And the PIIGS countries also.
Wealthy EU states treat Eastern Europe as a colony
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Re: Wealthy EU states treat Eastern Europe as a colony
#12> In the East, meanwhile, the elites are shamed to silence, for they’re complicit in a population collapse of wartime scale. Croatia has lost almost a quarter of its people (an existential meltdown, one premier dared to moan). Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltic three of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia have seen a fifth of workers go. Poland has lost over a tenth.
Are we saying that, say, the Polish state owns the Poles and if the latter go abroad they are stolen goods?
The rest of the article seems to assume that Poland would be better off outside of the German value chain, which borders insanity.
Re: Wealthy EU states treat Eastern Europe as a colony
#13Are the non-EU states like Belarus and Ukraine really better off than CEE EU states? While the situation may not be ideal for the CEE EU states, the alternative doesn't seem great either.
I don’t know what to say to that, other than to talk about my experience living in Eastern Eruope: about two of my friends are the ones who remained in the country, everyone else has gone to the west, whether Austria, Germany or the UK, they all understood that there’s a better life waiting for them there (with its own pros and cons, of course). So very few remain with the will and the courage to wish for a system th…
The same happens in Southern Europe and membership of the EU allowed me to get a 6-digit income and to live in a country where I don’t need a political affiliation to get a decent job and where the state bureaucracy is not merely a welfare system for government employees.
I’m not sure I’d blame this state of affairs on the countries that decided to not be economic basket-cases. What should Germany do? Cut its productivity or destroy its value chains?
Re: Wealthy EU states treat Eastern Europe as a colony
#14Are we Eastern Europeans supposed to cry that the Iron Curtain is no longer here to protect us from moving to places with higher quality of life?
Re: Wealthy EU states treat Eastern Europe as a colony
#15> In the East, meanwhile, the elites are shamed to silence, for they’re complicit in a population collapse of wartime scale. Croatia has lost almost a quarter of its people (an existential meltdown, one premier dared to moan). Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltic three of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia have seen a fifth of workers go. Poland has lost over a tenth. Are we saying that, say, the Polish state owns the Poles a…
> Are we saying that, say, the Polish state owns the Poles and if the latter go abroad they are stolen goods?
Large amounts of educated (at taxpayer expense) people leaving a country is a problem, regardless of any claims of ownership.
Or claims of duty to their country. But it is easier to argue that people aren't owned by their country (a claim present only in your rhetorical question, and absent from the article), than to argue that they have no duty towards it and their fellow countrymen.
> The rest of the article seems to assume that Poland would be better off outside of the German value chain, which borders insanity.
Does it? It seems to me it's pointing out the ways in which Eastern Europe is being exploited, and the claim that they'd be better off "outside the German value chain" is again purely your invention. Should they not complain until the situation is so bad they'd be worse off as an isolated economy competing alone against giant colluding countries and unions of countries?
It's telling the only criticism you have is not for things the article says, but for what it seems to say or imply.
Re: Wealthy EU states treat Eastern Europe as a colony
#16> In the East, meanwhile, the elites are shamed to silence, for they’re complicit in a population collapse of wartime scale. Croatia has lost almost a quarter of its people (an existential meltdown, one premier dared to moan). Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltic three of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia have seen a fifth of workers go. Poland has lost over a tenth. Are we saying that, say, the Polish state owns the Poles a…
Not own, but since they invested billions into education that has seen a net negative return, there is reason to fret a downward spiral unless those that benefit rebalance the load.
Re: Wealthy EU states treat Eastern Europe as a colony
#17> In the East, meanwhile, the elites are shamed to silence, for they’re complicit in a population collapse of wartime scale. Croatia has lost almost a quarter of its people (an existential meltdown, one premier dared to moan). Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltic three of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia have seen a fifth of workers go. Poland has lost over a tenth. Are we saying that, say, the Polish state owns the Poles a…
Not own, but since they invested billions into education that has seen a net negative return, there is reason to fret a downward spiral unless those that benefit rebalance the load.
Yes, the local political class and elites should take responsibility and act so that people stop expatriating, if that’s really what they want. What the article suggests is that we blame the foreigner, ie the German and the Briton, because they allow educated Poles and Italians to earn a decent salary.
Besides, in Poland we are starting to see a reversal, as the country keeps growing and becoming richer, net migration has become positive. So one may argue that Western Europe, while benefiting from the Polish workforce it imported, also acted as a relief valve for Polish unemployment, while the country was catching up with the west.
Re: Wealthy EU states treat Eastern Europe as a colony
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t know what to say to that, other than to talk about my experience living in Eastern Eruope: about two of my friends are the ones who remained in the country, everyone else has gone to the west, whether Austria, Germany or the UK, they all understood that there’s a better life waiting for them there (with its own pros and cons, of course). So very few remain with the will and the courage to wish for a system th…
The same happens in Southern Europe and membership of the EU allowed me to get a 6-digit income and to live in a country where I don’t need a political affiliation to get a decent job and where the state bureaucracy is not merely a welfare system for government employees. I’m not sure I’d blame this state of affairs on the countries that decided to not be economic basket-cases. What should Germany do? Cut its product…
Individually there are of course benefits to being able to go to richer countries. On the whole though it is obvious that a free market within the EU is vastly better for the large established industries of the west.
An underdeveloped country can hardly compete with the likes of already huge corporations without some serious backing from the state. And even then it may be unfeasible.
Of course you can blame Germany and other developed nations with established industries that while benefiting from educated immigrants and the free market within the EU don't care to give anything back, or even view this as problematic in any way.
Re: Wealthy EU states treat Eastern Europe as a colony
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
The same happens in Southern Europe and membership of the EU allowed me to get a 6-digit income and to live in a country where I don’t need a political affiliation to get a decent job and where the state bureaucracy is not merely a welfare system for government employees. I’m not sure I’d blame this state of affairs on the countries that decided to not be economic basket-cases. What should Germany do? Cut its product…
Individually there are of course benefits to being able to go to richer countries. On the whole though it is obvious that a free market within the EU is vastly better for the large established industries of the west. An underdeveloped country can hardly compete with the likes of already huge corporations without some serious backing from the state. And even then it may be unfeasible. Of course you can blame Germany a…
I don’t see this as problematic because, at least for Eastern European countries, the west absorbed some of their unemployment, while they were catching up, potentially reducing internal tensions and smoothing the transition to a modern high value-added economy. Access to the European market allowed them to become part of the German value-chain, which produced wealth and exported technology and know-how. All this while receiving transfers from the West to build infrastructure.
I’m not sure what alternative scenario we could have had. I think that Poland outside the EU would have ended up closer to Ukraine than to where it is now (Poland GDP per capita PPP is 3x the Ukrainian).
Re: Wealthy EU states treat Eastern Europe as a colony
#20Are we Eastern Europeans supposed to cry that the Iron Curtain is no longer here to protect us from moving to places with higher quality of life?
No, because everything is about you