A lot of people either forget, or never learned, that Poland was once one of the largest and most influential states in Europe.Yes it was long time ago, but the potential was always there. The real challenge was surviving the consequences of being caught between neighbors whose ideologies gave rise to two of the deadliest systems of the 20th century.

Also I am of not very popular anymore opinions that not distorted trade help both sides of the trade and immigrants really help economy of country that they immigrate into. Including workers.

I wonder how much the Catholic vs. Orthodox background affected things there

Founder visas are generally suffering from a chicken-and-egg problem, where only a successful company can sponsor anyone

Sorry, but this is wrong. Cheaper labor is pretty much the only reason for nearshoring from more expensive European countries to places like Spain or Eastern Europe.

having had my run around with London VCs - poor terms, slow moving (btw this is at seed stage) - it's better to bootstrap unless you're in deep tech (which London VCs can help out)

bootstrap and either deal with US VCs once you have numbers to back you up - if you wanna redo & do the VC route.

My last team had two Poles and two Scandinavians (Swedish and Norwegian).

It's been a _very_ long time since I've had a team that didn't have significant Eastern Europeans representation on it.

> [1] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/italy

> [2] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/romania

Both Italy and Romania are at the lower end of salaries though.

Compare to say

Finland https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/finland (almost twice)

Denmark https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/denmark (more than twice)

Germany https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/germany (around twice)

Switzerland https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/switzer... (more than three times, although this is an outlier)

1. https://www.zabka.pl/znajdz-sklep/

PS. Ever since the full scale war started I finally learned Cyrillic, and I must say - there is something nice about this alphabet (if you speak a Slavic language, of course). Sadly we don't have an official Cyrillic version of Polish, though, my compatriots would have their brains explode if someone promoted one.

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.

Yes they do.

> And they are still benefiting from slave labor

Not sure whether that really matters now-a-days for the economy.

> stolen precious metals

One of the cores of industrial and mine centers that made the German Empire thrive during the Belle Epoque, are now owned by Poland.

> Not to mention the Marshall Plan.

Half of Germany, didn't got to get it but where instead paying reparations for whole Germany. Sorry, I'm a bit tired of acting like Germany only got the history of being on the west side of the iron curtain. It got both treatments.

And the transformation to market economy involved at least two periods of suicidal decisions in name of ideology that regressed the economy (by the same person, even)

Anyway the trick to explosive growth as a country is who you trade with and how you count things. We now sell things to Germany instead of USSR, of course there’s “growth.” There’s also some very real growth, quite a bit of it - but I wouldn’t put one bit of care in a “top 20 biggest economies” ranking. NL is one of the biggest food exporters in the world because it sells mediocre tomatoes to Germany instead of selling rice to Brazil and food exports are counted in euros, not calories.

One of the examples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre

I feel like one uberhard worker has an unhealthy return. But a group of uberhard workers have a healthy return - they compound each others hard work and build a prosperous _environment_.

My wife and I work very hard, as do our colleagues. But together we've built a pretty healthy routine, home, and (for now at least) financial situation. This has enabled us to have kids more easily than most, travel, etc.

The hardest workers /busiest folks I know are farmfolk relatives, and they also have a level of social connection and family connection that I envy all the time. It's mostly from them showing up to help with _everything_.

Behind Germans, or Scandinavians, but ahead of most Mediteraneans.

The pension fund is usually not considered a tax formally, but most people I know assume with our demographics and pension system we are just paying for current retirees (and our 'savings' will be impacted by inflation when it becomes impossible to maintain), so practically it's a tax.

Than there is 23% VAT (ofc much less than 23% because both the IT company and the contractor pass it to client and subtract some cost; so only a piece of it affects the contractor; it's a convoluted thing and I don't really know if I should treat it as ~22.9% or 2.3% tax on a contractor and it's client).

I want "kultura zapierdolu" t-shirt now.

The mind virus actually makes you love the host.

I wouldn’t describe PiS and its supporters as a dynamic cultural movement in the way MAGA is.

