, literature, etc. had their respective flowerings).
However, what I had in mind was that education has always been important, with formal education beginning in the Middle Ages with the first cathedral/collegiate schools. And because Poland became increasingly republican in nature, demanding skillful articulation, argument, and diplomacy as a matter of statecraft, Latin culture was of such a high standard that, during the Renaissance and early modern period, foreigners would comment that they felt as though they were visting ancient Rome given the high level of Latin proficiency. I should also mention that the world's first ministry of education was founded in Poland in the 18th century during the reign of Stanislaus II Augustus, creating, among other things, the first comprehensive, state-mandated natural science curricula.
During the subsequent partitions and foreign occupations when germanization and russification campaigns were inflicted on the populace and severe restrictions on the Polish language were put in place, clandestine home schooling, underground education networks, and "floating universities" allowed the culture to survive. So it has a deeply-ingrained and special importance across a range of concerns, from Scholastic libertas to senatorial virtus to cultural survival to so-called "positivist" industry.
> Given how strong Poland used to be in mathematical logic, I can see an alternate history line where WWII does not happen and first computers are developed in Krakow and Lwow.
Indeed. Further evidence of this is that even under the restrictive and crippling policies of the communist state and Soviet influence, you still had a surprising amount of innovation in this space.
> But computer programming with Polish keywords would indeed be a bit of a hell ;)
What would really be delicious is an inflected, synthetic programming language. ;)
Stanislaus II Augustus was a Russian tool, nobody ever felt in Poland like in ancient Rome. The few scientific achievements from the interwar period are gone forever without heritage or even continuity, and they're not even that impressing comparatively to other European countries. Modern Poles put all money into real estate and crypto scams, that's their intellectual sophistication.
> Stanislaus II Augustus was a Russian tool
This is an ahistorical view lacking nuance. Stanislaus found himself in an impossible situation. He was not the Russian pawn you uncharitably make him out to be. Rather, he often used his position to strengthen the Commonwealth in ways that were at odds with Russian interest. Recall that he inherited the throne of a state that was already on its last legs. Russia held a knife at the Commonwealth's throat. He was walking a very thin tightrope with Russia. His efforts, at the very least, contributed to giving Poles a greater cultural ability to survive the subsequent partition, giving it focus.
> nobody ever felt in Poland like in ancient Rome.
I suspect you (uncharitably) suppose I mean everyone in the streets was walking around speaking Latin. That's obviously not what I meant. I am referring specifically to the educated class - sons of the nobility, magnates, clergy, statesmen, diplomats, senators, scholars, the royal court, even country squires. The szlachta's Sarmatian culture saw itself as a spiritual successor to the Roman Republic, and it showed.
> The few scientific achievements from the interwar period are gone forever without heritage or even continuity [...etc, etc, blah, blah, blah...]
This is such a fantastically amusing few lines.
> I am referring specifically to the educated class - sons of the nobility, magnates, clergy, statesmen, diplomats, senators, scholars, the royal court, even country squires. The szlachta's Sarmatian culture saw itself as a spiritual successor to the Roman Republic, and it showed.
The szlachta's "culture" under leadership of a Russian tool led directly to three partitions which quickly ended their sophisticated "culture".
I suspect Ukraine and Belarus brain drain to be a measurable factor here too.
It's the Zabka economy.
To explain the joke, a Żabka is like a 7-Eleven, but there is way more of them per unit of area. And they have more services in offer.
There are 12000 in Poland, it was insane when I visited. You'd look down any given street and you were see at least one, sometimes more. Check out the map! [1] They are excellent though, much better than Canadian convenience stores. I wonder if the franchise saturation will lead to a crash à la Subway.
1. https://www.zabka.pl/znajdz-sklep/
Here I was wondering what Johnny Lawrence had to do with Poland's economy.
do they have good food, like in 7 eleven japan?
It's decent. Treatment of franchisees, on the other hand...
Not quite, but better than a US 7-11.
They're better than US 7 eleven imo. They have a section with baked breads and rolls for cheap.
Sure. Recent Zabka food poster https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F4... https://www.reddit.com/r/Polska/comments/1t7ci4h/my_apologie...
They even have a space program! I hear they're planning to put the first man on the sun.
Wow that’s racist
Two main reasons: Foreign direct investment, averaging ~5% GDP/year, largely to build and fully integrate Polish industrial base in to Germany. Secondly: an education system designed to create an economy on advanced manufacturing.
The same has been happening in Slovakia; GDP growth per annum very comparable to Poland since 1995.
As a typical example my very German car has many components with "made in <Poland/Slovakia/Hungary>" on the side.
I am French but travelled extensively to Poalnd and lived there for some time. This is a truly wonderful country.
The one thing that is a insurmontable barrier to go and live there (I considered that) is the healthcare sstem. It is completely broken.
You have free healthcare where people behave like beggars in front of the demi-god MD. They do not pay him for hs work, officially, but there is money slipped under he table to make things work. It is unbereable.
Then you have provate health care whichis not not bad, until you have a serious problem and you are back to the public system.
Finally the medicines/drugs are not refunded. You have to pay for them. This is wild for someone coming from France.
I think that if Poland upgraded that part of its politics it would be a country bringing in lots and lots of people useful for the country.
Having studied in the Netherlands it was somewhat difficult finding a job (10 years ago), and my first job was in Poland at a large Pharma company. I started working there for a wage lower than Dutch minimum wage when I started, just to get an in into the industry.
There is a while set of jobs in Pharma that got moved to Warsaw and no longer available in NL/DE.
There's a large set of jobs in everything that expanded operations in Poland, for salary reasons, e.g. automotive (Stellantis, Volkswagen, MAN) electronics (Electrolux, Whirlpool), food (Ferrero)...
But Poland did well capturing them and then growing new businesses locally, so now there's local brands and such that are expanding abroad on their own.
No migrants leave the necessary attention on economy
Polish people migrating to the rest of Europe, sending money back, and eventually returning is probably a big part of the success.
If sending money back and then returning was the key, you’d expect more countries have the same success Poland did.
Except over 2 million Ukranian refugees: https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/migration-and-asy...
He means no brown and/or muslim migrants. The EU border would infamously let in even exchange students when the war heated up in 2022, except for those they did not want for clearly racist reasons.
Strange, that if you are from Norway or Switzerland, you cannot be a migrant anywhere, instead you are always a welcome citizen born afar who did not know it yet.
Racisms and other -isms seem to be a problem, let's hope it gets better, not worse, in Poland and on earth.
Norway and Switzerland are both Schengen area countries though and have been for decades, which is why there would be much less friction in getting in as a migrant, or no friction at all as a traveler.
But it feels (and smell) like a third world culture if you look at the air pollution level during 6 to 8 month a year (https://maps.sensor.community/#7/52.210/18.223): nearly everywhere people burn coal (among other biomass) the air is incredibly polluted.
One of the most underrated countries in Europe to visit if you’re a fan of history, architecture or food. I am so blessed to Be able to go every year and am hoping for continued prosperity for both Poland and the region.
What food would you recommend?
Pierogi, Kielbasa
Sir, this is a hardware store.
For travel? I prefer Poland over Paris.
