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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

#511

Post by jakozaur »

anikan_vader wrote: post #474
jakozaur wrote: post #454

The story is longer: Poland was the first country to make a remarkable peaceful transition from a bankrupt, failed Soviet satellite state. The shock therapy, plus NATO and EU aspirations, paved the way. It is a story of a country that made a lot of the right decisions along the way. Managed to keep consistent high growth, not a pony trick or boom/bust mode. Poland should be a role model for many other countries. Reco…

>> Poland was the first country to make a remarkable peaceful transition from a bankrupt, failed Soviet satellite state. In what sense? Czechia is richer per capita. Almost all of the former Soviet satellite states in eastern Europe have had largely peaceful (since 1991) sustained economic growth. The exceptions are exactly those countries which continue to have Russian troops occupying portions, namely Belarus, Ukra…

Poland's first partly free election was on 4 June 1989, preceded by the roundtable negotiations.

The protests in Czechoslovakia came later, called the Velvet Revolution, from 17 to 28 November 1989. In June 1990, Czechoslovakia held its first democratic elections, a year after Poland.

Poland paved the way for the whole of central and eastern Europe. The Round Table produced the negotiated-exit template that Hungary built on in its own talks that summer, and that Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and the Baltics drew on as their regimes fell within months.

And it did so from the deepest macroeconomic crisis of any of the satellite states: hyperinflation running into the hundreds of percent by late 1989, an unresolved sovereign default from 1981, and chronic shortages.

Since then Poland has converged fastest of any of them. From a low base it has climbed to the upper-middle of central and eastern Europe by GDP per capita PPP, overtaken Hungary, and is now closing on Czechia and Slovenia.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#512

Post by [deleted] »

cpursley wrote: post #328
victorbjorklund wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Russians they are the contineuation of USSR. heck they are celebrating victory day claiming they were the red army.

No, they don’t claim that - but they do see it as a continuous thing (Russian civilization and the genocidal threat they overcame). Also, it’s not just them who celebrate.

[deleted]

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#513

Post by fmajid »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #149
niemandhier wrote: post #76

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…

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…

Not to mention a stronger economy means stronger defense against the Russian threat.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#515

Post by spwa4 »

paganel wrote: post #238
spwa4 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That’s the thing, Poland got wealthier because it became an extension of German industry, with some IT stuff thrown in. Czechia would have also been in the world’s top 20 had they had a larger population, as they’re even more dependent on said German industry.

Well, yeah. I get that being the stupid backwater of a huge capitalist union is still better than communism. However, it's not working out so well for (now mostly ex-)factory workers in Germany.

Entire cities are emptying because of this. Leaving the old behind, of course.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#516

Post by seper8 »

pjc50 wrote: post #503
silexia wrote: post #479

Poland made the brilliant decision to protect its heritage and not allow unchecked immigration and illegal immigration. It is a very high trust society with far lower crime rates, especially violent crimes than other places like the UK and France that went the other way.

Poland benefited significantly from immigration (of Poles to other countries and then back).

And the other countries have benefited significantly from their hard work too.

Signed, Dutchman.

Our greenhouses, factories, trades works, all favorite destinations amongst Polish (season) workers.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#517

Post by alkyon »

anikan_vader wrote: post #474
jakozaur wrote: post #454

The story is longer: Poland was the first country to make a remarkable peaceful transition from a bankrupt, failed Soviet satellite state. The shock therapy, plus NATO and EU aspirations, paved the way. It is a story of a country that made a lot of the right decisions along the way. Managed to keep consistent high growth, not a pony trick or boom/bust mode. Poland should be a role model for many other countries. Reco…

>> Poland was the first country to make a remarkable peaceful transition from a bankrupt, failed Soviet satellite state. In what sense? Czechia is richer per capita. Almost all of the former Soviet satellite states in eastern Europe have had largely peaceful (since 1991) sustained economic growth. The exceptions are exactly those countries which continue to have Russian troops occupying portions, namely Belarus, Ukra…

In chronological sense.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989

Round Table agreement, which paved the way to the partially free elections in 1989 won by the opposition, preceded similar events in other countries by several months including Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia and the Fall of Berlin Wall.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#518

Post by lifestyleguru »

rembal wrote: post #510
lifestyleguru wrote: post #247

Worst healthcare among developed countries, which every ranking of healthcare systems confirms. Average people receive 19th century level of coverage and care for 21st century price. The only people on employment contract are public sector and some of the outsourcing and nearshoring, industries which are moving out of the country. Milllennials are 40 years old now and every reform which had been made, made sure they…

I'm pretty sure I got prescribed an antibiotic at least once :) Also, my father has been through 5 cancer "journeys", all successfully treated via public healthcare, last few caught "too early to operate" due to early detection PET scan programs. I don't know much about 19th century medicine, but it seems off.

The state of Polish healthcare is undefensible, it's not funny at all.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#519

Post by steve_adams_86 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #359
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #208

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…

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…

> So, the reason you can buy motors and robotics components from Poland and not Canada is because Poland has lower costs

I hear you, and I partially agree. What I worry is that this made more sense ten or twenty years ago, though.

Living in Canada for 40 years, I'm no longer confident that we can continue using economic levers to allow ourselves to output less and buy more from poorer countries. We're stagnating, and the numbers are clear and directional.

We are not a very productive country compared to a younger version of ourselves, and our productivity only falls. Our most recent GDP increases belie population increases that outstripped wealth creation, leading to decreases in GDP per capita. We're growing and yet doing less.

At this rate we will need to be more resourceful, and our relative wages will continue to fall. We should be prepared and capable in all manners of wealth creation, industrial and otherwise.

Our government has stated it will do things like focus on tax competitiveness, internal trade barriers, and AI investment. To me this is depressing as hell. It's nowhere near the fighting spirit we need to make real progress. And frankly, what is AI investment? What the hell is Canada going to do with AI? We have some decent schools and interesting companies, but our government has no business speaking about the matter as an economic opportunity. We may lead the G7 in terms of research outputs here, but our spending plans on AI-related infrastructure and policy are a rounding error on singular US tech firms' balance sheets. We need to be serious. The gap between rhetoric and realistic outcomes is so absurd as to seem irresponsible.

Canadians are getting poorer quickly and at this rate we will eventually have those lower costs, but no trajectory leading us to developing better industrial and high tech manufacturing. We should have been finding ways to leverage our higher cost labour force for advanced manufacturing 20–30 years ago. Now we will have to leverage our middle-cost labour for barely-competitive products in industries with far more competition.

So I agree completely 15–25 years ago, but today I believe Canada's not doing so well, those costs will collapse, and we're going to wish we got ahead of this.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#520

Post by ozim »

dakiol wrote: post #222
ptdorf wrote: post #21

Educated AND motivated workforce will do the trick. All the polish I know that work in IT enjoy handwork as well. They are hard workers.

I guess it's anecdata. Polish engineers I've worked with weren't that good at technical stuff nor communication (in English). They're overprotective with "their" code and in general we've had more luck with western/southern Europeans.

Looking at other comments it seems like your experience is less representative.
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