711–720 of 944 posts
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…
I spent some time in Poland for work about 10 years ago. I remember the cities being very expensive and chic - on par with Paris, Berlin, etc but when you got out of the cities (my project was in Bydgoszcz) it's a completely different world - poor, rundown, etc. would be curious how it is now and also where most of the Ukrainian refugees settled.
I learned on arrival that the city was not in fact color-graded and filled with beautiful slow motion video opportunities. Since then, every time I mention to any Pole that I've been to Bydgoszcz, the question is always "Why?"
All my memories of two fairly long trips around Poland are now ten years out of date, and I've heard only good things about its development since then.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>This is something I tell people I am generally politically/socially align with (liberals/progressives) when they start talking about “handouts for red states.” California and other areas were not developed on their own, they required years of sustained federal investment and interest in the area. If they were to ask where you think this "federal investment" funding came from, what would you reply?
It’s a fair point, but there is a significant difference between investment in infrastructure and education versus just supporting states that are intentionally degrading their infrastructure and education. Upwards spiral versus downwards. Money pours in for both cases, but only one is really an investment.
Poland is basically Germany without the historical baggage and with less cultural cruft (to avoid trigger words). Having said that there is one Olympic discipline that they perfected even beyond German standards (which are quite high in that department already) and that is: whining.
> without the historical baggage Oh boy, are you wrong on that...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you’re taking from others who earned it and give it someone that didn’t? Got it.
Money is a claim on future work - it only works if the system works.
Fun story: the city of Nowy Sącz (80,000 habitants) has a very high percentage of millionaires compared to other cities. One of the reasons was that as the city is in a mountainous region hence not well communicated, the communist authorities were less strict there and allowed for private businesses to grow. As the communism ended, the region basically had a head-start compared to the rest of the country.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Poland's first partly free election was on 4 June 1989, preceded by the roundtable negotiations. The protests in Czechoslovakia came later, called the Velvet Revolution, from 17 to 28 November 1989. In June 1990, Czechoslovakia held its first democratic elections, a year after Poland. Poland paved the way for the whole of central and eastern Europe. The Round Table produced the negotiated-exit template that Hungary b…
I'm curious what this means in real terms from the perspective of a Pole. GDP/capita is often a relatively useless metric in modern times. For instance Ireland has one of the highest GDP/capitas in the world -- around 50% higher than the US. But that's because of economic games with their working as a tax haven to enable corporations to avoid paying taxes to their home countries. It doesn't translate to anything for…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Typical salary for a senior dev is around 20-30k PLN per month, which translates to $65k-$100k per year (gross). Also, a lot of devs do a little bit of tax avoidance that is currently not persecuted, which allows them to pay total taxes below 20% on that amount. So, your take-home pay is $50k-$80k.
> Typical salary for a senior dev is around 20-30k PLN per month Typical, yes, though it's possible to earn way more than that. Not that 20-30k PLN per month is bad, the average Polish salary is perhaps around 9k and the median around 7k. 20-30k PLN goes a long way in Poland. Some seven years ago, I was spending around 7k PLN a month, living in the beautiful Warsaw old town, 50 metres from Kolumna Zygmunta, eating ou…
This paragraph is really odd: “As oppressive as it was, communism contributed by breaking down old social barriers and opening higher education to factory and farmworkers who had no chance before. A post-Communist boom in higher education means half of young people now have degrees.” It feels like despite overwhelming evidence presented in the own article that communism was bad, they felt they had to say something va…