Poland is an underrated European destination (and I assume most Eastern European former USSR-aligned countries are too). If you haven't been you should definitely visit. I've been to both Paris and Warsaw recently and tbh I prefer Warsaw over Paris. Warsaw is clean (little graffiti, little trash on streets), safe, no homeless, etc and is a relatively high-trust society (another comment in this thread also mentioned that). Police actually enforce laws. The worst I saw was a drunk man on the street (although not violent or anything), and within minutes 4 police officers came to him. Few tourists. Everyone knows English.
Paris: I won't go into the negatives here (like the Africans/gypsies trying to scam you, sell you useless stuff, etc), it was nice overall, a little dirty, but I actually liked Warsaw better.
I'm from Poland, it sucks as usual. Our GDP comes from buying groceries.
Article totally missed the big immigration wave from Belarus in 2020-2021, after a heavy authoritarian crackdown there.
Contrary to immigration wave from Ukraine (war refugees), immigrants from Belarus were mostly political refugees. They we mostly composed of politically and economically active people (as non-active people had no reason to emigrate). So even with less total number, immigrants from Belarus have higher contribution to Polish GDP per immigrant capita.
I live here and I know why. It is also not solely connected to any EU funds. Not at all. We have a large tech sector here. IT, software engineering, embedded, agentic AI, genAI, backend, platforms, and consulting firms and startups. We have hyper growth that is actively sponsored with economic development teams from govt in each region. Mfg also. Cheaper labor and growth in many sectors and industries.
Poland went more free market than the other former Soviet bloc countries. Free markets are the fastest and best way to prosperity.
I am simply so happy for them. I used to have insomnia and in a music filesharing hub mostly Euros are awake around midnight Singapore time, so had so many online Euro friends mostly from Poland, Finland, Sweden, and especially Romania. It is from my Polish friends that I learned of so many great artists and authors, Beksinski and the nobel laureate Wislawa among many others. I memorized the Polish anthem once but I just know the first line now, Marsz, Marsz, Dabrowski! Polish diaspora especially Polish Americans are just too cool too, Mark Z Danielewski is a favorite.
Worked with many Polish developers for the last 8 years. Great group, very talented. However, the initial motivations to go there were to keep costs low. Eventually they saw their salaries increase 3x or 4x over the years. They totally deserved it, but the economics change if you're running a startup. Now with AI, not clear if the tech outsourcing dynamic will remain.
Anecdotal, but the company I work for offers to the juniors only +15% to what it used to offer 15 years ago. The salaries are growing mostly because previous government introduced huge increases to minimal salaries, but I don't feel the wages in IT grew significantly over the years. Which actually make sense - we used to have huge disproportion between regular worker salaries and IT ones, now the difference is getting smaller.
before Brexit - a decent number of polish people in the UK doing all types of work.
after Brexit - noticed polish engineers didn't want to be in the UK
Why would they want to bear the burden of an "hostile environment" (as the UK Home Office named their policy towards foreigners) AND declining economic prospects due to an economic suicide they had no say in?
Poland has been booming for a long time even before Brexit. I think it was a latent force just waiting to be set free by Perestroika and free market forces.
I'd travelled to Warsaw a few times maybe 20 or so years ago, and you could feel the vibrancy and energy in the air.
Poles do have a business sense, much stronger than Czechs, I would say, and even stronger than Germans.
Before and after Covid. It made a lot of people (in general - not thinking about Poles in particular) think about where they wanted to live. it was a pretty bad time to be away from home, family, etc.
> before Brexit - a decent number of polish people in the UK doing all types of work.
The comedian Omid Djalili (a Brit of Iranian descent) had a number of "Polish plumber" skits:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vppmzUZENfc
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8mjzu0Runo
To be fair the gap has been tightening for quite a while and it’s likely that adjusted by living expenses it’s not that hard for those engineers to find higher paying jobs in Poland compared to the UK.
Before 2004 there used to be a decent number of antipodeans working in finance in London.
After 2004, the numbers dropped noticeably.
This feels apt: https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
I’m not polish (but still european) and i wouldn’t go to the uk anymore.
The UK used to be “the dream” when i was a teenager, now it’s the empty shell of what it used to be.
This is because big corporations supporting Brexit figured out it will be better for their bottom line if they could source labour from wider pool and have it tied to visa. Something EU workers would never be comfortable with. Hence you had the so called Boriswave - an influx of workers paid below market rates supporting big corporations able to navigate Home Office corrupt system. Conservative party never told the public what it was really about - bringing in very much slave workforce to exploit - at the expense of working class and SMEs.
By the looks of it, Conservative party will never recover from this betrayal and soon followed by Labour who decided to maintain the status quo.
We could have issued visa to countries outside the EU before Brexit. There was no need to leave the EU to push wages down.
Ding ding ding
I mean, it makes things more difficult, right?
I think the bigger factor is that Polish immigration has effectively ended. We're seeing more Poles returning from abroad than leaving. With the prosperity and stability of Poland, coupled by living in your home culture, immigration is simply not that attractive.
(Traditionally, much of Polish immigration was meant to be temporary. A good number of Poles stayed abroad and assimilated, because immigration tends to be "sticky".)
Tbf, SWE salaries are constant across much of Europe, so anyone who is working in CEE feels less of a pull to work in London as a line-level engineer for roughly the same salary as they'd get in Warsaw. Funnily enough, even Bangalore salaries [0] are catching up to Italy [1] and Romania [2].
As a founder, it's a different story though - London is hard to beat from an entrepreneurship and capital access standpoint aside from parts of the CEE with strong ties to to American VC due to diaspora ties.
Edit: can't reply
> dzonga
Completely agree. I've O-1'ed plenty of European and British founders. But London is better than the rest of Europe from a raising perspective, which shows how bad the situation is in the rest of the continent.
[0] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater...
[1] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/italy
[2] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/romania
The taxation is not though. It may be better working from Warsaw or Prague due to tax rules. In Czechia it's a sort of fake, but tolerated consultancy and self employment and I have heard there is a similiar status in Poland.
Yea. In Poland everyone is a contractor even if they are not in reality. This year Poland had started to indicate they will crack down on it though so a lot of companies are now turning their contractors into employees instead.
Wow, that sucks. Here in Czechia the politicians talk about cracking it down all the time, but in reality it is now more common than ever with no signs of stopping. Only higher execs at banks or in other regulated industries needs to have a normal employment contract.
They have been indicating it constantly for last 12 years, regardless of who is in power...
Source?
The biggest drivers for tech employment in the CEE aren't those consultancies but American and non-European FDI.
Edit: can't reply
> Having 10-20% tax rate really helps though to have comparable or better pay rate to western europe with about 50% tax rate
At the employer end, if we offer enough FDI Western European governments do try to match support and subsidies that we could get in CEE.
Additionally, when investing in USD and used to American prices, it's a rounding error.
The drive to the CEE was partially government driven, but is now entirely due to the domestic ecosystem - you aren't going to find talent with the right attitude (business minded and independent) in Western Europe anymore.
Having 10-20% tax rate really helps though to have comparable or better pay rate to western europe with about 50% tax rate.
At the same time though, out of 6 developers, my team in London has two Brits (including me), two Eastern Europeans (Hungarian and Romanian), and two South Asians (Indian and Pakistani).
My last team had two Poles and two Scandinavians (Swedish and Norwegian).
