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Poland is now among the 20 largest economies
- 6d6b73 6mo agoIt 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.
- wvbdmp 6mo agoThat only explains some sort of “noob gainz”, not moving into the top 20.
- 6d6b73 6mo agoWhen 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.
- wvbdmp 6mo agoSure, 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.
- trinix912 6mo agoWhich 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.
- thfuran 6mo agoSurely 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.
- keiferski 6mo agoDon’t know why this is downvoted. The history of Poland for the last 300 years is pretty much exactly what you wrote.
- ch4s3 6mo agoWell 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.
- 6d6b73 6mo agoBut maybe that's because these countries did not have to struggle as hard as Poland did?
- ch4s3 6mo agoI don’t find that to be a very compelling argument.
- PunchyHamster 6mo agobeing in the trade union helps, especially when for most part it was "cheap labour" for that union
- ch4s3 6mo agoYou can provide cheap labor inside of a trading block and still be economically a mess, Mexico comes to mind and Turkey was sending workers to parts of Europe starting in the late 1940s. Poland did a lot more than just supply cheap labor, and it really undersells all of the work they've put in to develop their work force, education, economic policies, and so on.
- MrBuddyCasino 6mo agoWhy are polish people like this.
- mrits 6mo agoWe did that in the US and became the #1 economy. Leadership just changed.
- ash162 6mo agoHundreds 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.
- keiferski 6mo agoI 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.
- 6d6b73 6mo agoMost 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?
- 2398 6mo agoSure, 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?
- artylerzysta 6mo agoAre you still lacking lebensraum?
- 6d6b73 6mo agoGermany 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..
- 10xDev 6mo agoI remember when Poland colonised half the world.
- OhioMan2943 6mo agoIronic.
- helge9210 6mo agoVacuuming 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.
- draw_down 6mo agoHmm, I think you’re not ever supposed to say anything negative about Ukraine.
- mazurnification 6mo ago"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
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- kingstoned 6mo agoThey 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.
- lo_zamoyski 6mo agoPolish education has a long tradition of excellence. Indeed, the last decade has seen reforms that have been heavily criticized for working against that.
- lifestyleguru 6mo agoYou 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.
- goralph 6mo agoPoland is fifth in the world with gold medals in informatics Olympiad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Olympiad_in_Informatics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Olympiad_in_Info... But yeah, it’s just cause they’re cheap and subservient right.
- lifestyleguru 6mo agoRomania is 6th, Iran is 8th, and your point is?
- goralph 6mo agoThat Romania and Iran also have strong education in STEM. Your point is these countries don’t? What point exactly are you trying to make.
- 6mo ago
- mdre 6mo agoAnd 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.
- pbowyer 6mo agoWhat'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).
- cromka 6mo agoSmaller market, I think. While Polish manufacturers have no incentive to keep price low for the local market as they can just sell to the West at EU common market price.
- seidleroni 6mo agoNoah Smith had a good article about this in 2024 for those interested in reading more: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/six-ideas-for-poland https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/six-ideas-for-poland
- mlitwiniuk 6mo agoMostly 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.
- FrustratedMonky 6mo agoI don't know much about Poland Why was other comment flagged and dead???
- choeger 6mo agoIt certainly helps to be neighbor with an economically strong but demographically weak and overly beaurocratic country that hungers for eager, competent workers.
- mothballed 6mo agoThey're scared shirtless of communism and statism, have recent enough memory of why, and went full sail on classical liberal economics. It worked.
- severino 6mo agoI'd also be a classical liberal if I were getting 1 out of 4 euros of the EU taxpayers.
- RhysU 6mo agoDoesn't check out. Not all recipients of US federal tax proceeds are classical liberal. It's a split.
- Vaslo 6mo agoThe 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.
- keybored 6mo agoNorway, Finland, the Baltics. If you’re talking about Russia.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- ks2048 6mo agoPositive 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.
- dzonga 6mo agobefore 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
- alephnerd 6mo agoTbf, 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-bengaluru https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater... [1] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/italy https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/italy [2] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/romania https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/romania
- nikanj 6mo agoFor 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
- alephnerd 6mo agoSure, 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.
- juho_ 6mo agoIt's the Zabka economy.
- H8crilA 6mo agoTo 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.
- deepriverfish 6mo agodo they have good food, like in 7 eleven japan?
