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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

#551

Post by BeetleB »

DarkNova6 wrote: post #157

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.

> defund education,

People have already addressed this falsehood.

As I hinted at in another comment, more money for education doesn't help if the culture doesn't value it. And largely, US culture does not value a good education.[2] Or more precisely, not possessing what many other countries consider "basic skills" is quite acceptable here.

Case in point: I've spent time in a poor country with terrible education. Over there, if you were slow doing arithmetic on paper (multiplication, division, etc), everyone considered you to be an idiot. Because of that, even mediocre students who merely graduated high school and didn't go to college have those skills.

Over here, you have Verizon Math.[1] After that crazy episode, I've seen this problem. And it's not just that interchanging dollars and cents is a custom, a lot of people genuinely don't understand the issue. I've been to yard sales where things are advertised as 0.25 cents, and asked them about it. I was expecting a response like "Yeah, yeah, it's sloppy but everyone knows what it means." Instead I got genuine confusion.

Verizon Math isn't an isolated quirk. If you come from any of these countries to the US, much of the US population will appear to be idiots to you (rightly or wrongly).

In one of my jobs, we had a bunch of Russian and other East European coworkers. They were appalled by all of this and started working on after-school tutoring activities for their kids. Because they came from a culture that viewed a lack of certain skills as "being idiots", they were really concerned that their kids would grow up to become idiots like the rest of the Americans.

My point isn't that one should know basic arithmetic. There are plenty of legitimate arguments to say it's OK not to.

What my point is that there is no baseline knowledge level in the US where being below it is socially problematic. Because of that, there is no peer pressure to retain the knowledge they learn in school. It's OK not to know how many days are in a year.

I used to tutor 3-5th grade students, and after I realized this, I gave up. The kids didn't need help understanding the material. They already did. They just didn't see a need to retain it. If their friends don't value the knowledge, and their parents don't value the knowledge, there's little I can do to help them.

[1] https://verizonmath.blogspot.com/

[2] The good education is there for the few who value it. But the rest of the population doesn't benefit from it.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#552

Post by tejohnso »

gib444 wrote: post #378
delis-thumbs-7e wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As A Finn I’d like to see Canada figure out that “oh shit we could be a world superpower with all the smarts and natural resources we have” and start trading culture and goods with Nordic countries. We would rule!

Far north hemisphere, unite? A Canadian-British-Nordic partnership.

Don't forget Russia and USA!

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#553

Post by Forgeties79 »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #476
Forgeties79 wrote: post #201

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. This is something I tell people I am generally politically/socially align with (liberals/progressives) when they start talking about “handouts for red states.” California and other areas were not developed on their own,…

The argument that red states receive handouts is essentially a myth. Almost the entirety of the "handout" is social security/medicare based on where retirees live (notably the sunbelt), where military bases are located (rural areas of less populous states), and where most Federal land management offices and employees are located (the mountain west). Ironically, it counts Federal employment as "welfare" with more step…

A cursory search indicates an even split of red/blue states put in more than they get, but that 7 of the top 10 receivers of federal aid are red states. But ultimately my point doesn’t hinge on the ratio: everyone should support solid investments in all states.

You can give all the caveats you want but my point is it doesn’t matter what the reason is, these states rail against taxes and the federal government despite leaning heavily on their investment and “donor states” need to see it as a positive for all of us.

Why does it matter if it’s national parks or military bases or whatever? Do you think these states would gladly give it up so they can “liberate themselves from federal intervention” or whatever? Fat chance.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#554

Post by steve_adams_86 »

dismalaf wrote: post #522
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…

> We should be able to do this. That would require work. Canadians just want to buy real estate, watch it go up 10x, then sell and retire in Mexico.

You're describing something that some Canadians did (and very few still do), but this is not reflective of the vast majority of us. For most Canadians, especially as our economy declines, our extremely expensive homes are more like death sentences for our financial futures. We're not going to profit off of these things—ever—unless decades-long trends rapidly begin to reverse rather than accelerate.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#555

Post by somenameforme »

gedy wrote: post #483
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think there's an even more salient issue. Manufacturing is the backbone of any economy. When you outsource it, you end up creating a dependency on a nation that is ostensibly less developed. I say ostensibly because what does "less developed" even mean when the other country can not only do fine without you, but now also has the power to destroy your economy if they wanted to?

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#556

Post by vkou »

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…

Ukraine didn't have Russian troops occupying anything but the leased Crimean bases before the war started (and I do count the start of the war as being immediately after Euromaidan)... Yet in 2013, it was the second poorest country in Europe. (Ahead of Moldova, which has been occupied for decades, but significantly behind Belarus and Bulgaria)

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#557

Post by paganel »

spwa4 wrote: post #515
paganel wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> However, it's not working out so well for (now mostly ex-)factory workers in Germany.

I fully agree with this, the whole EU enlargement/post-Cold War thing is insanely complicated from a societal pov, there's no silver bullet, for ever positive you can instantly find a negative just as big etc etc, that's why I find this obsession with EU funds quite besides the point, i.e. because the reality on the ground was, still is, in fact, a lot more complicated.

For example in our (Romania's) case EU accession came with even a larger increase in PPP value compared to Poland, but that also came with a huge, huge depopulation problem (neighbouring Bulgaria suffers from the same thing), which cannot be put into PPP numbers. Like I said, positives and negatives.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#558

Post by lo_zamoyski »

mamonster wrote: post #254
lo_zamoyski wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. The self-congratulatory narrative around "EU funds" is obnoxious and ignorant. As you say, Poland's economic growth was similar before it had joined the EU. (Many economists then thought Poland's accession in 2004 was premature and should have been postponed.) Causes were cultural (there is a strong, traditional entrepreneurial streak in Polish culture) and related to the economic reforms undertaken during th…

>Also worth noting: Poland didn't receive a dime of reparations after the War. Poland received virtually all of the lands that were considered Prussia though.

If you peer into the (un-tendentious) history of much of those lands, you might take a slightly different view of them and their role and importance in Polish history, culture, language, and statehood, beyond just the 20th century... But perhaps more to the point, Poland lost nearly half of its prewar territory, east of the Curzon line. Poland is territorially smaller today than it was before WWII.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#559

Post by kakoni »

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…

Finland has been an EU net contributor since 2001. Now it has among the highest unemployment rates in the EU and is going through austerity, while Poland is visibly building and converging. I understand the logic of cohesion funds, but from Finland it increasingly feels like: we cut, Poland builds.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#560

Post by AlexandrB »

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…

> they invariably move off of manufacturing and more into services because it's a higher value part of the economic food chain

What part of the economic food chain are government employees?

> Most Canadian employment growth is now reliant on the public sector. Public sector employment climbed 0.9% (+41k jobs) to 4.45 million in July. Annual growth shows 4.8% (+205k) jobs added, a rate 8x greater than private sector growth. Canada’s now so dependent on public sector growth that government workers represent 1 in 4 employed workers.[1]

[1] https://betterdwelling.com/a-quarter-of-employed-canadians-n...

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