It's been a _very_ long time since I've had a team that didn't have significant Eastern Europeans representation on it.
but London VCs are poor quality compared to what you find in the States.
having had my run around with London VCs - poor terms, slow moving (btw this is at seed stage) - it's better to bootstrap unless you're in deep tech (which London VCs can help out)
bootstrap and either deal with US VCs once you have numbers to back you up - if you wanna redo & do the VC route.
> [0] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater...
> [1] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/italy
> [2] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/romania
Both Italy and Romania are at the lower end of salaries though.
Compare to say
Finland https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/finland (almost twice)
Denmark https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/denmark (more than twice)
Germany https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/germany (around twice)
Switzerland https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/switzer... (more than three times, although this is an outlier)
> SWE salaries are constant across all of Europe
Sorry, but this is wrong. Cheaper labor is pretty much the only reason for nearshoring from more expensive European countries to places like Spain or Eastern Europe.
As I've mentioned before, I've had intimate experience hiring across Europe and at the 75th percentile and above, the salaries tend to be extremely close when comparing Western Europe and CEE. The difference becomes attitude.
A German SWE wants a 9-5. A Czech or Romanian SWE wants to build the next JetBrains or UIPath.
I don't want to hire the former - they're useless and a headache. I want to hire the latter.
Pretty sure salaries at large tech companies are way higher in places like London, Zurich or Amsterdam than in Warsaw or Prague for example. Berlin may be closer to the eastern countries.
It might help to discuss actual ranges instead of "intimate experience" so we can tell if your experience matches reality.
Zurich is probably in a league of its own. London next. But then it is quite similiar in Paris, Prague, Warsaw, Frankfurt, ...
I think Zurich is in a slightly different league than London or Amsterdam in that regard but especially if you go down to the median and below (low taxes are helpful as well)
I cannot confirm your experience with the attitude of the latter unfortunately (I can confirm the former though).
Edit: But as mentioned, the near-shoring resources also were quite substantially less expensive. So you could say we bought cheap and we got cheap.
For the ~500 million people of the EU, moving to Frankfurt means taking a train there, moving to London is a whole headache of visas, permits and permissions.
Founder visas are generally suffering from a chicken-and-egg problem, where only a successful company can sponsor anyone
Sure, but the entire VC and funding ecosystem that London has is nonexistent in much of the rest of Europe.
It's easier to raise rounds with better terms in London versus mainland Europe, aside from CEE where diaspora VCs in the US tend to step in to build the ecosystem.
But even then the entire ecosystem pales in comparison to the US.
God I miss Eastern European tradespeople.
British tradespeople in my experience are duplicitous, lazy, unmotivated, low quality, cocky and expensive.
Look at the demography though. Poland will fall very hard, faster than its neighbours.
The story of Poland is also a story of migration.
A significant percentage of the polish population participated in what is labled today economic migration.
They went Germany, Ireland, UK experienced an influx of migrants taking up all the low pay jobs.
But that was before the Russian bots took over the news on the internet and Russia-sponsored extreme right parties entered the parliaments. So the political effect from the migrants was roughly equivalent to their impact on pop
Filed from Poznań, which is where I'm typing from. The dateline alone made me smile.
I've been building software here for almost 20 years. Started a software house, grew it to ~50 people, sold it, now back to bootstrapping from scratch. The fact that this is a normal sentence to type from a Polish city is, honestly, kind of the whole story.
That "institutional framework" line in the article is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Having run companies through Polish bureaucracy — it's fine. It works. A generation ago that bar was on the floor. Boring is a feature.
Politics aside, the 35-year arc has been quietly extraordinary. European to the bone, with old roots and a real appetite for what's next.
I read Mila 18 by Leon Uris (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mila_18) decades ago and been a big admirer of Polish people since then.
The Warsaw Uprising Museum is an excellent place to visit if you're into WWII history.
Also the WWII museum in Gdansk.
In the early 2000's I've read about the "next wave", after BRICS, where Poland and Turkey were leading the pack. It was mainly due to the population tree. Both countries did relatively well, as expected. Turkey a bit worse, probably due to politics, changing geostrategic pivots, and strained relations with the big EU market.
How it happened? (Source: I'm working with polish companies)
1. Hard working people
2. Biggest recipient of EU subsidies used for projects which generates more profit. Infrastructure, internet, etc. To compare, Czechia used it for stupid things like bicycle lanes, child playgrounds etc.
3. Building permit is very easy to get for basically anything. Yes, this way you can sometimes get chaotic new buildings, but this can be solved later. In comparison, in Czechia, obtaining a building permit is difficult and depends on the whim of the official. Also we have basically non-existent property taxes, so new homes are unaffordable for everybody and only used as an investment.
4. Not allowing imigration from countries where people don't want to work and with hugely different religions and customs. This worked for Czechia too though, our biggest immigrants are Ukranians which are also slavs and very hard working. Official statistics is, that they paid in taxes more than they got from social support.
> Czechia used it for stupid things like bicycle lanes, child playgrounds etc.
Without the full picture, these don’t seem like stupid things at all. What makes it stupid for them to invest in these things?
Invest? That sounds like a pure loss in economic terms.
I'd argue that creating infrastructure that allows people to move and take care of children isn't a loss, it's an investment in functional towns and cities, which leads to better outcomes in general (including economic).
I would say Czechia used it more to boost the agricultural holding that's totally not owned by our PM
I mean, both GDP and average salaries in Czechia is higher so arguably at some point you might want playgrounds for your children
As a Czech, I am fine with the playgrounds, but the infrastructure like bicycle lanes was quite often built in illogical places where it is underutilized, but where it was easier to build it.
Sort-of like the guy who lost his keys in a bush, but is looking for them under a streetlamp b/c there is more light there.
I feel the need to correct the record. The only reason, there is this racist stereotype in some western countries that such and such ethnicities are not working, is because those countries make it exceedingly hard for those ethnicities to gain employment. For example requiring language fluency and forcing immigrants to attend language school full time instead of giving them a mop and a bucket and a minimum wage. In places where this banal legislation does not exist those same ethnicities are working fine in mixed ethnicity factory floors alongside Poles and Romanians.
And btw those same countries who make it super hard for, for example Syrians, to gain employment, then made a whole bunch of exceptions for Ukrainians. For example in Germany, Syrians without full command of German were told to attend language schools, but when the Ukrainians arrived they suddenly made exceptions and suddenly in our department we had Ukrainian cleaning crew who spoke neither German nor English.
Some cultures legitimately are less hard working though. Ironically most of these cultures are western, the biggest examples are southern European cultures.
As far as immigrants though, approximately 100% of them wish to be productive members of society, I agree. You dont go through the effort of emigrating without an entrepreneurial spirit.
It looks that not many talked about the fact that there is a lot Chinese investment in Poland, bringing in manufacturing and management experiences.
1670 on Netflix was hilarious
I hadn’t come across this before. Looks really good, thanks for sharing
Living only a good hour away from the Polish border I must say that this is really great for our region, too. When the income difference was higher, there was a lot of property crime (mostly cars, but also other things) originating from Poland. I went to a Polish village just at border once and you could feel the crime there. Young guys driving too expensive cars despite houses being run down, suspicious looks if you drive by with your German number plates. But that is over. If you go to Szczecin or Bydgoszcz you feel no wealth gap at all and I am happy that it turned out this way.