- deruta 6mo agoIt's decent. Treatment of franchisees, on the other hand...
- cobertos 6mo agoThey're better than US 7 eleven imo. They have a section with baked breads and rolls for cheap.
- szewachvice 6mo agoNot quite, but better than a US 7-11.
- rasz 6mo agoSure. Recent Zabka food poster https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F4k3l33x7uxzg1.png https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F4... https://www.reddit.com/r/Polska/comments/1t7ci4h/my_apologies_%C5%BCabka_i_was_unfamiliar_with_your_game/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Polska/comments/1t7ci4h/my_apologie...
- deepriverfish 6mo agodamn, I need her gym routine.
- moi2388 6mo ago- Educated population - Access to the EU market - Cheap labour - 250 billion in EU subsidies
- jansan 6mo agoAlso, 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.
- wafflemaker 6mo agoEven 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.
- lovegrenoble 6mo ago250 миллиардов субсидий ЕС
- H8crilA 6mo agoEvroSoyuz 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.
- mikrl 6mo agoA 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.
- metaPushkin 6mo ago
- joshrw 6mo ago[flagged]
- retinaros 6mo agofrench 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.
- 6d6b73 6mo agoGerman 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.
- 12986-112 6mo agoGerman 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.
- bboozzoo 6mo agoI 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?
- 6d6b73 6mo agoWait, but I thought Germans love slave labor? Is that not a case anymore? What happened?
- skfhaT 6mo agoWe want better slaves. Poles and Romanian builders deliver shoddy work.
- danr4 6mo agoPoland would've probably been my top relocation priority if it weren't for the atrocious air quality
- mazurnification 6mo agoTry 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.
- cpfohl 6mo agoSubjective 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...
- dr_kretyn 6mo agoI'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.
- pawelduda 6mo agoIt'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.
- ptdorf 6mo agoEducated AND motivated workforce will do the trick. All the polish I know that work in IT enjoy handwork as well. They are hard workers.
- olalonde 6mo agoWere they not educated and motivated before?
- petesergeant 6mo agoYes, but being occupied by Russia has not traditionally been a motor for growth
- cpursley 6mo agoThey 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).
- 10xDev 6mo agoYeah, 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".
- cpursley 6mo agoI 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.
- baal80spam 6mo agoNit, but I don't think we're there anymore. We were there briefly around March, when this article was posted.
- mrits 6mo agoThey are trained for high earning jobs while willing to take a lot less. That has to help. Ukraine was on the same path.
- PunchyHamster 6mo agoWe get a lot of Ukrainians in IT jobs
- mlitwiniuk 6mo agoFiled 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.
- picsao 6mo ago[dead]
- comrade1234 6mo agoI 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.
- hn_throwaway_99 6mo agoThat basically describes the US as well.
- mcmcmc 6mo agoYou 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.
- hn_throwaway_99 6mo agoI 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.
- quickthrowman 6mo ago
- tanepiper 6mo ago7 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.
- croes 6mo agoRelated? https://www.statista.com/chart/18794/net-contributors-to-eu-budget/ https://www.statista.com/chart/18794/net-contributors-to-eu-...
- HatchedLake721 6mo agoHere's per capita: https://i.imgur.com/VlRkDMy.png https://i.imgur.com/VlRkDMy.png
- croes 6mo agoAre subsidies evenly spread between all citizens?
- keiferski 6mo agoAs 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.
- weezing 6mo agoWe just didn't have oligarchs.
- WarmWash 6mo agoPoland has somewhat of a culture of overworking, "kultura zapierdolu".
- Ralfp 6mo agoYup, 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.
- stackedinserter 6mo ago> kultura zapierdolu I want "kultura zapierdolu" t-shirt now.
- goalieca 6mo ago
- jansan 6mo agoLiving 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.
- cromka 6mo agoYeah, as a Pole, it's crazy how much safer it's gotten and how quickly. There's almost no petty crime in Poland nowadays. And I totally see where the stereotypes were coming from, we definitely exported some of the worst element to the Western EU for many years. Happy this is no longer the case.
- niemandhier 6mo agoI 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-forefront-of-eu-countries-in-terms-of-investing-european-funds2 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?
- tossandthrow 6mo agoYes, 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.
- pavlov 6mo agoIn 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.
- kspacewalk2 6mo agoI 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).
- szmarczak 6mo ago> 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.
