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

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#741

Post by alterom » Fri, May 08, 2026, 9:16 PM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #700

Leonard_of_Q wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

No, he's right. It's not republican vs democrat. It's about people who weren't lucky enough (and word lucky does a lot of work here) to feel the benefits of the progressive policies. People who are easily captured by populist grifters, using simplest scaremongering tactics that russian propaganda happily manufactures and disseminates in the West. In US it stopped being republicans vs democrats many years ago. They ju…

Dziękuję bardzo! Ale oni i tak nic nie przeczytają :(

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#742

Post by nabbed » Fri, May 08, 2026, 9:17 PM UTC

I wish I could go back in time and tell my 10 year old self to knock it off with the polish jokes (which were all the rage at that time, although I can remember only one now).

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#743

Post by mejutoco » Fri, May 08, 2026, 9:21 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #693

mejutoco wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GDP/capita aligns very closely with material standard of living for the median person GDP is an average, not a median, so it might align with the average person, not the median. The average/mean can hide many things (see Anscombe s quartet) which is one of the problems with GDP IMO.

It depends what you’re using the data for. If you’re comparing across countries, or looking at a developing country over time, it’s a relatively small factor. The ratio between the average and the median isn’t that big even in the U.S. (about 1.3). Meanwhile, Poland’s GDP per capita has tripled since 2005: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location... .

> The ratio between the average and the median isn’t that big even in the U.S. (about 1.3)

Being off by 30% might not matter for some usages, but it is not a small amount. It seems the median is more accurate to report and we agree.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#744

Post by Saline9515 » Fri, May 08, 2026, 9:24 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…

Poland has also the lowest fertility rate of the EU. This growth came at a cost and may be short-lived when the cheap workforce dies out with no replacement.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#745

Post by aembleton » Fri, May 08, 2026, 9:28 PM UTC

varispeed wrote: post #184

dzonga wrote: post #14

before Brexit - a decent number of polish people in the UK doing all types of work. after Brexit - noticed polish engineers didn't want to be in the UK

This is because big corporations supporting Brexit figured out it will be better for their bottom line if they could source labour from wider pool and have it tied to visa. Something EU workers would never be comfortable with. Hence you had the so called Boriswave - an influx of workers paid below market rates supporting big corporations able to navigate Home Office corrupt system. Conservative party never told the p…

We could have issued visa to countries outside the EU before Brexit. There was no need to leave the EU to push wages down.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#746

Post by Saline9515 » Fri, May 08, 2026, 9:34 PM UTC

jmalicki wrote: post #671

maxglute wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FDI itself is not enough. Modern national champions happen because state protectionism, typically under autocratic industrial policy (Asian Tigers), in combination with FDI. Hyundai was suppose to be Honda, you can throw TSMC in there. There's no sign Poland is going to get national class to world class champions, because democracies more easily captured and EU forbids tier of subsidies and protectionism that enable…

The comments have already mentioned CD Projekt and elevenlabs which I would call world class companies even if not huge scale.

Cd Projekt made around 200M$ revenue last year. It's a small company by world standard.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#747

Post by skfhaT » Fri, May 08, 2026, 9:37 PM UTC

6d6b73 wrote: post #649

12986-112 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German working class is displaced or has their salaries driven down by either Poles or Romanians working in Germany while their families live cheaply at home or by corporations moving factories to Poland and Romania. You have no clue what you are talking about. I wonder why this sort of obnoxious reasoning always comes from Poles and never from Czech people for example.

Wait, but I thought Germans love slave labor? Is that not a case anymore? What happened?

We want better slaves. Poles and Romanian builders deliver shoddy work.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#748

Post by cnd78A » Fri, May 08, 2026, 9:43 PM UTC

But it feels (and smell) like a third world culture if you look at the air pollution level during 6 to 8 month a year (https://maps.sensor.community/#7/52.210/18.223): nearly everywhere people burn coal (among other biomass) the air is incredibly polluted.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#749

Post by Leonard_of_Q » Fri, May 08, 2026, 9:44 PM UTC

alterom wrote: post #741

scotty79 wrote: post #700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he's right. It's not republican vs democrat. It's about people who weren't lucky enough (and word lucky does a lot of work here) to feel the benefits of the progressive policies. People who are easily captured by populist grifters, using simplest scaremongering tactics that russian propaganda happily manufactures and disseminates in the West. In US it stopped being republicans vs democrats many years ago. They ju…

Dziękuję bardzo! Ale oni i tak nic nie przeczytają :(

Två kan spela samma spel, frågan är vem det nu är som läser eller lyssnar och vem inte gör det. Det hjälper inte heller att kalla allt som inte passar åsiktskorridoren som 'extremhöger' eller amerikanska versionen av samma konceptet, inte heller att peka fingret mot påstådda 'fienden' och kalla honom för ryssvänlig.

Also, let's speak English here so everyone understands what we're talking about. Ja nje omje moviez po Polsku (I probably butchered the spelling but you get my drift). Ja nje gawarje pa roesskie either but English I can do pretty well.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#750

Post by toephu2 » Fri, May 08, 2026, 9:45 PM UTC

For travel? I prefer Poland over Paris.

Poland is an underrated European destination (and I assume most Eastern European former USSR-aligned countries are too). If you haven't been you should definitely visit. I've been to both Paris and Warsaw recently and tbh I prefer Warsaw over Paris. Warsaw is clean (little graffiti, little trash on streets), safe, no homeless, etc and is a relatively high-trust society (another comment in this thread also mentioned that). Police actually enforce laws. The worst I saw was a drunk man on the street (although not violent or anything), and within minutes 4 police officers came to him. Few tourists. Everyone knows English.

Paris: I won't go into the negatives here (like the Africans/gypsies trying to scam you, sell you useless stuff, etc), it was nice overall, a little dirty, but I actually liked Warsaw better.