I wish I could go back in time and tell my 10 year old self to knock it off with the polish jokes (which were all the rage at that time, although I can remember only one now).
Intresting systemic bias around the country despite large improvements. I would be curious if those views would be a signal for investment in some of poland's tech startups. I believe their economy is still growing and companies will flourish even more.
Investment, infrastructure, education. Same as China. Same as every other growing country.
What the US and most other western countries do are: Let infrastructure rot, defund education, reroute money to large corporations. This is how you end up with failed state.
The US spends over $1T per year on education, more than almost any other country on a per capita basis by a large margin. What is the rationale for characterizing this as "defunding"?
I would say that outsourcing and moving manufacturing to other countries is what has killed the US economy - now in a death spiral with interest payments on the debt starting to dominate government spending.
Can you give examples of western countries other than the US doing that?
I’ve never seen it, I travel a lot.
I can definitely speak for all German speaking countries (Germany, Austria, but also Switzerland). Absolutely the UK as well. But really, Austerity was a trend that was followed by pretty much all EU countries since 2008 and the trend has not been reversed. And the Chinese have been buying european key industrial companies left and right going back as far as 2010.
Instituations haven't been renewed, education hasn't been brought up to reflect the latest reality of life and digitalization of state workflows? Hah, no.
But if a fraudulent bank requires saving? Sure, 500 billions or more can be paid upfront. Multiple times if necessary.
This is generally true about how much damage austerity has done, but it's important to note that most of the bank bailout money was loans which have been mostly repaid.
(Yes, exceptions for Iceland, Ireland, Cyprus, and a few others)
A German here, I think we have done that too with great success.
Wow, since you're so well travelled you can also share examples of the US doing it, with the comparison to these other amazing utopian western countries.
Start with education spending per capita.
The US has done everything but defund public education lol.
> defund education,
People have already addressed this falsehood.
As I hinted at in another comment, more money for education doesn't help if the culture doesn't value it. And largely, US culture does not value a good education.[2] Or more precisely, not possessing what many other countries consider "basic skills" is quite acceptable here.
Case in point: I've spent time in a poor country with terrible education. Over there, if you were slow doing arithmetic on paper (multiplication, division, etc), everyone considered you to be an idiot. Because of that, even mediocre students who merely graduated high school and didn't go to college have those skills.
Over here, you have Verizon Math.[1] After that crazy episode, I've seen this problem. And it's not just that interchanging dollars and cents is a custom, a lot of people genuinely don't understand the issue. I've been to yard sales where things are advertised as 0.25 cents, and asked them about it. I was expecting a response like "Yeah, yeah, it's sloppy but everyone knows what it means." Instead I got genuine confusion.
Verizon Math isn't an isolated quirk. If you come from any of these countries to the US, much of the US population will appear to be idiots to you (rightly or wrongly).
In one of my jobs, we had a bunch of Russian and other East European coworkers. They were appalled by all of this and started working on after-school tutoring activities for their kids. Because they came from a culture that viewed a lack of certain skills as "being idiots", they were really concerned that their kids would grow up to become idiots like the rest of the Americans.
My point isn't that one should know basic arithmetic. There are plenty of legitimate arguments to say it's OK not to.
What my point is that there is no baseline knowledge level in the US where being below it is socially problematic. Because of that, there is no peer pressure to retain the knowledge they learn in school. It's OK not to know how many days are in a year.
I used to tutor 3-5th grade students, and after I realized this, I gave up. The kids didn't need help understanding the material. They already did. They just didn't see a need to retain it. If their friends don't value the knowledge, and their parents don't value the knowledge, there's little I can do to help them.
[1] https://verizonmath.blogspot.com/
[2] The good education is there for the few who value it. But the rest of the population doesn't benefit from it.
Education hasn't been defunded. I don't know why so many people keep posting that misinformation when the opposite is true.
Inflation-adjusted funding per student rose from $14,969 to $20,322 over the past two decades.
K-12 funding rose $1,610 per student in real terms between 2020 and 2023 alone.
"Schools in the United States spend an average of $20,387 per pupil, which is the 3rd highest amount per pupil (after adjusting to local currency values) among the 40 other developed nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)."
"I don't know why so many people keep posting that misinformation when the opposite is true."
Because it suits their prejudice.
Poland made the brilliant decision to protect its heritage and not allow unchecked immigration and illegal immigration. It is a very high trust society with far lower crime rates, especially violent crimes than other places like the UK and France that went the other way.
Poland benefited significantly from immigration (of Poles to other countries and then back).
And the other countries have benefited significantly from their hard work too.
Signed, Dutchman.
Our greenhouses, factories, trades works, all favorite destinations amongst Polish (season) workers.
To add to the argument about European funding, Polish people are also very hard-working and probably have the mentality closest among European countries to what the USA had in the twentieth century with the pursuit of the American Dream. The only difference is motivation. Polish people suffered a lot in the past, so they do not want to experience poverty again; thus, their drive is powered by insecurity compared to an optimistic confidence that hard work would lead to prosperity in the future (this is also seen in the Polish sense of humour, which is much darker). I suppose it is mostly because of the post-communist Balcerowicz Plan transformation and the first generations travelling to the West for work, which further solidified the belief in upward mobility from the lower class to the middle class to the upper class through hard work.
Poland will rule the Europe in the coming decades
Vacuuming working age population from Ukraine since 2014. Poland did everything right, while Ukrainian governments and businesses were smirking "What are you going to do?" during salary discussions.
Over the past 4 years, millions of Ukrainians have fled there because of the war — many of whom had businesses and money in Ukraine and are integrating seamlessly into the Polish economy. Almost the entire Ukrainian IT sector that used to operate on an outsourcing basis is now there. Before the war, Ukrainians were mainly a source of cheap labor there, while Poles were doing the same work in other European countries. And since Ukraine is a bargaining chip in the current war, it is in the interest of all its neighbors for Poland to become strong, so that the Russians don’t cross the border.
"What are you going to do" was a phrase you could hear in Poland as well in 90ties and early 2000th. What differentiated PL w/ UA in my opinion is 2 things:
1. Lack of oligarchy - which in fact was not obvious outcome and little bit of luck on our part and little bit of cultural zeitgeist of 90ties and 00ths. 2. No east-west dithering - PL knew right away to which economic and cultural sphere wanted to belong
> 2. No east-west dithering - PL knew right away to which economic and cultural sphere wanted to belong
I wonder how much the Catholic vs. Orthodox background affected things there
Not much I think. I had long discussions about it with my Ukrainian friends: we came to the conclusion that it was mostly the fact that Ukraine was part of the USSR (much harder crackdowns on opposition, actually including the church) - and that also built stronger ties with Russia. A lot of people forget that USSR really was a multicultural empire: you had families where in the 90s siblings abruptly woke up in different countries: Russia, Belarus, Ukraine. Post-2022 some of those families stopped talking to each other, the propaganda is stronger than the family ties. Before the situation got clarified by falling bombs, the east/west choice was much harder.
> Post-2022 some of those families stopped talking to each other, the propaganda is stronger than the family ties.
I don't think it's a matter of propaganda. We're talking about totalitarian dictatorships on both sides of the barricades, where such communication with relatives on the other side have very real risks of decades in prison or even death.
It certainly helps if you don't have a massive minority speaking Russian.