- kypro 6mo agoPolish 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.
- elAhmo 6mo agoTwo letter answer: EU
- waffleiron 6mo agoHaving 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.
- riffraff 6mo agoThere'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.
- nopurpose 6mo ago1670 on Netflix was hilarious
- n1b0m 6mo agoI hadn’t come across this before. Looks really good, thanks for sharing
- greenavocado 6mo agoProsperity is a curse. People are no longer having children in Poland. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Fertility_statistics https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
- lo_zamoyski 6mo agoIt'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.
- merpkz 6mo agoFirst 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"
- lo_zamoyski 6mo agoIndeed. 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.
- FrustratedMonky 6mo agoIn 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.
- shrubble 6mo agoThis 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.
- FrustratedMonky 6mo agoThat 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.
- heyitsmedotjayb 6mo agoWouldn'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.
- danans 6mo ago> 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.
- MaxPock 6mo agoThey'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
- wqaatwt 6mo ago> 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..
- detritus 6mo agoIt'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.
- thih9 6mo agoPoles 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.
- PunchyHamster 6mo agoIt 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
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- yieldcrv 6mo agoupdating 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.
- very_good_man 6mo agoHow? They said "No" to mass migration.
- orian 6mo agoThis is not true. Over 5% of population is foreign and it’s growing every year.
- 4289076290867 6mo ago[dead]
- nickdurfe 6mo agoExcept when millions of Ukrainian refugees have been allowed in since 2022. You could say that they said "no" to mass brown people migration.
- DarkNova6 6mo agoInvestment, 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.
- testing22321 6mo agoCan you give examples of western countries other than the US doing that? I’ve never seen it, I travel a lot.
- 1718627440 6mo agoA German here, I think we have done that too with great success.
- DarkNova6 6mo agoI 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.
- pjc50 6mo agoThis 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)
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- thiago_fm 6mo agoThis 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.
- shevy-java 6mo agoPoland 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-budget/ 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_(nominal)#Table 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.)
- jonahs197 6mo ago[dead]
- Fokamul 6mo agoHow 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.
- steve_adams_86 6mo ago> 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?
- thatfrenchguy 6mo agoI mean, both GDP and average salaries in Czechia is higher so arguably at some point you might want playgrounds for your children
- atmanactive 6mo agoInvest? That sounds like a pure loss in economic terms.
- steve_adams_86 6mo agoI'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).
- thelastgallon 6mo agoI read Mila 18 by Leon Uris (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mila_18 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mila_18) decades ago and been a big admirer of Polish people since then.
- _whiteCaps_ 6mo agoThe Warsaw Uprising Museum is an excellent place to visit if you're into WWII history.
- cyclopeanutopia 6mo agoAlso the WWII museum in Gdansk.
- steve_adams_86 6mo agoYears 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.
- kamranjon 6mo agoWould you happen to know any of the motor companies by name? I’m often trying to find quality motors and it’s surprisingly difficult.
- steve_adams_86 6mo agoThis was the best one I dealt with https://www.mabrobotics.pl/ma-actuators 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.
- alt219 6mo agoSome 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.
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- krona 6mo agoTwo 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.
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- LightBug1 6mo agoSo, 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.
- lifestyleguru 6mo agoWorst 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.
- rembal 6mo agoI'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.
- lifestyleguru 6mo agoThe state of Polish healthcare is undefensible, it's not funny at all.
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- thih9 6mo ago> “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.”
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- sudo-tak 6mo agoI 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.
- raffael_de 6mo agoPoland 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.
- cromka 6mo ago> without the historical baggage Oh boy, are you wrong on that...
- raffael_de 6mo agowell, maybe they have. but compared to Germany I don't see them carry it.
- anonu 6mo agoWorked 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.
- jacekm 6mo agoAnecdotal, 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.
- MiDu16 6mo agowhat a coincidence, I just bought a Bosch washing machine and it was made in Poland.
- saddat 6mo agoNo migrants leave the necessary attention on economy
- pjc50 6mo agoPolish people migrating to the rest of Europe, sending money back, and eventually returning is probably a big part of the success.
- znpy 6mo agoIf sending money back and then returning was the key, you’d expect more countries have the same success Poland did.
- ivanjermakov 6mo agoExcept over 2 million Ukranian refugees: https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/migration-and-asylum/migrant-integration/migrant-integration-hub/eu-countries-updates-and-facts/migrant-integration-poland_en https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/migration-and-asy...
