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Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

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Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#211

I love the polish, but credit where credit is due: „Poland is the largest beneficiary of EU funds 2014-2020, with one in four euro going to Poland“ https://www.gov.pl/web/funds-regional-policy/poland-at-the-f... Update: The comments below this are strange. I ment: „Poland gets money, Poland transforms it into more money”. Is Poland more efficient in it than other countries? I do not know. Would Poland have generated…

Since one of the major donors is Germany, I also like to consider this as reparations for WWII. I wish people in Poland would realize more how generous the EU has been to them.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#212

I love the polish, but credit where credit is due: „Poland is the largest beneficiary of EU funds 2014-2020, with one in four euro going to Poland“ https://www.gov.pl/web/funds-regional-policy/poland-at-the-f... Update: The comments below this are strange. I ment: „Poland gets money, Poland transforms it into more money”. Is Poland more efficient in it than other countries? I do not know. Would Poland have generated…

There are many countries in the EU that get many more funds per person than Poland and have much worse outcomes. Some moron always show up with the "but it was all the EU subsidies" talking point, which is quite frankly part of racist tropes of eastern Europeans being dumb and worse than westerners. Could you imagine them accomplishing anything on their own? That's ridiculous. It's us, the western saviors, who did th…

Perhaps I wouldn't use such harsh words, but it is a noticeable phenomenon when interacting with _some_ Western Europeans that if Poland's success comes up in a conversation, they immediately "offer insight" that it was in fact all outside help that made it possible. (There are also, in fact, some folks further east of Poland, who like to repeat that narrative as well, but it doesn't happen nearly as often as with Westerners.)

And yes, my own take why this does happen is that there was certain order to the region in the past centuries - the West was modern and wealthy, the East was backwards and poor and all was in its natural place. This new situation is unfamiliar and needs a sort of explanation that would preserve the balance somehow. In short, they cope.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#213

As an American that’s lived in Poland for the last decade: - it was kind of inevitable once Poland stopped being oppressed by its neighbors. The USSR, Nazi Germany, the German Empire / Prussia, Austria, Imperial Russia, etc. have basically been dividing the country since the 1780s. Without these restrictions, Poland is a natural leader in its region purely on population alone. - A general lack of ideological “mind vi…

Polish-born person living abroad here. There definitely ARE "mind viruses" in the polish psyche, and pretty nasty ones at that. You might not have noticed them because they are from a different nature than the ones that infected Wester Europe and North American. For example, Poles by and large harbor an inferiority complex due to the decades of oppression and suppresson that makes them sell themselves short and act as people-pleasers to western nations and western firms (that's precisely what makes us so liked by those firms! and that's also your "looking to America" here). Poles as a nation are driven by romantism, not pragmatism, and that is the reason why we always get screwed on the world stage one way or another and have the reputation of being "dumb". I am as happy as the next guy to see economic development, but our mental maps let us down regularly, and I am not particularly optimistic for a change on that front.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#214

How it happened? (Source: I'm working with polish companies) 1. Hard working people 2. Biggest recipient of EU subsidies used for projects which generates more profit. Infrastructure, internet, etc. To compare, Czechia used it for stupid things like bicycle lanes, child playgrounds etc. 3. Building permit is very easy to get for basically anything. Yes, this way you can sometimes get chaotic new buildings, but this c…

> 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?

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#215
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 1980s, EU money was flowing to Spain, Portugal and Greece. And people complained about that too. But the result is inarguably positive. Those countries had only recently become democracies after decades of military dictatorships or otherwise unstable third-world style governments. Today they're the most dynamic economies in the EU in many respects, and their democracies are well established and functioning. Th…

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I’m not interested in debating the anti-Islam diatribe. If your lived experience is that “bearded men and veiled women” have destroyed the halcyon paradise of your childhood, then that’s fundamentally a nostalgia-based emotional argument.

But I’ll clarify that I wrote that Spain, Portugal and Greece specifically have become dynamic economies in the context of the EU. Spain has grown at a consistent 3% for a decade. Of course the far-right argues that it’s the wrong kind of growth because it’s fueled by immigration (backwards-looking political movements prefer zero growth and a shrinking population if it means less people of the color they don’t like).

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#216
post #97

I love the polish, but credit where credit is due: „Poland is the largest beneficiary of EU funds 2014-2020, with one in four euro going to Poland“ https://www.gov.pl/web/funds-regional-policy/poland-at-the-f... Update: The comments below this are strange. I ment: „Poland gets money, Poland transforms it into more money”. Is Poland more efficient in it than other countries? I do not know. Would Poland have generated…

They're also the 3rd smallest net recipient of EU funds per capita: https://i.imgur.com/VlRkDMy.png

You mean 13? You have to count the net contributors as well or its very misleading...

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#217
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is not whether it is an investment or whether it is not. The question is whether growth is objective and fair or whether it is not. For comparison of wealth in Poland, ALL net-subsidies would have to be deducted, because this is essentially wealth taken from other countries, and distributed to poorer areas in the EU. I am not disputing that this leads to more growth; I am disputing the "country xyz is no…

Economic zones are NOT zero sum.

I agree, but people are very weary of these things because of the (correct) belief that their appropriation is guided by unaccountable bureaucrats. It stands in need of justification that Europeans feel they never got to hear

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#219

Having studied in the Netherlands it was somewhat difficult finding a job (10 years ago), and my first job was in Poland at a large Pharma company. I started working there for a wage lower than Dutch minimum wage when I started, just to get an in into the industry. There is a while set of jobs in Pharma that got moved to Warsaw and no longer available in NL/DE.

There's a large set of jobs in everything that expanded operations in Poland, for salary reasons, e.g. automotive (Stellantis, Volkswagen, MAN) electronics (Electrolux, Whirlpool), food (Ferrero)...

But Poland did well capturing them and then growing new businesses locally, so now there's local brands and such that are expanding abroad on their own.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#220
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of it as an investment. The rest of the EU also benefits from their hard work, and economic prosperity. Other countries in the EU have also enjoyed economic growth and support over the years. I'm old enough to remember internal borders with passport checks in Europe, before the wall fell and Poland was still on the other side of that. Nice to see them moving on from that. Thanks to the EU free movement of peopl…

"I'm old enough to remember internal borders with passport checks in Europe" Did you recently crossed borders? On many the checks are there again, because of fear of immigration terrorism or something, so the people could see, politicians were doing something to make them feel safe (but what I could see when passing borders, especially between poland and germany, were looong lines of trucks, so much for free flowing…

Not the same extent like it was before… Now most of the times is just slowed down traffic (quick glance who's in car and move on), and more than that I was maybe stopped two times for quick chit-chat (where/why I'm heading). And I crossed, multiple times, borders of DK (they had checks since 2018?), DE, A, IT, CH, CZ…

Quick ID check happened once - when I was traveling with bus across border.

Back in a days it was a lot, lot slower and more detailed.

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