Lack of oligarchy is starting to look like an absolutely critical ingredient, and it's lucky that Poland escaped from the PiS trying to turn it into an oligarchy.
Hmm, I think you’re not ever supposed to say anything negative about Ukraine.
What a buffoon take, you didn’t understand a word of what they’ve said, did you?
This paragraph is really odd: “As oppressive as it was, communism contributed by breaking down old social barriers and opening higher education to factory and farmworkers who had no chance before. A post-Communist boom in higher education means half of young people now have degrees.”
It feels like despite overwhelming evidence presented in the own article that communism was bad, they felt they had to say something vaguely nice about communism. But they can’t even keep it going for more than a sentence, because the next sentence says actually education was better after communism.
The opiate of the intellectual; forever afforded the benefit of every doubt.
These days it’s forbidden to deny the horrors of nazism but quite fashionable to glorify the murders and confiscations of communism and to even justify Marxist murderers like Mangione.
Yeah in modern media you always have to pander to the left, it’s clownish.
And yet, their air pollution level during winter months is so bad that local government issues public alerts to encourage people to stay indoors. Every winter there are days when air is in top 10 most polluted areas around the globe.
My Polish coworkers say that's due to the senior citizens stuck in a Soviet occupation mindset, and they're doing things like burning plastic trash to heat their homes.
I really enjoyed Warsaw in December, the air seemed fine to me.
Some people are burning trash at home, but the air pollution is mostly due to use of local coal for individual heating. Funny enough, their coal is called Eko-groszek. Eco!
True. But this problem is fixable individually with a smog mask outdoors and air purifier indooes. Systemic issues in other countries are rarely so easy to work around.
And yet it's still not all roses in the actual everyday life given that we have higher prices than Germany (food, phones, computers) while earning 3x less. But it surely beats how we had it the 90s.
What's led to the higher prices than Germany? Usually substantially lower earnings would mean lower prices, even if not substantially lower (look at the UK, higher prices than much (all?) of Europe, average earnings slightly less).
I'm a red, white, and blue American, born and raised in the USA. My family is all from Poland, and made America a home. The other day, someone asked my ethnicity, I said American Polish. Each of us are from somewhere, that where my family happens to be from. Nice Polska.
Poland is basically Germany without the historical baggage and with less cultural cruft (to avoid trigger words). Having said that there is one Olympic discipline that they perfected even beyond German standards (which are quite high in that department already) and that is: whining.
> without the historical baggage
Oh boy, are you wrong on that...
well, maybe they have. but compared to Germany I don't see them carry it.
Nit, but I don't think we're there anymore. We were there briefly around March, when this article was posted.
- Educated population
- Access to the EU market
- Cheap labour
- 250 billion in EU subsidies
Also, the Poles who I talked to have the feeling like money is going into the right projects and corruption is relatively low. This is quite different if you talk to people from Bulgaria, for example.
Even if for many years the net value of EU subsidies is close to 0, many people claim that money is still better spent, because of checks and balances forced by the EU system.
250 миллиардов субсидий ЕС
EvroSoyuz is just a better offer, comrade. Don't hate the player, hate the game.
PS. Ever since the full scale war started I finally learned Cyrillic, and I must say - there is something nice about this alphabet (if you speak a Slavic language, of course). Sadly we don't have an official Cyrillic version of Polish, though, my compatriots would have their brains explode if someone promoted one.
A family member told me they knew of someone who once visited Poland from Yugoslavia and found, in their opinion, that Polish was a Slavic language perfectly suited to the Latin script.
But yes, transliterated Russian doesn’t look quite right- rather cumbersome- and I assume the same would hold true for a Polish Cyrillic.
As an American that’s lived in Poland for the last decade:
- it was kind of inevitable once Poland stopped being oppressed by its neighbors. The USSR, Nazi Germany, the German Empire / Prussia, Austria, Imperial Russia, etc. have basically been dividing the country since the 1780s. Without these restrictions, Poland is a natural leader in its region purely on population alone.
- A general lack of ideological “mind viruses” that seem to plague the western world. Most Poles are pretty straightforward, common sense people. They might have opinions you don’t agree with but it’s not a country of extremists in any direction.
- the general openness to American culture and (over)work ethics. I think Poland probably looks more to America than it does any EU country, although this of course isn’t simple, especially lately. But in general it’s a pretty hardworking, business-open culture. My impression is that it’s much easier to operate a business here than say, Germany, Italy, or France.
- Something I need to read more about, but IIRC Poland dealt with its oligarch problems in a different way than Russia or Ukraine did post-USSR and so doesn’t really have this issue.
Polish-born person living abroad here. There definitely ARE "mind viruses" in the polish psyche, and pretty nasty ones at that. You might not have noticed them because they are from a different nature than the ones that infected Wester Europe and North American. For example, Poles by and large harbor an inferiority complex due to the decades of oppression and suppresson that makes them sell themselves short and act as people-pleasers to western nations and western firms (that's precisely what makes us so liked by those firms! and that's also your "looking to America" here). Poles as a nation are driven by romantism, not pragmatism, and that is the reason why we always get screwed on the world stage one way or another and have the reputation of being "dumb". I am as happy as the next guy to see economic development, but our mental maps let us down regularly, and I am not particularly optimistic for a change on that front.
Good thing that Trump is bringing disillusion regarding America; same for brexit regarding UK
Thanks to the internet they are also rushing to adopt the dumbest of the social mind-viruses of the West ... Saddens me tbh.
> A general lack of ideological “mind viruses” that seem to plague the western world. Most Poles are pretty straightforward, common sense people. They might have opinions you don’t agree with but it’s not a country of extremists in any direction.
I want to stray from the politics too much, but we definitely self-sabotage in canada. It's kind of an immature teenage angst to self-loathe to the point of punishing yourself all the time.
Rage-bait media is both profitable and the masses will defend you as "fighting the good fight".
The mind virus actually makes you love the host.
Poland has somewhat of a culture of overworking, "kultura zapierdolu".
Yup, a lot of older folk with ruined health here because they overworked to "build a wealth" that eventually didn't materialize, but who at same time are criticizing younger gens of not wanting to follow in their steps.
> kultura zapierdolu
I want "kultura zapierdolu" t-shirt now.
> A general lack of ideological “mind viruses” that seem to plague the western world
Uhh, the Law and Justice party was packing the Polish Constitutional Court, filling the government with party loyalists, and placing restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly only a few years ago. I suppose veering close to a constitutional crisis isn’t ideological per se, but that framing doesn’t seem quite right
Didn't expect that stuff to reach HN... anyway:
> packing the Polish Constitutional Court
This didn’t start with PiS. PO, just before losing power, tried to elect five Tribunal judges at once, including two seats that weren’t theirs yet. The Tribunal later said: three OK, two not OK.
PiS then did the PiS thing: ignored the three valid ones too, and installed its own people. So yes, PiS behaved badly. But "PiS packed the court" skips the opening move.
American-ish version: lame-duck Senate tries to pre-fill future SCOTUS seats. Incoming side responds by throwing the furniture around.
> filling the government with party loyalists
For normal political jobs, what’s the issue? That’s politics. Republicans appoint Republicans. Democrats appoint Democrats.
> placing restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly
What are you referring to exactly?
> For normal political jobs, what’s the issue? That’s politics. Republicans appoint Republicans. Democrats appoint Democrats.
