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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

#801

Post by aldrich »

tomalbrc wrote: post #62
vrganj wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which, to be fair, laid the foundation for the well-educated part. The Soviets really valued STEM. They also quite valued emancipating women. Just for context, in the 60s, around 5% of chemistry PhDs in the US were women. In the Soviet Union, it was 40%! [0] Of course, that doesn't excuse all the other things they did, but the amount of badass female engineers from Eastern Europe I had the honor of working with is a…

How come eastern germany does so poorly?

One factor in this may also have been the way the privatization of East Germany was handled. Its often overlooked, but the vehicle for it was called Treuhand[1]. Regardless of whether it was necessary or not or right or wrong, it did basically shift out a large amount of capital assets into West Germany (and still carries this sentiment of "opportunistic theft" today).

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01475...

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#802

Post by aldrich »

a3w wrote: post #602
ivanjermakov wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except over 2 million Ukranian refugees: https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/migration-and-asy...

He means no brown and/or muslim migrants. The EU border would infamously let in even exchange students when the war heated up in 2022, except for those they did not want for clearly racist reasons. Strange, that if you are from Norway or Switzerland, you cannot be a migrant anywhere, instead you are always a welcome citizen born afar who did not know it yet. Racisms and other -isms seem to be a problem, let's hope it…

Norway and Switzerland are both Schengen area countries though and have been for decades, which is why there would be much less friction in getting in as a migrant, or no friction at all as a traveler.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#804

Post by philwelch »

standeven wrote: post #658
rayiner wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GDP/capita is often a relatively useless metric in modern times. "Often" is the wrong modifier. GDP/capita aligns very closely with material standard of living for the median person. If you look at the GDP/capita growth in India and China since 1990, or South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, since 1950, that reflects very real increases in material standards for ordinary people. There's two, relatively well-understood…

Isn’t GDP pretty easy to boost with deregulation and government overspending, at least in the short term? Neither of which benefits the people.

Deregulation does benefit the people, at least if it's done in ways that lead to sustained economic growth.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#805

Post by grogenaut »

lee wrote: post #680
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!

There is a saying I've heard: "Silicon Valley is powered by Waterloo Grads" The problem with Canadian innovation is that our best and brightest tend to complete their education in Canada, then emigrate to the US. The brain drain is a real issue for us. One of the "positives" of Trump's hostilities towards Canada is that perhaps this would slow the brain drain for the current generation.

Love waterloo grads. They're 2 years ahead of other college grads. They come to the internship ready to ship. They definitely power stuff.

But Stanford grads all take moonshots.

Which would I rather have? Waterloo, they're great workers. Not sure they've been crushing it long enough to be in charge everywhere, time will tell.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#806

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#807

Post by lava_pidgeon »

paganel wrote: post #250
shevy-java wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is not whether it is an investment or whether it is not. The question is whether growth is objective and fair or whether it is not. For comparison of wealth in Poland, ALL net-subsidies would have to be deducted, because this is essentially wealth taken from other countries, and distributed to poorer areas in the EU. I am not disputing that this leads to more growth; I am disputing the "country xyz is no…

The Holocaust was a decision taken by one of the two pillars of the EU, Germany, so countries nowadays being rich or poor has nothing to do with past “good” decisions of those countries populaces. And before anyone commenting that the Holocaust and the German economy are two orthogonal subjects, just look at the corporate history of German industry giants VW and Bayer.

Neither VW and Bayer are rich because of the Holocaust. They are rich because of good business environment and good corporate decisions after 2nd world war.

From a purely economic viewpoint Holocaust and 2nd world war were very very stupid decisions.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#808

Post by doctorpangloss »

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…

> There are almost no globally competitive Polish companies.

there ought to be, but EU capital is taking bad bets. it would be the easiest early stage play in the world

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#809

Post by dbdr »

brabel wrote: post #458
pegasus wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did a 180 on their relationship with the EU, which was the context GP was discussing. Maybe not 180 but definitely over 90, let's say, unlocking billions in funds. Funny that you picked the one major issue that didn't see a big adjustment, and completely out of context.

I think the comment was still correct. Very little will change in Hungary with the new government. I think it’s only a matter of time for them to pick a fight with the EU on some different matter given how the EU’s values (considering most of Western Europe) are still far from theirs.

> Very little will change in Hungary with the new government.

Are you aware the new government is not even in power yet?

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#810

Post by wrzuteczka »

goobatrooba wrote: post #771
mrkaluzny wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rapid and successful conversion to market economy was the main reason we are where we are. Human cost was extremely high, crime went up quickly and lots of money was lost. I'd argue this was corrected by joining EU and by adjusting the plan to polish reality. What made it a success was also the social capital in Poland, a lot of people worked extremely hard to pull it off, but still high unemployment was alleviat…

Not to forget tens of billions in EU subsidies. Not trying to diminish the polish efforts, but not every country gets this opportunity of massive, predictable transfers without much conditionality. I wonder how far Poland would be without the years of PiS corruption.

I think you got it backwards.

Over the last 20 years, the SLD govt used to literally sell new legislation for bribes, PO (currently in charge of Poland) literally has right now a guy in their ranks who has likely stolen 100s of millions PLN from a public company, but is the prime minister’s BFF so the prosecutor canceled the investigation. The stuff PiS has done is nothing compared to those.

I actually think that the Anti- Corruption Bureau that PiS founded is one of the core reasons Poland was able to mostly weed out the post-Russian corruption (corruption is unfortunately the main export of Russian culture, every country they invaded ended up extremely corrupt).

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