1670 on Netflix was hilarious
I hadn’t come across this before. Looks really good, thanks for sharing
Poland is now among the 20 largest economies
481–490 of 944 posts
Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies
#482Can 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?
Opinions 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.
Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies
#483Years 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…
Not arguing for this one way or another, but as countries become more economically developed, they invariably move off of manufacturing and more into services because it's a higher value part of the economic food chain (wish I could find the research article with all the data - I remember reading it as part of a post arguing that Trump's attempts to "bring back manufacturing jobs to the US" was doomed to fail) So, th…
> they invariably move off of manufacturing and more into services because it's a higher value part of the economic food chain
Folks seem to be trying like heck to minimize the services jobs though with AI, etc. Maybe countries should retain a healthy mix of these jobs.
Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies
#484In 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.
This 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.
> 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.
Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies
#485Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, 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".
I 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.
"cutting deals" lol this was just yesterday: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0m2wjlkzplo
Going by your history, you clearly have a strong bias for China but adding spyware or putting countries into debt isn't virtuous.
Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies
#486Educated AND motivated workforce will do the trick. All the polish I know that work in IT enjoy handwork as well. They are hard workers.
They also enjoy 15% tax, through some arrangement I’m still not convinced is legal for IT contractors… But yeah, some of the most skilled and passionate engineers I’ve worked with have been from Poland and the surrounding countries like Czechia.
12% for software development, 8.5% for design/management. The caveat being, you can't deduct anything from tax, only VAT(under some assumptions). If you have actual expenses it's 12/32% progressive or 19% linear tax. Of course all of those are assuming you own a one man company and work B2B. Most devs here do. Otherwise regular contract of employment is progressive 12/32% tax, plus Healthcare and employer payments. Much less beneficial to both sides hence why it's not preferred by most.
Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies
#487How? They said "No" to mass migration.
This is not true. Over 5% of population is foreign and it’s growing every year.
Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies
#488Earlier quoted context omitted.
The EU is working as intended then. Even without funds distributing EU cash, a common market works as a leveller this way and pulls up the poorer countries, because if you can live work and operate anywhere, people naturally pick the cheapest and easiest places to start a business serving the EU. Spain and Portugal were the previous beneficiaries and everyone benefits really as jobs are created everywhere. This is fa…
I don't understand the number of people here who repeat the official EU elites line. Would you say that The US and Mexico should be forced to implement free movement of people, goods, services and industry with a new North American Union capital in Mexico city? If not, what is the difference? Mind you that Polish workers are the next in line to be screwed if Ukraine joins the EU.
NAFTA was pretty beneficial until people went nuts about it.
Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies
#489Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s a factor that’s not any more significant than the Marshall Plan was in your Wirtschaftswunder in the 1970s, which, oddly enough, a lot of Germans have no issue attributing to a domestic merit alone. Funny how that works! If it was the EU contributions that were the dominant force here, Germany could… simply do the same and prop up its own struggling economy with money printed by the ECB. Instead, it prefers to s…
Britain received more from the Marshall plan and did a little worse. The Marshall plan also did not involve the US having completely free access to Germany economically and move all their companies to Germany for cheaper wages. If you talk about asylum seekers (which may be a valid point), notice also that German social security institutions are filled to the brim with Eastern European claimants.
> Notice also that German social security institutions are filled to the brim with Eastern European claimants.
Utterly false: nationals of Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania account for approximately 4.9% of all SGB-II Leistungsberechtigte (~256,000 of 5.24 million as of December 2025).
> The Marshall plan also did not involve the US having completely free access to Germany economically and move all their companies to Germany for cheaper wages.
This is such a bizarre point. The openness of the common market goes both ways, you do realise that, right? For more than the first decade after the accession of the Central Eastern European countries to the EU, Western European countries saw an influx of workers that were well educated (or skilled in trade professions), which helped fill the gaps in their labour market. So if you were going to try to draw an analogy here, you’d also have to point out that the US didn’t import millions of Germans after the war into its own labour market. Well, barring some rocket scientists who had built weapons of mass destruction and death for Hitler.
Anyway, yes, that’s how the common market works: companies can move operations to countries where labour is cheaper (in Poland), but other companies have encouraged labour to move where they already operate (in Germany). And what’s forgotten in this discussion is that the cohesion subsidies are in fact a form of compensation for the inherent imbalance that a pure common market would exhibit. That’s why it took years in negotiations for those poorer countries to decide under what terms they’re actually willing to open up their markets, and in many cases it’s been a very controversial issue.
Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies
#490Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I love the polish, but credit where credit is due > I ment: „Poland gets money, Poland transforms it into more money”. I have noticed that absolutely every time Poland's success is mentioned, someone from EU steps in to downplay it. A self-serving bias. Seriously, that type of comment is absolutely everywhere. Any YouTube video. Any Reddit post. In last couple days I have seen it about dozen times, last time today…
Based on my limited experience, Polish are incredibly workaholic and work-focused people. It's really no surprise they elevate themselves economically.
And intelligent, hence the Nazi stereotype.