You're presumably coming from a US point of view (the US has an unusual system where the entire top level of the civil service, pretty much, are always political appointees), but in Europe this often _would_ be seen as a sign of corruption (and honestly it should be in the US too; it has gotten way worse there since Trump I; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendleton_Civil_Service_Reform...).
I mean more in the sense of the people themselves. PiS did some shady things for sure, but ultimately most of their supporters are just old conservative people. I would describe that as a fundamentally different thing from the cause-of-the-day ideology and its backlash movement that sweeps through Western countries every decade.
I wouldn’t describe PiS and its supporters as a dynamic cultural movement in the way MAGA is.
"it was kind of inevitable once Poland stopped being oppressed by its neighbors"
No. Not at all inevitable. Poland might have descended into kleptocracy, e.g. Hungary. That this did not happen is worthy of investigation. I'm not holding my breath however; the findings would probably not be welcome.
"A general lack of ideological 'mind viruses' that seem to plague the western world"
Indeed. Poland frequently disappoints the rest of the EU with its stubborn indifference to obligatory Western moral panics.
> A general lack of ideological “mind viruses”
Yeah when Poland banned abortion and declared a number of "LGBT free zones" a lot of Poles I know came here to Czech Republic
I don't think most poles dislike you if you're gay, it's just that the woke mind virus went too far and Poland is still normal.
We just didn't have oligarchs.
POLAND MENTION!!!!!
Poland would've probably been my top relocation priority if it weren't for the atrocious air quality
Try 3city (Gańsk-Sopot-Gdynia up north on Baltic). Definitely better air quality then in other places in Poland. Do not know how it compares to other European cities though.
I'm Polish and I left because of the air quality. But, 15 years passed, and it got much better (obs. through holiday visits). People no longer heat with trash and coal isn't less of an option. Also, it isn't as cold in the winter so there is less need for heavy heating. Really thinking of coming back, to family.
It's getting better year by year but I suspect it'll take another decade before we'll have acceptable air quality during the heating season. During earmer seasons it's fine tho.
Subjective air quality is SO much better than it was in the early nineties though...
I definitely blame my difficulties with respiratory illnesses on living there as a kid...
It certainly helps to be neighbor with an economically strong but demographically weak and overly beaurocratic country that hungers for eager, competent workers.
The Polish economy is not built on sending workers to Germany.
Who said that? It certainly helps. Poland has close trade and manufacturing ties to Germany and has rightfully developed from a "cheap" image to "quality that's still affordable" image.
what a coincidence, I just bought a Bosch washing machine and it was made in Poland.
Can anyone tell me what impact their whole government dying at once in a plane crash had on this?
Would they probably be doing better or worse if those people had stayed in power? Was that a significant factor in this?
Opinions will vary. Most people on that plane (not all) represented the equivalent of UK Reform party - isolationist, backward-looking, populist. That party, ironically called PiS (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, Law and Justice) brought in a lot of reckless spending and anti-growth measures. Still, GDP rocketed on under their government just as much as under the other ones. As did inflation.
In Poland, we have a president and a parliament, with parliament holding most of the power. It was the president who died in the crash, and he was most likely going to lose the upcoming re-election later that year. In short, I don’t think it changed much.
They've done well for themselves for sure . 20 years ago, Poland was sending seasonal workers to the UK to pick tomatoes. Brexit largely won because of anti Eastern Europe immigration
> Eastern Europe immigration
It’s hard to believe those type of people actually wanted to replace it with non European immigration, though (which is what happened). Of course cause and effect is a complex concept to wrap ones head around..
It's hard to believe, and I repeatedly said as much to people who thought as much prior to the vote who 'pfffd' me in response, and yet here we are.
The right to vote on fundamental societal issues should come with some sort of mental means testing. I'm only half-kidding. I think.
Poles return to Poland and get to see results of their hard work. Brexit people get exposed to more cultures. I guess everyone got what they needed and deserved.
It warms my heart that my country contributed to ejecting Britain, and right before it turned completely to shit.
Not for any particular dislike, I wish that the actual brits actually take back the power from the scum government and fix it, just a sight of relief that their mess could be whole EU mess if Brexit didn't happen
They're scared shirtless of communism and statism, have recent enough memory of why, and went full sail on classical liberal economics. It worked.
I'd also be a classical liberal if I were getting 1 out of 4 euros of the EU taxpayers.
Doesn't check out. Not all recipients of US federal tax proceeds are classical liberal. It's a split.
The rest of Europe would be also afraid if they didn’t have the nice cushy buffer of Ukraine and Poland to give them breathing room.
Norway, Finland, the Baltics. If you’re talking about Russia.
Positive actions cited in the article: "independent courts, an anti-monopoly agency to ensure fair competition, and strong regulation to keep troubled banks from choking off credit"
While many in US say "liberal economics" means not interfering with businesses with regulations or anti-trust.
I suppose people have different definitions of "classical liberal", "neo-liberal", etc.
It turns out it's not that hard to grow an economy once countries all around you stop trying to kill your culture, exterminate your population and steal your lands.
Surely there are more than 20 countries that have been in a position where their neighbors aren’t all trying to exterminate them for at least as long as Poland.
That only explains some sort of “noob gainz”, not moving into the top 20.
When you lose 20% of your population and then spend 50 years under communist rule because your allies sold you out, there’s really only one direction left to go—up.
A lot of people either forget, or never learned, that Poland was once one of the largest and most influential states in Europe.Yes it was long time ago, but the potential was always there. The real challenge was surviving the consequences of being caught between neighbors whose ideologies gave rise to two of the deadliest systems of the 20th century.
Sure, but the explanation is still Poland’s potential and its capacity to fulfil it. You could be free all you want and still plateau on some immediate post-war rebound gains.
Which in some ways is what happened here in Slovenia. We used to be doing much better than other communist countries (as a part of Yugoslavia), exited relatively peacefully, entered the EU, and everything seemed to be going great until the 2008 financial crisis.
Then it seems our politicians stopped being pragmatic and started bringing up ideological issues more often, which divided the population, while IMO not doing nearly enough to promote further development of the economy.
So now we have a population split on ideological issues, while Poland and Croatia are overtaking us economy-wise. We have had every advantage (geographically at the crossroads of multiple trade routes, sea access, EU funds, hard-working population, didn't turn into a Russia-style oligarchy...) but mostly slept on it.
Don’t know why this is downvoted. The history of Poland for the last 300 years is pretty much exactly what you wrote.
Well there are plenty of countries that aren't facing those conditions now, or in the recent past and still have shitty economies. It undersells how hard it is to build a strong economy and therefore undersells how hard Poland has worked.
being in the trade union helps, especially when for most part it was "cheap labour" for that union
But maybe that's because these countries did not have to struggle as hard as Poland did?
I don’t find that to be a very compelling argument.
I remember when Poland colonised half the world.
We did that in the US and became the #1 economy. Leadership just changed.
Why are polish people like this.
Hundreds of billions in subsidies and Polish workers displacing West European workers inside and outside of their country have nothing to do with the success of course.
The EU is based on greedy West European corporations maximizing shareholder value at the expense of their own populations.
The EU is too big and should be reduced to the Western core countries. I wonder how Poland would fare then.
I don’t understand why people constantly mention EU subsidies and not mention the billions of wealth destroyed or taken during the world wars, partitions, or the deluge.