- a3w 6mo agoHe 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.
- aldrich 6mo agoNorway 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.
- eagle10ne 6mo agoI'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.
- idontwantthis 6mo agoCan 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?
- rich_sasha 6mo agoOpinions 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.
- pure_magic 6mo agoIn 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.
- reubenlavin 6mo agoIntresting 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.
- ponector 6mo agoAnd 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.
- _whiteCaps_ 6mo agoMy 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.
- ponector 6mo agoSome 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!
- bad_username 6mo agoTrue. 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.
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- dyauspitr 6mo agoIt’s punching way below where a nation of that size should be with all the zillions of free EU welfare money it gets.
- rembal 6mo agoI don't know. I have to admit that things might have been better, we could have been more active in international politics or trade, but we are a sort of low key, and maybe the money and effort is better spent on improving life of citizens. Would I like more Polish footprint in the world? Yeah. Do I prefer clean streets, nice infrastructure and safety? Hell yeah.
- dyauspitr 6mo agoI think it’s less about footprint and more about improving your economy based on welfare.
- cindyllm 6mo ago[dead]
- aykutseker 6mo agothe 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.
- fwr 6mo agoThank 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.
- linhns 6mo agoYep. Looking at Hungary.
- gpt5 6mo agoHungary and Poland charts look almost identical https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=PL https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location... https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=HU https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...
- cromka 6mo agoThis is about successful use of the EU funds, not GDP or any other metric.
- jakozaur 6mo agoThe 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-Economic/dp/0198789343 https://www.amazon.com/Europes-Growth-Champion-Insights-Econ... And Noah's blog post: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-polandmalaysia-model https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-polandmalaysia-model
- exitb 6mo agoNotably, only five years have passed between last Russian solders leaving Poland and the country joining NATO. Quite a speedrun.
- cromka 6mo agoAnd it was about the only period when Russia was so week it did not meddle internationally. Putin ascended to power in 1999.
- anikan_vader 6mo ago>> 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.
- jakozaur 6mo agoPoland'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.
- silexia 6mo agoPoland 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.
- pjc50 6mo agoPoland benefited significantly from immigration (of Poles to other countries and then back).
- seper8 6mo agoAnd 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.
- __natty__ 6mo agoTo 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.
- ericzawo 6mo agoOne 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.
- therealdrag0 6mo agoWhat food would you recommend?
- tonymet 6mo agoPierogi, Kielbasa
- trick-or-treat 6mo agoSir, this is a hardware store.
- tonymet 6mo agoWhat’s a guy gotta do to get a measly upvote
- mchusma 6mo agoThis 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.
- nickpp 6mo agoThese 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.
- znpy 6mo agoYeah in modern media you always have to pander to the left, it’s clownish.
- topspin 6mo agoThe opiate of the intellectual; forever afforded the benefit of every doubt.
- marsven_422 6mo ago[dead]
- johnbarron 6mo agoPoland 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.
- WalterBright 6mo agoPoland went more free market than the other former Soviet bloc countries. Free markets are the fastest and best way to prosperity.
- VimEscapeArtist 6mo agoI 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"
- avgDev 6mo agoWhat 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.
- baq 6mo agothis 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.
- kleiba2 6mo ago> this is Poland for you. everyone complains about everything Must be the proximity to Germany...
- scotty79 6mo agoIt's quite incredible how close Poland and Germany are culturally. And how unaware both countries are about this.
- Leonard_of_Q 6mo agoAre 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.
- polskibus 6mo agoLook at the demography though. Poland will fall very hard, faster than its neighbours.
- gitowiec 6mo agoI'm from Poland, it sucks as usual. Our GDP comes from buying groceries.
- dadjoker 6mo ago[dead]
- redwood 6mo agoNot 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
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- m463 6mo agogog.com is in poland
- jakub_g 6mo ago> ... 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.
- sixsevenrot 6mo agoThe 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
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- miki123211 6mo agoI'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.
- cicko 6mo agoIn 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.
- nabbed 6mo agoI 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).
- cromka 6mo agoThese jokes were for a reason. The Polish imigranta weren't exactly the cream of the crop. Even we, the Poles from Poland, would laugh at those Pollack from Greenpoint/Jackowo jokes.
