581–590 of 944 posts
They have had good public education for the past decade or two and rank high in international student rankings. So, I would bet that high 'human capital' would be the cause here.
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…
But I only know of them because they bought some successful small companies in my country and shut them down to reduce competition, for which they are universally hated around here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
15%? With some legal footwork you can get to 10 or 5%, depending if you count general medical I surance as a tax or not.
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…
Btw great furniture, it’s still in my living room many years after, pretty much still pristine.
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.
That's funny because Poland became dramatically richer after joining the EU, it allowed them access to one of the richest markets on Earth.
I understand that if you're from a smaller village you might also have missed the enormous infrastructure investments (highways, airports, sewage systems, etc.) that have only been possible because of EU money.
Then there's all the foreign companies that you mentioned whose investments have provided jobs directly and indirectly - as a EU member, Poland has become a lot more attractive for foreign investors.
And arguable, Poland carries a much bigger weight in international policies then it used to.
These points are not to say that there's nothing to criticize about the EU. As a matter of fact, there's not shortage of things to criticize. But it's unfair not to see the enormous gains Poland got since joining.
I would go so far as to argue that Poland is one of the biggest success stories of post-1989 Europe.
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…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
this is Poland for you. everyone complains about everything. perhaps that's the secret to success - there's always something to complain about and one in a hundred (or thousand) people actually does something about it.
Must be the proximity to Germany...
As an American that’s lived in Poland for the last decade: - it was kind of inevitable once Poland stopped being oppressed by its neighbors. The USSR, Nazi Germany, the German Empire / Prussia, Austria, Imperial Russia, etc. have basically been dividing the country since the 1780s. Without these restrictions, Poland is a natural leader in its region purely on population alone. - A general lack of ideological “mind vi…
Polish-born person living abroad here. There definitely ARE "mind viruses" in the polish psyche, and pretty nasty ones at that. You might not have noticed them because they are from a different nature than the ones that infected Wester Europe and North American. For example, Poles by and large harbor an inferiority complex due to the decades of oppression and suppresson that makes them sell themselves short and act a…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).…
The purpose of IQ tests is to derive a value that would predict other values. The inverse is also true. Given a multitude of such values it would even be possible to get back to a precise IQ value. IQ tests are just factor analysis artifacts. You can dream up 100 questions that you conjecture may have something to do with intelligence and not even know the answers and have 10,000 people answer them. Product of the fa…