That is not true. Poland run substantial trade deficits (as opposed to China) up to very recently giving sizable marked for products manufactured by western Europeans and thus __helping__ and not hindering West European workers. And this trade deficit was enabled by mainly external investments (and little but by subsidies). Also since PL was converging this investments were more profitable then in the west.
Also I am of not very popular anymore opinions that not distorted trade help both sides of the trade and immigrants really help economy of country that they immigrate into. Including workers.
Most of the subsidies go back to the western Europe in the form of cheap products, and cheap labor. Also these subsidies were used to buy technology, machinery and goods from the West. Let's have Germany pay few trillions in reparations, and we can give back the billions in subsidies. Deal?
Sure, Germany pays reparations, Poland gives back Pomerania and Silesia (which were part of the reparations) and Western Europe forms a new EU so we don't have to deal with Poles any longer. Deal?
Are you still lacking lebensraum?
Germany lost the war. That's just small price they should be paying for exterminating millions of people and destroying many countries. And these lands were Polish, and Czech way before there were Germans. That's why Prussia had a systematic depolonization going on in the 1800s on these lands. They wanted remove the inhabitants of these lands for a long time..
Not at all surprising. If you look at the history of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth it was very similar to the dynamism of the Holy Roman Empire in what we now think of as the German speaking lands. Except you combine that with some even more modern ideas including minimal centralization of power and you realize there was a real renaissance era there. Kosciusko contributing greatly to the American Revolution is a wonderful example of this.
Of course being sandwiched between two extremely powerful regional hegemons did not serve Poland well. It's wonderful that it is now able to pick up the pieces. The poles no more than anyone the terrible realities that we must continue to be willing to fight for
> “I get asked often if I’m missing something by coming back to Poland, and, to be honest, I feel it’s the other way around,” Kowalska said. “We are ahead of the United States in so many areas.”
Poland is the best example of using the best capabilities of access to EU funds and the large EU economy. Its sucess case should be rubbed up the noses of the arrogant UK establishment and its Eton driven Brexit disaster.
gog.com is in poland
Worst healthcare among developed countries, which every ranking of healthcare systems confirms. Average people receive 19th century level of coverage and care for 21st century price. The only people on employment contract are public sector and some of the outsourcing and nearshoring, industries which are moving out of the country. Milllennials are 40 years old now and every reform which had been made, made sure they didn't have enough income neither housing to have children. Polish miracle is over, deservedly.
I'm pretty sure I got prescribed an antibiotic at least once :) Also, my father has been through 5 cancer "journeys", all successfully treated via public healthcare, last few caught "too early to operate" due to early detection PET scan programs. I don't know much about 19th century medicine, but it seems off.
The state of Polish healthcare is undefensible, it's not funny at all.
How? They said "No" to mass migration.
Except when millions of Ukrainian refugees have been allowed in since 2022. You could say that they said "no" to mass brown people migration.
This is not true. Over 5% of population is foreign and it’s growing every year.
Polish people are some of the most pragmatic, straight-forward, hardworking and intelligent people on the planet in my opinion.
They have all the fundamental human-capital strengths of economies like Germany. It's really no surprise they're doing so well.
Sensible smart people working hard will get a lot done over time.
For what it's worth Poland is the only place I've ever visited where felt I could easily see myself living there. It doesn't surprise me that a lot of Poles are moving back.
> Kowalska works at the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center, which is developing the first artificial intelligence factory in Poland and integrating it with a quantum computer, one of 10 on the continent financed by a European Union program.
I don't think quantum computing currently is able to help in the AI industry, I don't think this is having any impact.
WIG20 is essentially 5 banks, 3 energy providers, clothing, small shops + Allegro + CD Projekt Red. I don't think any of this has major world impact.
Related?
https://www.statista.com/chart/18794/net-contributors-to-eu-...
Here's per capita:
https://i.imgur.com/VlRkDMy.png
Are subsidies evenly spread between all citizens?
They are trained for high earning jobs while willing to take a lot less. That has to help. Ukraine was on the same path.
We get a lot of Ukrainians in IT jobs
> ... While most enterprises were nationalized, authorities gave permission to small-scale private workshops like his to operate
Fun story: the city of Nowy Sącz (80,000 habitants) has a very high percentage of millionaires compared to other cities. One of the reasons was that as the city is in a mountainous region hence not well communicated, the communist authorities were less strict there and allowed for private businesses to grow. As the communism ended, the region basically had a head-start compared to the rest of the country.
updating my anecdotal views on Poland has been one of my biggest changes over the last few years
I think they're doing everything right and for their people
Have yet to visit. but even by just 2018 or 2019 I only would have jokes and a confused face if someone was telling me they had chosen a job or life in Warsaw as opposed to a bustling city in a Western European country. Now, I think I get it. Modern and cosmopolitan veneer, safety, opportunity, educated population, nationalist pride that isn't delusional, a sensical immigration policy being enforced before enforcing it becomes a human rights problem. I like it.
Two letter answer: EU
They recently joined the EU?
Overnight success is often decades in the making.
You jelly
Poland made many good decisions in the last 20 years - I do not dispute this.
However had, it also is still a net EU subsidized country:
https://www.statista.com/chart/18794/net-contributors-to-eu-...
In fact, Poland gets the most money. So, before we can evaluate the net worth, this number would have to be deducted, which would instantly make Poland drop more than 5 ranks in that chart if you look at it. Just compare the numbers for yourself, the calculation is trivial to do.
Here is total GDP per country:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
(You have to compare the same year of course; my calculation above is for the year 2024. Poland is now ranked higher than in 2024, but the net subsidies still are given in. Those "Poland is now rich" never take that into account.)
I'm Polish.
My mother (early 50s) still remembers clay houses that had two rooms, one for the people, one for the cows and the chickens. She never lived in one, but her grandmother did and she would visit for summer.
She would help her parents stand in line in the evening, waiting for a shipment of pasta or coffee to arrive in their local grocery store in the morning.
My father (similar age) didn't have an in-house bathroom until he got married.
Both of them had black-and-white TVs, where they'd see wonders like microwaves, answering machines or game consoles. Those were things that rich Americans had in movies, not things normal people had in their homes.
If you were well--off enough to go on vacation, you'd probably go to a seaside town, or maybe a village in the mountains. Certainly not abroad. A passport was an extravagance, not easy to get from the communist government.
People who lived in big cities, as opposed to much smaller villages, which were and still are a big thing in Poland, were a bit better off, but not by much.
In the 90s, My parents' village got wired up for telephone. Around that same time, Vietnamese NES clones (here called Pegasus) started popping up on the market. They may have been 15 years behind what the Americans had, but they were available at a price that almost any family could afford.
Shortly after I was born, they got a computer. At that time, computers were still expensive, not something every single family had, but definitely not something unusual for a working / middle class family to purchase. Satellite digital TV soon followed, and then came ADSL internet; because of no flat-rate calls, dial-up never really took off here.
As kids and young teenagers, we looked on iPods and iPhones with envy, those were for the rich, but knock-off mp3 players and cheap Nokia phones were things that many kids had.
Our train company, PKP, was famous for delayed trains and poor service. We used to expand the abbreviation as "Just wait, it'll arrive eventually."
