Poland's economic experiment based on Thomas Piketty • Hacker News Board

Re: Poland's economic experiment based on Thomas Piketty

#51

Post by bobthechef » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 10:48 PM UTC

ucaetano wrote: post #21

bobthechef wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> renting is better to society as a whole. Care to explain? I would say that widespread renting is actually quite terrible. It means that property is kept in the hands of class of landowners (and when wealth is concentrated, this also tends to concentrate power); that instead of investing one's income, renters are basically paying off the owner's mortgage; that generally, people prefer to own, and so widespread renti…

> Care to explain? Sure! Caveat: please ignore taxes, emotional value and a few other country-specific details. When you're buying a home, you're doing 3 independent things: 1) Borrowing money (optional) 2) Making a capital investment into an illiquid, immovable asset 3) Renting an asset that you own to yourself for you own usage Give how much little money you have (compared to a company) and how your earnings and sp…

I couldn't help but notice that you didn't address anything I wrote. You also ask me to ignore important factors like property tax which, frankly, can make owning land unprofitable for landlords if people move away. Also, an economics stripped of human beings and divorced from the social and the political is not economics, just some Procrustean nonsense cooked up in an armchair. Economies exist to serve their participants, not the other way around. Anyway...

First off, immobility is a problem only when there is a scarcity of jobs. It is a bad sign when lots of people have to move frequently to get jobs. Optimizing for mobility is kind of like treating a symptom instead of the cause and will likely deepen the problem because, hey, we can always count on people moving. People don't generally move around just to move around. Appealing to "better allocation" and "adaptation" as ways to defend mobility is, again, the result of having adopted some kind of dehumanized economics that treats people like units of goods in a distribution chain. Mobility is really not the thing you should be most worried about.

Second, it's not an either/or proposition. We can have renters and owners. Renting can cater to those who are mobile. But when a market is dominated by renters, then your market is fucked (see above).

Re: Poland's economic experiment based on Thomas Piketty

#52

Post by dvfjsdhgfv » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 10:49 PM UTC

ucaetano wrote: post #11

> That means a pause in privatization, which Morawiecki says contributed up to 14 billion zlotys a year to the budget, a preference for domestic over foreign borrowing (the share of Poland's debt owned by foreigners is down to 50 percent from about 60 percent three years ago) and a reliance on state enterprises to increase investment because private companies are too small and not boldly expansionist enough to provid…

I'm curious to see what happens next. Economics is quite complex and often the same policy applied in a different country gives quite different results.

Re: Poland's economic experiment based on Thomas Piketty

#53

Post by genericthrow » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 11:07 PM UTC

"The problem with Poles is they don't want to save," Borowski says.

In 2001 so called 'Belka's Tax' was imposed, which is annulling the capital gains tax (19% or something). This makes any placing to actually lose money (even more if you count inflation in). So saving money in sock's drawer is out of question because of inflation, in banks it's even worse, that's been going on for 17 years. How we're suppose to save then?

Re: Poland's economic experiment based on Thomas Piketty

#54

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 11:13 PM UTC

laurencerowe wrote: post #31

ucaetano wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! And inflation is just another form of taxes.

Inflation is a tax on wealth but not income (which rises with inflation.) As such it’s a progressive tax since wealth is so unequally distributed. Close to two decades of low inflation in the US and Western Europe has greatly increased inequality. Hyperinflation is destructive and must be avoided but there’s a strong progressive case for increasing the 2% inflation targeted by most central banks.

[deleted]

Re: Poland's economic experiment based on Thomas Piketty

#55

Post by asdsa5325 » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 11:22 PM UTC

rb808 wrote: post #47

ed_balls wrote: post #2

> That has meant a negative household saving rate, compared with Germany's 10 percent of disposable income. Isn't it because majority of Germans rent and majority of Poles buy?

Probably because Germans earn 3x as much. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...

Average wage doesn't matter unless you adjust for cost of living.

Re: Poland's economic experiment based on Thomas Piketty

#56

Post by asdsa5325 » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 11:24 PM UTC

ucaetano wrote: post #21

bobthechef wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> renting is better to society as a whole. Care to explain? I would say that widespread renting is actually quite terrible. It means that property is kept in the hands of class of landowners (and when wealth is concentrated, this also tends to concentrate power); that instead of investing one's income, renters are basically paying off the owner's mortgage; that generally, people prefer to own, and so widespread renti…

> Care to explain? Sure! Caveat: please ignore taxes, emotional value and a few other country-specific details. When you're buying a home, you're doing 3 independent things: 1) Borrowing money (optional) 2) Making a capital investment into an illiquid, immovable asset 3) Renting an asset that you own to yourself for you own usage Give how much little money you have (compared to a company) and how your earnings and sp…

(2) is where your argument falls apart. Everyone wants to buy houses nowadays- it's not illiquid. In large cities, most houses only stay on the market for a few days. Buying houses with cash is becoming increasingly common also.