- cnd78A 6mo agoBut 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 https://maps.sensor.community/#7/52.210/18.223): nearly everywhere people burn coal (among other biomass) the air is incredibly polluted.
- toephu2 6mo agoFor 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.
- mrsvanwinkle 6mo agoI 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.
- deepsun 6mo agoArticle 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.
- noirchen 6mo agoIt looks that not many talked about the fact that there is a lot Chinese investment in Poland, bringing in manufacturing and management experiences.
- throwpod 6mo agoPoland will rule the Europe in the coming decades
- TurdF3rguson 6mo agoThey even have a space program! I hear they're planning to put the first man on the sun.
- znpy 6mo agoWow that’s racist
- TurdF3rguson 6mo agoI'm Polish, maybe that will help you unclutch them pearls.
- James_K 6mo agoPOLAND MENTION!!!!!
- BrandoElFollito 6mo agoI 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.
- cromka 6mo ago> but there is money slipped under he table to make things work. Corruption like this is almost non-existent anymore. Was very much the case 10 years ago and earlier. Docs make serious money now, they don't need to risk it with bribery. > Finally the medicines/drugs are not refunded. You have to pay for them. This is wild for someone coming from France. Sorry, WHAT? This was never the case, where are you getting this from?
- BrandoElFollito 6mo ago> Corruption like this is almost non-existent anymore. Was very much the case 10 years ago and earlier. Docs make serious money now, they don't need to risk it with bribery. Go to a hospital where you need to be operated. Look at the queues to see the ordynator and how people behave and talk among each other how much to give. have you been to a hospital recently? I have, I visited the parents of a freind and actually witnessed this, not from a theoretical parespective but in real life. Ask around. >> Finally the medicines/drugs are not refunded. You have to pay for them. This is wild for someone coming from France. > Sorry, WHAT? This was never the case, where are you getting this from? Do you actually live in Poland?? OK, let's try this. When you are sick and you get a recept for medicaments, do you pay for them, or are they free? You have to pay. Do you get a reimbursement? Maybe 50% if you hit the right drug. You have to buy diapers for adults for a person who is handicapped. Are they free? No they are not. You pay for them, a part is subsudised. To 80% of a limit set (not the actual price) except if you apply fro special extra stiff such a PFRON. You have MS. Do you have access to modern medicamentation by default? No you don't - after 40 yo you get into a less efficient track. Please do your homework before discussing. There are people who actually know this becaise they were actually direcly involved. As a constrast, and something which is a baseline for civilized medicine -- my wife has MS and it costs us a few EUR per month (you pay 1 € per visit to the doctor and about 0.5 € per pack of medicine, up to 50 € per year total). This includes all the doctor visits, tomography, rehabilitation, ... I would say that my whole family pays 20 € a year total for everything medical. Like I said, I have a particular fondness for Poland which is a marvellous country. This does not mean that one should not point out the things that should change.
- danielpop 6mo agoEvery country that joined the EU is more prosperous then before joining. Poland had a greater boom then other members, but they are all benefiting from being in the union. The European Union might be the greatest human project so far.
- woodpanel 6mo agoVisited Poland in the 2000s, while there were still plenty of tokens of poorness visible. Eating out cost a third of what it cost in Germany. I remember that rain water would drop on our commie bloc hostel beds from the ceiling, even though there were still three floors above us. I'm sure many of those tokens are gone by now. While the Poles I've worked with are on average very capable and driven, there is also the bigger picture: That they have a national ambition. Can only guess, but it seems they know that Poland must outperform its biggest two neighbours (DE & RUS) in order to retain their freedom. Given the current state of these neighbours this fear may seem to be blown out of propotions, but history is the better guide here. Given that ambition I would guess the population is less devided on economic and trade issues, specifically with regards to Europe/International. The need to join the Euro is certainly less present there and in hindsight might be another part of Poland's success. Poland tries to be a serious nation at least. Which can't be said about Germany and its self-inflicted demise on almost every measruable front, ie the woke mind virus. Fun fact: German IT magazine Heise in light of the sluggish German job market recently published an article about moving abroad for jobs, ie. to Poland https://www.heise.de/ratgeber/Auswandern-nach-Polen-Was-ITler-verdienen-Lebenshaltungskosten-und-Steuern-10458960.html https://www.heise.de/ratgeber/Auswandern-nach-Polen-Was-ITle...