Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

apnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

821–830 of 944 posts

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#821

Post by mfru »

jcmontx wrote: post #609
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…

FDI is a legit way of increasing an economy's size and health. The fact that Poland created a safe country for foreign investments is great merit.

yeah it's great if you want to be dependent on US and German political interests

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#822

Post by delis-thumbs-7e »

gib444 wrote: post #773
delis-thumbs-7e wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Britain, well… I’ll take Scotland, they’re sensible. But rest of you, we can’t just look what you are doing to yourself. Please Britain, get some help.

Hm Finland, with the 38th highest suicide rate in the world? Well above the UK, in 117th place. I think you need our help :(

I was referring to how you have selected post-2008 government after another to completely tank the economy and destroy key British institutions, but Finland has a goverment that does exactly the same, so we do kinda need help as sell. Maybe we should go to some 12-step-program together.

(PS. Finnish suicide rate has fallen through the 2000’s from 1200 per year to about 750)

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#824

Post by gib444 »

delis-thumbs-7e wrote: post #822
gib444 wrote: post #773

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm Finland, with the 38th highest suicide rate in the world? Well above the UK, in 117th place. I think you need our help :(

I was referring to how you have selected post-2008 government after another to completely tank the economy and destroy key British institutions, but Finland has a goverment that does exactly the same, so we do kinda need help as sell. Maybe we should go to some 12-step-program together. (PS. Finnish suicide rate has fallen through the 2000’s from 1200 per year to about 750)

> how you have selected post-2008 government after another to completely tank the economy and destroy key British institutions

Yup. Thanks Russia.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#825

Post by scotty79 »

rvnx wrote: post #277
luke5441 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The largest EU benefit is that it makes democratic and rule of law backsliding unlikely. So if you invest money in Poland you can be reasonably sure that it won't get stolen from you. Hungary was a demonstration that this works over the long term.

In the EU, money gets stolen from you in a more subtle way. For example, the COVID situation, with unlimited money-printing was a tax on the people who had savings, and supporting a specific subset of the economy, or, delaying the tax in the essence. There is no lesson of "democracy" to give. At best it is a guided democracy, and this is very generous. For example, VPNs are going to be forbidden, and the free speech…

> unlimited money-printing was a tax on the people who had savings

US printed so much that basically entire global economy had to pay for it in huge inflation in the years that followed. And all that freshly printed money ended up in pockets of US billionaires.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#826

Post by lifestyleguru »

goralph wrote: post #505
lifestyleguru wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Romania is 6th, Iran is 8th, and your point is?

That Romania and Iran also have strong education in STEM. Your point is these countries don’t? What point exactly are you trying to make.

Neither Poland, nor Romania or Iran are know for excellence in education. There is this specific niche in particular age group but that doesn't translate into meaningful industry or into anything really. They are relatively good at solving quizzes, that's it.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#827

Post by scotty79 »

yetihehe wrote: post #198
wowoc wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet you can see crowds of young anti-woke Germans on X claiming that Poland's been growing only because of their (i.e. the Germans') money. Also, the reason you've given doesn't explain why it worked so much better for Poland than for Czechia, Slovakia and a few others.

> Yet you can see crowds of young anti-woke Germans on X There are also crowds of young anti-woke Poles claiming that Poland should leave EU because we would be better without it and claiming that EU is puppet of Germany. I've also seen opinions that Israel is a puppet of Poland, aimed at Israelis. If you want to, you will see all opinions you could imagine.

This all started with Facebook. Those "opinions" are partly manufactured in russia and for russian money amplified through US owned social networks. Any "opinion" that sows discord in the West is used. Content is pretty much irrelevant. The outcome is what matters. Divisions, reduction of trust in institutions and leadership. It works because there are people in the west who opportunistically politically capture audiences created by this discord. And they do it, by repeating same "opinions", often even for free.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#828

Post by HighGoldstein »

mejutoco wrote: post #666
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…

That is how all economies grow. It is unnecessary to remove credit from Poland. You say labor is educated, for example. Is that also not their merit? Didnt USA benefit from mostly not being bombed during ww2? Didnt Germany benefit from cheap Russian gas and educated immigrants after 2008 crisis in EU? In the end, we can keep going back looking for pthers to thank but the country did it, and it is fair to say so. P.S.…

> P.S. I also live in Poland, not Polish. I also lived in Berlin, and I dont think the salaries are always so different.

Anecdotally this is also my experience. Several countries in eastern Europe have vastly lower taxes, and as a result international companies can pay salaries that are on par with western Europe but still cheaper than an equivalent worker in Germany or France because the cost to the employer is much lower.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#829

Post by scotty79 »

airstrike wrote: post #263
lo_zamoyski wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of the stabilization was due to the strong domestic market. Recall that Poland was the only country to avoid the 2008/2009 recession. It is tight global integration that causes recessions to spread.

Brazil also famously avoided the 2008-09 recession to a great extent, to name one example. Tight global integration is not a bad thing. Even if we took at face value your argument that a strong domestic market protected Poland in that case, you can't cherry pick the one instance in which lower-than-expected integration was beneficial without also considering all the other times in which it was harmful.

Poland's growth does well when everyone is in the dip. Even in 2020 crisis Poland dipped less than other. Although the difference was less that time. 8 years of populist rule did harm Poland a bit.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#830

Post by scotty79 »

tgv wrote: post #402
wswin wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You greatly overestimate its significance. The benefits are roughly 1% of the GDP. In 2023 Poland netted 8.2 bn€ [1]. The GDP was 751 bn€. [1] https://www.pap.pl/en/news/poland-largest-recipient-eu-funds...

1% of the GDP is a considerable amount of money. The GDP is not a country's profit, not even its revenue. If we stick to 2023, Poland had a budget deficit of 5% of the GDP, which makes 1% a very welcome gift.

At one point, don't remember when, the money sent back home by Polish immigrants was about 8% of Poland's GDP. So 1% is not that much.
Post reply on HN