> packing the Polish Constitutional Court

This didn’t start with PiS. PO, just before losing power, tried to elect five Tribunal judges at once, including two seats that weren’t theirs yet. The Tribunal later said: three OK, two not OK.

PiS then did the PiS thing: ignored the three valid ones too, and installed its own people. So yes, PiS behaved badly. But "PiS packed the court" skips the opening move.

American-ish version: lame-duck Senate tries to pre-fill future SCOTUS seats. Incoming side responds by throwing the furniture around.

> filling the government with party loyalists

For normal political jobs, what’s the issue? That’s politics. Republicans appoint Republicans. Democrats appoint Democrats.

> placing restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly

What are you referring to exactly?

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.

The EU doesn't get nearly enough credit for how it transformed the continent. People have forgotten how nearly all European countries were in a very bad shape after WWII. Fascists had remained in power in Spain and Portugal. Soviets were orchestrating communist takeovers in countries like Italy. It's a small miracle that the liberal democratic economic order won so quickly and decisively.

https://georank.org/assets/img/charts/economy/poland/slovaki...

Ireland were in a similar position for instance (received €40bn in EU subsidies in the first 45 years of membership; now a net contributor).

Of course these countries have 5-10m inhabitants so in term of raw GDP and industrial power they can't compete

https://georank.org/economy/bulgaria/hungary

https://georank.org/economy/poland/slovakia

https://georank.org/economy/bulgaria/poland

And yes, my own take why this does happen is that there was certain order to the region in the past centuries - the West was modern and wealthy, the East was backwards and poor and all was in its natural place. This new situation is unfamiliar and needs a sort of explanation that would preserve the balance somehow. In short, they cope.

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).

It is a tax haven, with one of the highest GDP / person in the world, why is it, by magnitudes, the biggest recipient of EU largesse / person??!

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 now rich" while not even mentioning the subsidies. And that reuters article does not mention that at all.

It also has to be mentioned because the crazy bureaucrats in Brussels want to aggressively expand eastwards. They think that the richer areas in the EU need to pay for that expansion. I simply fail to agree with that "logic" at all and I also consider it hugely unfair to richer areas. The richer areas made good decisions; now this is being negated by bureaucrats in Brussels. That is unfair. (This is not meant against Poland, but against the constant expansionistic agenda from Brussels.)

Did you recently crossed borders? On many the checks are there again, because of fear of immigration terrorism or something, so the people could see, politicians were doing something to make them feel safe (but what I could see when passing borders, especially between poland and germany, were looong lines of trucks, so much for free flowing goods).

Not sure of the current situation, though, but last summer and autumn was horrible with checks (probably still better than what was before, but having experienced the real open border situation, having them restricted again is frustrating).

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.

It obviously goes without saying that conservatives in the US need to stop demonizing taxes so much for the same reason/they need to recognize that as the some of the largest beneficiaries of federal tax dollars they are cutting their nose to spite their face (I believe Kentucky is still the most subsidized state in the US).

All of us should want our states cooperation with the federal government so we can all rise together, and we need to view investing in our neighbors as a collective good.

I don't know. I want to agree with you, but a large part of the economic growth in Poland is off-shoring and cheap tax (~12% on contract) for tech workers. The average tech wage there now is pretty similar to the UK, and I don't really see many startups there - probably in part because of how bureaucratic their business system can be. I don't know if this influx of foreign money from off-shoring and surge in real estate pricing is sustainable or good in the long run.

Other than a massive influx of overdevelopment of flats in the cities (sometimes too rushed, I've seen reports of flat blocks subsiding because of cutting corners), I'm not sure where else the increase it.

It is for as long, as the EU exists in its current form. The rise of anti-EU parties in both Poland and Germany makes it a risky investment.

An economic investment as well as one of solidarity. People forget that the EU is a peace project that ensures peace via economic cooperation. This nuance seems trivial but is actually massively important. I can see trust degrading in the US but being fortified across the EU.

