Poland is now among the 20 largest economies • Hacker News Board

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#561

Post by mikrl » Fri, May 08, 2026, 4:55 PM UTC

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…

Rockwell Automation has a facility in Katowice, Silesia which was/is a major centre of coal mining and locomotive manufacturing since the 1800s when it was part of Prussia, and continuing through the Polish Republic, WW2 era and beyond.

The industrial heritage is strong.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#562

Post by fwr » Fri, May 08, 2026, 4:55 PM UTC

aykutseker wrote: post #453

the EU funds argument works both ways. plenty of countries received similar transfers and didn't compound it the same way. the interesting question isn't where the money came from, it's what Poland did with it that others didn't.

Thank you. Many say our institutions are underdeveloped but I think it takes a certain maturity of the society to be able to execute projects successfully. It's not perfect, but I think we've come a long way.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#563

Post by VimEscapeArtist » Fri, May 08, 2026, 4:57 PM UTC

I live in Poland. This headline is misleading. Poland didn't build a top-20 economy. Western Europe and the US built their economy in Poland, because the labor is educated and cheap.

There are almost no globally competitive Polish companies. The "growth" is branch offices of German and American corporations taking advantage of engineers who'll work for 40% of Berlin rates. Remove the foreign-owned sector and you're looking at a mid-tier economy running on EU structural funds.

It's a great place to live, genuinely. But calling this "Poland's economy" is like calling a McDonald's franchise "your restaurant"

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#564

Post by grunder_advice » Fri, May 08, 2026, 4:57 PM UTC

Fokamul wrote: post #174

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…

I feel the need to correct the record. The only reason, there is this racist stereotype in some western countries that such and such ethnicities are not working, is because those countries make it exceedingly hard for those ethnicities to gain employment. For example requiring language fluency and forcing immigrants to attend language school full time instead of giving them a mop and a bucket and a minimum wage. In places where this banal legislation does not exist those same ethnicities are working fine in mixed ethnicity factory floors alongside Poles and Romanians.

And btw those same countries who make it super hard for, for example Syrians, to gain employment, then made a whole bunch of exceptions for Ukrainians. For example in Germany, Syrians without full command of German were told to attend language schools, but when the Ukrainians arrived they suddenly made exceptions and suddenly in our department we had Ukrainian cleaning crew who spoke neither German nor English.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#565

Post by ltasdh » Fri, May 08, 2026, 4:57 PM UTC

nubg wrote: post #547

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…

Cue the butthurt Germans, decimating their own bread and butter industries by ridiculous policies like diesel and nuclear bans, immigration straight into the welfare state, then complaining that others - who did not commit economic suicide - fare better. Note that Germany vastly profits from the EU as well, as it allows Germany to push e.g. their established supermarkets into Eastern Europe, undercutting any competit…

We have to distinguish between the German industry and corporations and the German people. The German people do not benefit from Aldi expanding into Poland.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#566

Post by haddr » Fri, May 08, 2026, 4:57 PM UTC

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…

[dead]

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#567

Post by nickpp » Fri, May 08, 2026, 4:57 PM UTC

mchusma wrote: post #526

This paragraph is really odd: “As oppressive as it was, communism contributed by breaking down old social barriers and opening higher education to factory and farmworkers who had no chance before. A post-Communist boom in higher education means half of young people now have degrees.” It feels like despite overwhelming evidence presented in the own article that communism was bad, they felt they had to say something va…

These days it’s forbidden to deny the horrors of nazism but quite fashionable to glorify the murders and confiscations of communism and to even justify Marxist murderers like Mangione.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#568

Post by tptacek » Fri, May 08, 2026, 4:57 PM UTC

cakealert wrote: post #545

tptacek wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sibling comment understates the critique. There is no such thing as "average IQ". Countries don't IQ test representative samples of their population, so hucksters like Richard Lynn just make shit up and pull samples from mental institutions (where IQ tests are used, as they should be, as diagnostics). This is a pretty simple and obvious observation. Have you ever been asked to take a proctored IQ test to help esta…

Why the focus on Lynn? Focusing on his critics is more illuminating and damaging to your presumed position: Systematic review by Wicherts et al: "In light of all the available IQ data of over 37,000 African testtakers, only the use of unsystematic methods to exclude the vast majority of data could result in a mean IQ close to 70. On the basis of sound methods, the average IQ remains close to 80." They of course follo…

Part of the point of the Wicherts papers was to refute the Lynn data, observing that even taken on its own premises Lynn's team pretty clearly excluded data unfavorable to the conclusion they wanted to draw. But look at Wicherts 2009, at the samples they're talking about. One of the largest was 800 students in Nigerian high schools (a test arranged by IQ researchers to for a cross-cultural comparison, back in 1981). Lynn's data includes, and is materially influenced by, a sample of 59 Senagalese children who were tested while recovering from malaria. The malaria thing is just funny, but it's the numbers that stick out to me.

I'm not getting further into the details here because the easiest-to-understand point here is that there are not in fact programs to generate reliable "average IQ" numbers in different countries. I am struck by the fact that message board nerds from America believe these programs exist, when almost none of us have ever taken an IQ test.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#569

Post by indiangenz » Fri, May 08, 2026, 5:00 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #215

TacticalCoder wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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. O…

The bearded men have increased the crime rates in Spain, France, UK, Germany, Sweden etc. This is crystal clear if you look up statistics. Just in the last week there was a Aloha Snack Bar stabbing in Barcelona. Poland has low crime rates specifically because they have strict border controls.

You are free to personally visit Brussels to see what a shit hole it is.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#570

Post by avgDev » Fri, May 08, 2026, 5:00 PM UTC

VimEscapeArtist wrote: post #563

I live in Poland. This headline is misleading. Poland didn't build a top-20 economy. Western Europe and the US built their economy in Poland, because the labor is educated and cheap. There are almost no globally competitive Polish companies. The "growth" is branch offices of German and American corporations taking advantage of engineers who'll work for 40% of Berlin rates. Remove the foreign-owned sector and you're l…

What kind of dev salaries are you seeing in Poland?

I have family in Poland, they are from smaller villages and they ALWAYS complain about EU and the economy. I wonder if things are similar in large cities.