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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

#191

Post by victorbjorklund »

Squarex wrote: post #57
alephnerd wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tbf, SWE salaries are constant across much of Europe, so anyone who is working in CEE feels less of a pull to work in London as a line-level engineer for roughly the same salary as they'd get in Warsaw. Funnily enough, even Bangalore salaries [0] are catching up to Italy [1] and Romania [2]. As a founder, it's a different story though - London is hard to beat from an entrepreneurship and capital access standpoint asi…

The taxation is not though. It may be better working from Warsaw or Prague due to tax rules. In Czechia it's a sort of fake, but tolerated consultancy and self employment and I have heard there is a similiar status in Poland.

Yea. In Poland everyone is a contractor even if they are not in reality. This year Poland had started to indicate they will crack down on it though so a lot of companies are now turning their contractors into employees instead.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#192

Post by andsoitis »

shimman wrote: post #163
andsoitis wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not like capitalists are creating anything valuable, Some capitalists create enormous value, some destroy it, some are essentially passive recipients of returns generated by others. Capitalists provide real productive functions like capital allocation, risk-bearing, founding, governance, monitoring, etc.

No capitalists just provide money, something other entities can as well. Often better too. Capitalists are completely useless when they have no workers, so I don't understand your points outside of "wow capitalists require a lot of workers to exist." Hence the rush towards LLM systems, the dream of perpetual labor machine is too enticing. There is also no risks for capitalists, do we live on the same planet where the…

[dead]

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#193

Post by flir »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #167
pavlov wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 1980s, EU money was flowing to Spain, Portugal and Greece. And people complained about that too. But the result is inarguably positive. Those countries had only recently become democracies after decades of military dictatorships or otherwise unstable third-world style governments. Today they're the most dynamic economies in the EU in many respects, and their democracies are well established and functioning. Th…

[flagged]

I'm getting strong H. P. Lovecraft vibes here. Just so you know.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#194

Post by thelastgallon »

vrganj wrote: post #56
yu3zhou4 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poland was sort of occupied until 1989

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…

With all that Chemistry talent, they could have built and dominated battery industry.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#195

Post by testing22321 »

DarkNova6 wrote: post #157

Investment, infrastructure, education. Same as China. Same as every other growing country. What the US and most other western countries do are: Let infrastructure rot, defund education, reroute money to large corporations. This is how you end up with failed state.

Can you give examples of western countries other than the US doing that?

I’ve never seen it, I travel a lot.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#196

Post by p-e-w »

luke5441 wrote: post #120
wowoc wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Which proves that people who keep saying that Poland's growth is only due to EU's money should finally stop. Another argument: Poland's GDP had already been growing at a similar pace before it joined the EU (but after it got rid of communism).

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.

> The largest EU benefit is that it makes democratic and rule of law backsliding unlikely.

On the contrary. Since the EU has no meaningful penalty mechanism other than withholding funds, and enormous capacity for shared damage absorption, once a country passes a certain threshold of development membership in the EU actually encourages government misbehavior including democratic backsliding, because it insulates the government from many potential adverse consequences.

For example, governments around the world have to fear violent revolution. But in the EU, the shared desire for law and order is so strong that the rest of the members are likely to support a member state in repressing such a revolution with essentially any degree of brutality, regardless of the condition of that state’s democracy, because the alternative (a successful coup in an EU member state) is impossible to contemplate.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#197

Post by praptak »

ptdorf wrote: post #21

Educated AND motivated workforce will do the trick. All the polish I know that work in IT enjoy handwork as well. They are hard workers.

As a Polish IT worker I feel that we enjoy hardwork too much. I'm talking here about "kultura zapierdolu" [0] which is what we call the specific Polish version of culture of unhealthy work/life balance.

[0] https://lubimyczytac.pl/ksiazka/5124728/czesc-pracy-o-kultur...

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#198

Post by yetihehe »

wowoc wrote: post #132
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.

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.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#199

Post by toasty228 »

Vaslo wrote: post #111
tossandthrow wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is how European social welfare works. And it is fantastic! Because the entirety of the EU is benefitting from it. Polish people have larger spending power, interesting and safe places to visit, etc. This is not a "present" given to Poland. This is ensuring a better life for all Europeans.

So you’re taking from others who earned it and give it someone that didn’t? Got it.

That's like the entire point of the EU yes, most people agree it's better than what we used to have, considering how it went in 1914 and 1939 for example

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#200

Post by etiennebausson »

wswin wrote: post #129
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…

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...

You are naming a year outside those he named, it might influence significantly the result.
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