Re: Poland's economic experiment based on Thomas Piketty

#57

Post by seba_dos1 » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 11:44 PM UTC

bobthechef wrote: post #45

baq wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're national socialists. They don't like aliens, want to be in control of everything they deem important and are perfectly willing to break the rule of law for the good of society. They gave everyone with more than one child free money. They also call everything 'national' instead of 'public'. They think that the EU is a hindrance and an enemy, as if Putin didn't exist (that the part I can't understand the most.)

You're parroting an extremely twisted line touted by some media sources. You must realize how absurd it is to call them national socialists given the accepted meaning of that term. It's actually quite clownish. W.r.t. aliens, that's nonsense. Even the article mentions Ukrainian immigration. For the record, Poland took in what were effectively ~1 million Ukrainian refugees and immigrants because of, you know, that war…

As somebody who followed closely some of the issues mentioned here, especially the Tribunal one, seeing the legislative procedures being fearlessly broken and actually listening to the parliamentary debates, being able to pin-point the carefully crafted manipulative messages that weren't even internally coherent as soon as you gave them more attention than usual media coverage does, I can see you mindlessly repeating all this stuff right now. Try to diversify your opinion, read various sources, and especially don't buy into the completely stupid "they tried to do bad stuff and failed, so we'll now successfully do twice as bad stuff as they wanted to, cause we're in power now and nobody will stop us and hey, they were baddies too" argument.

Re: Poland's economic experiment based on Thomas Piketty

#58

Post by nkkollaw » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 11:45 PM UTC

bobthechef wrote: post #22

nkkollaw wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most of the polish judiciary has roots in the communist prosecution apparatus and is actively shielding all of the assholes that had a soft landing after the "toppling" of the communist government I was under the impression that most of the people that were working as judges during the Soviet occupation are now dead or retired..?

He didn't say they were all judges. He said they had roots in the Communist establishment (his focus is on the deeply embedded secret police, but it goes beyond that). You also have Communist/post-Communist dynasties and clans where power is inherited and shared through ties and nepotistic practices stemming from the Communist period. It's nice to think that the fall of Communism automatically led to the wholesale li…

Would you compare the change from being part of the USSR to a republic to a change of government from Monarchy to republic? I think you just start over.

I'm not Polish so I don't know the situation exactly, but it's also been 30 years. I live in Poland and I see nothing even remotely resembling communism (besides the ugly Soviet buildings they haven't demolished yet). I think the government is using this as a scapegoat to push their agenda, but that's just an impression.

Re: Poland's economic experiment based on Thomas Piketty

#59

Post by nkkollaw » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 11:47 PM UTC

the_nozzle wrote: post #19

nkkollaw wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most of the polish judiciary has roots in the communist prosecution apparatus and is actively shielding all of the assholes that had a soft landing after the "toppling" of the communist government I was under the impression that most of the people that were working as judges during the Soviet occupation are now dead or retired..?

Most of the supreme court judges still hail from the old system (not sure of the average age but it's got to be around 70). Communism/socialism was in a slow decline when they started their careers, but that does not change the fact that they swore their fealty to the communist party.

So you really think that because they swore to the Communist party 30 years ago they still push that agenda, even though it was a foreign power, that doesn't even exist anymore..?

Re: Poland's economic experiment based on Thomas Piketty

#60

Post by mrwebmaster » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 11:55 PM UTC

ucaetano wrote: post #11

> That means a pause in privatization, which Morawiecki says contributed up to 14 billion zlotys a year to the budget, a preference for domestic over foreign borrowing (the share of Poland's debt owned by foreigners is down to 50 percent from about 60 percent three years ago) and a reliance on state enterprises to increase investment because private companies are too small and not boldly expansionist enough to provid…

What disaster do you see in Argentina? During the last years It cancelled all of it's debt with the IMF (in one payment, and this debt was generated many years ago) and also with the Paris Club. It's Central Bank is in relative good position. A monetary issue is the high inflation rate, but I wouldn't call it an "economic disaster" since unemployment is relatively low, if we compare it with historical levels or with unemployment of other LatAm countries.