None of this is true any more. Go to any Polish city now, and it's no different from any other European country, maybe except for being a good bit safer. You will see people with iPhones; we're still majority Android, but now that's mostly choice and habit rather than financial necessity. You will see people order food on Uber Eats using their gigabit fiber internet, and then Uber back from a night out. They may not even need to do that; both men and women feel pretty safe on the streets here, even at night. You will see kids playing their favorite games, on their PS5. You will see college students, working on weekends and after classes to make some money, take their boyfriends and girlfriends on trips to Greece, Italy or Spain. By airplane, of course.
That train company? In theory, the reputation is still there, but in practice, the statistics say what they say, we've far surpassed Deutsche Bahn in terms of punctuality.
Surpassing DB's punctuality is the first large-scale example of the "Overtaking without catching up" East German slogan coming true.
In the United States, Red/Right leaning States typically receive more federal funding than Blue States. Red States get 'propped up'.
I bet a lot of people here criticizing that EU funding went to Poland are typically Right Leaning, and think they are making a some killer point about socialism, when back home they are also taking in the hand out money.
This is a poorly supported take, once you factor in the productive parts of the economy.
If you have a lot of farmland in a red state and the profits are reported in a blue state, then counting the reported profits on the corporate balance sheet will give a distorted picture of what is happening.
Look at e.g. General Mills, based in a blue state, but a great deal of what they buy are ag inputs from red states.
> Look at e.g. General Mills, based in a blue state, but a great deal of what they buy are ag inputs from red states.
Are the businesses from who they buy ag inputs in the red states not compensated at market rates for the raw materials they provide?
Do the red states also not receive massive taxpayer funded farm subsidies for the corn and wheat they grow from the federal government?
Minnesota's GDP is higher because it has a larger population and a more diverse and greater value-added economy than it's its ag focused neighbors.
It's GDP per capita is actually lower than its very sparsely populated neighbor, North Dakota, but the economic power of a jurisdiction ultimately comes from its population*productivity.
Wouldn't the red states be profiting off of blue states in your example? Why would General Mill's purchase of red states' outputs not show up as profits in the red states? This makes no sense.
That is a good point.
But wouldn't the farm, selling to the big corp, realize the profits in their own state? Or are you saying the farms are owned by General Mills?
I was under the impression that most of the farms are owned separately and sell to General Mills.
This is a clear display that we need free trade, sensible economic polices and a common ground of what humans need to thrive. "Sovereignty" is overrated.
For example, for the US to have a chance in the EU, it would first need to fix its YOLO fiscal policy of sustained 5.5% debt/gdp deficits.
We shall see in a few years as US's debt balloons and the average American becomes pseudo-slaves from a few overlords... to see if the EU is really bad as some Americans believe it to be.
french and german working class tax. and obviously great leadership to use EU and that money well to win. unlike france for instance that got outplayed by germany that itself got outplayed by their dear ally the USA and are now going into energy obsolescence.
German working class is actually benefiting from this as Poland it one of their biggest importers now. And they are still benefiting from slave labor, stolen precious metals, and art they got during the WW2. Not to mention the Marshall Plan. They really can't be complaining.
> German working class is actually benefiting from this as Poland it one of their biggest importers now.
Yes they do.
> And they are still benefiting from slave labor
Not sure whether that really matters now-a-days for the economy.
> stolen precious metals
One of the cores of industrial and mine centers that made the German Empire thrive during the Belle Epoque, are now owned by Poland.
> Not to mention the Marshall Plan.
Half of Germany, didn't got to get it but where instead paying reparations for whole Germany. Sorry, I'm a bit tired of acting like Germany only got the history of being on the west side of the iron curtain. It got both treatments.
> Sorry, I'm a bit tired of acting like Germany only got the history of being on the west side of the iron curtain. It got both treatments.
Well glass that has half of water is still better that glass fully empty. Poland didn't get any war reparations and after being more destroyed during the war than germany (warsaw burned to the ground) and pretty much occupied for many decades after the war then how polish companies supposed to compete with any western economy including germany?
It got both treatments because of their actions in WW2.
German working class is displaced or has their salaries driven down by either Poles or Romanians working in Germany while their families live cheaply at home or by corporations moving factories to Poland and Romania.
You have no clue what you are talking about. I wonder why this sort of obnoxious reasoning always comes from Poles and never from Czech people for example.
I believe this is called competition, encouraged since the EU markets are open and freedom of migration is guaranteed. If it wasn't for those guys, you'll have migrant workers from Ukraine, or India or some other place. However, I suspect that before the Poles and Romanians came to DE, you already had quite a bit of migration from Spain, Italy and Turkey, isn't that right?
Wait, but I thought Germans love slave labor? Is that not a case anymore? What happened?
We want better slaves. Poles and Romanian builders deliver shoddy work.
So, countries inside a large, free-trading, economic zone, with a diversity of economic standards, tend to do well from central investment and all the many benefits that accrue from said economic zone.
Shocking.
Well done, UK. You really shat the bed and, by the look of it, still are. Diarrhea, possibly.
Prosperity is a curse. People are no longer having children in Poland. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
It's the South Korea model and road, people are working hard to chase constantly and quickly moving goal of securing extremely expensive home, basic setup for having the family. But process itself is exhausting and depleting.
It's not prosperity, but consumerism. Consumerism causes demographic decline, because it unhinges people's priorities. Their conception of the purpose of life becomes more materialistic, and children compete with that kind of materialistic, self-indulgent consumption.
In that sense, the Poles have been seduced by consumerism.
First time I hear this explanation of why demographics is in decline in Europe and it kind of makes sense, every so often having this discussion about having children people bring up that they wont be able to enjoy things anymore, like travel, which in itself is a form of consumerism - buying the "experience"
This is very simplistic and I would say there is more reason than only consumerism. People still might have kids they just have it less - they are happy to have only one kid because they fill fulfilled and also they cannot afford 2 or 3.
Standard and expectation also increased and even thought I grew up with 2 siblings in 2 bedroom apartment in Poland today nobody would want that - or good luck finding a partner that want that. You would expect to have house or at least 3-4 bedroom apartment to raise 3 kids.
Today also probably you need 2 cars instead of 1 family car because your partner also have to work. You probably also need extra money for babysitter or kinder garden because again your partner is working and probably less likely your parents nearby to help since most young people had to move to big cities to get a job.
Indeed. People also like status. If consumerism ties status to consumption, then children constrain that consumption and thus constrain status.
It also used to be that having a large family was a source of honor. Today, it makes people uncomfortable. They may even take a condescending view of those with many children. People have formed a strange association between having many children and poverty.
What you find is that the highest fertility in the developed consumerist world tends toward the poor and the rich. It's the middle class that has the fewest children. This makes sense through the lens of consumerism: the consumption of the rich is not constrained by having more children, while the poor can't consume all that much anyway, so having more children doesn't really change their buying power meaningfully where conspicuous consumption is concerned. It is the middle class (especially the upper middle class) that is anxiously keeping up with the Joneses and engaged in aggressive and petty consumerist competition. They have just enough to consume conspicuously, but not enough that they don't need to prioritize their spending. Consumerism simply prioritizes conspicuous consumption to the detriment of fecundity.
It's crazy to think that a 21st century genocide could be as simple as extending massive amounts of credit to your victims for a long enough time to obliterate their social order.
Ironic.