271–280 of 944 posts
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Yes, this is how European social welfare works. And it is fantastic! Because the entirety of the EU is benefitting from it. Polish people have larger spending power, interesting and safe places to visit, etc. This is not a "present" given to Poland. This is ensuring a better life for all Europeans.
So you’re taking from others who earned it and give it someone that didn’t? Got it.
Investment, infrastructure, education. Same as China. Same as every other growing country. What the US and most other western countries do are: Let infrastructure rot, defund education, reroute money to large corporations. This is how you end up with failed state.
Can you give examples of western countries other than the US doing that? I’ve never seen it, I travel a lot.
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…
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As I've mentioned before, I've had intimate experience hiring across Europe and at the 75th percentile and above, the salaries tend to be extremely close when comparing Western Europe and CEE. The difference becomes attitude. A German SWE wants a 9-5. A Czech or Romanian SWE wants to build the next JetBrains or UIPath. I don't want to hire the former - they're useless and a headache. I want to hire the latter.
Pretty sure salaries at large tech companies are way higher in places like London, Zurich or Amsterdam than in Warsaw or Prague for example. Berlin may be closer to the eastern countries. It might help to discuss actual ranges instead of "intimate experience" so we can tell if your experience matches reality.
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So many false claims in one post. Impressive levels of delusion.
[1] https://www.globalelectricity.org/electricity-prices-by-coun...
> Germany leads Europe—and the world among major economies—with residential electricity prices reaching €0.3835 per kWh (approximately $0.41/kWh) in the first half of 2025, according to Eurostat data. This represents a 34% premium above the EU average of €0.2872/kWh.
Years ago I bought some really nice brushless motors and was surprised to see they were made in Poland. I had no idea they were manufacturers of things like that. Later I bought even nicer motors, meant to provide exceptional control and feedback for tactile/haptic behaviours, and they were from Poland too. Then I got to work on a robotic arm which contained a bunch of components from Poland. At this point it was cle…
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Exactly. Which proves that people who keep saying that Poland's growth is only due to EU's money should finally stop. Another argument: Poland's GDP had already been growing at a similar pace before it joined the EU (but after it got rid of communism).
The largest EU benefit is that it makes democratic and rule of law backsliding unlikely. So if you invest money in Poland you can be reasonably sure that it won't get stolen from you. Hungary was a demonstration that this works over the long term.
There is no lesson of "democracy" to give. At best it is a guided democracy, and this is very generous.
For example, VPNs are going to be forbidden, and the free speech compared to the US is a little toy.
Elections are often a facade in many EU countries.
In France for example, it's always the "right" (btw you can be socially or jailed if you support them by using the wrong words) against the existing party, and communists are begging it's better to vote for the existing party, than support the newcomers.
It's a loop, this is why there is this joke that voters are "beavers", because at every elections they are asked "build a dam" against competition.
There is the same beaver thing, over and over again for 30 years.
Even people that are actually elected you have nowhere your word near their decisions (and even less near Von der Leyen and similar people).
Poland understood long time ago that it needs a safe country, and that they need to make sure that the people in their country are fine and safe before helping the whole planet.
Hungary and Poland are a little bit in the same boat, their relative independence saves them (e.g. refusing the EUR currency, refusing some policies) that allows them to have more leeway to support the local people, while benefiting of the funds from the EU and Schengen.
The EU prevents your money from being stolen, except when the EU itself decides to withhold or deduct it. Hungary has lost over a billion euros in ECJ daily fines...
If you push it even further, this is forgetting about the hundreds of billions that are centrally distributed to third-parties (and this is just Ukraine!). So, your money, our decision.
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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…
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You mean the ones who fought tooth and nail for comfy jobs within unions with barely no way to fire anyone? And now are wondering where the jobs and the money went?
Tesla workers rejected IG Metall as the union of choice for their factory because all they want to know is send faxes and keep companies wrapped around in red tape like a mummy
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Yet you can see crowds of young anti-woke Germans on X claiming that Poland's been growing only because of their (i.e. the Germans') money. Also, the reason you've given doesn't explain why it worked so much better for Poland than for Czechia, Slovakia and a few others.
> Yet you can see crowds of young anti-woke Germans on X There are also crowds of young anti-woke Poles claiming that Poland should leave EU because we would be better without it and claiming that EU is puppet of Germany. I've also seen opinions that Israel is a puppet of Poland, aimed at Israelis. If you want to, you will see all opinions you could imagine.
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Which, to be fair, laid the foundation for the well-educated part. The Soviets really valued STEM. They also quite valued emancipating women. Just for context, in the 60s, around 5% of chemistry PhDs in the US were women. In the Soviet Union, it was 40%! [0] Of course, that doesn't excuse all the other things they did, but the amount of badass female engineers from Eastern Europe I had the honor of working with is a…
How come eastern germany does so poorly?
An East German state (Saxony) also consistently has the best education system among German states.
https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/201453/umfrag...
In general, East Germany (economically) mostly only does poorly when compared to West Germany, but not to the rest of Europe ;)