Look at Hungary recently, they did a 180 not because of Brussels or Berlin saying they should. Hungarians are sceptical of both. However they do trust the Polish people who they see as genuine peers who are very pro-EU.

While what you’re saying may be true, and this prosperity may be good for all of Europe, I think there is a lot of resentment about who the beneficiaries of the EU structure are.

And it's a good thing, but I wish Eastern European countries would recognize this and become more of a team player instead of shitting on EU.

Poland waited for Trump 2nd term, threatening the take some of the EU territory by force to finally transition from buying US weapons to buying from other European countries.

In the early 20th century Texas for instance was a poor state, a recipient of federal funds, but now it's an economic powerhouse. (To be precise I still think it's a recipient of federal funding but it holds its own now.)

Europe is the outlier here. The rest of the world checks your passport when you come in their country because they like to know who comes and who goes for a lot of reasons including public safety, biosecurity and so on.

The fact that Europe has basically given up on trying to filter who comes in is not necessarily a model that is desirable for the rest of the world.

> Thanks to the EU free movement of people, I've now studied, worked and lived in four different countries.

You can do that without Europe as well. Do you think people did not move to another country or studied in another country before the European countries decided to remove borders? What about now with all the students moving to the US/UK/Australia/Canada?

As someone who has lived in both countries its such a hilarious anxiety.

Would you say that The US and Mexico should be forced to implement free movement of people, goods, services and industry with a new North American Union capital in Mexico city?

If not, what is the difference?

Mind you that Polish workers are the next in line to be screwed if Ukraine joins the EU.

If you talk about asylum seekers (which may be a valid point), notice also that German social security institutions are filled to the brim with Eastern European claimants.

How can you honestly say that though. A blatant overgeneralization of a large group of people, but this has been a recurring theme on HN lately.

So I would agree that people spouting anti-US sentiment have been conveniently downplaying, leaving out, or haven't been educating themselves on, this important part of US-European history, but what's new.

In the meantime, streets have been named after Marshall, plaques and statues have been erected (including recent times) at least in the more Western parts of continential Europe where much of the Marshall Plan funds ended up, and its extreme importance is quite an ingrained part of WW2 school history education. Just as one example, Arnhem was largely rebuilt using these funds and has historically paid homage and still does today with such tributes and memorials.

But wouldn't the farm, selling to the big corp, realize the profits in their own state? Or are you saying the farms are owned by General Mills?

I was under the impression that most of the farms are owned separately and sell to General Mills.

Are the businesses from who they buy ag inputs in the red states not compensated at market rates for the raw materials they provide?

Do the red states also not receive massive taxpayer funded farm subsidies for the corn and wheat they grow from the federal government?

Minnesota's GDP is higher because it has a larger population and a more diverse and greater value-added economy than it's its ag focused neighbors.

It's GDP per capita is actually lower than its very sparsely populated neighbor, North Dakota, but the economic power of a jurisdiction ultimately comes from its population*productivity.

The right to vote on fundamental societal issues should come with some sort of mental means testing. I'm only half-kidding. I think.

Instituations haven't been renewed, education hasn't been brought up to reflect the latest reality of life and digitalization of state workflows? Hah, no.

But if a fraudulent bank requires saving? Sure, 500 billions or more can be paid upfront. Multiple times if necessary.

Start with education spending per capita.

Because it suits their prejudice.

Sort-of like the guy who lost his keys in a bush, but is looking for them under a streetlamp b/c there is more light there.

As far as immigrants though, approximately 100% of them wish to be productive members of society, I agree. You dont go through the effort of emigrating without an entrepreneurial spirit.

It's been a while and I can't recall the other big one. I know some engineers from one of them went on to work for Clone Robotics, which seems to be doing interesting stuff with other types of actuators.

If your banking system is conservative and you don’t have a venture capital backed risk taking infrastructure - it’s systemic issue. It is the same problem with Europe.

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.

Folks seem to be trying like heck to minimize the services jobs though with AI, etc. Maybe countries should retain a healthy mix of these jobs.

I hear you, and I partially agree. What I worry is that this made more sense ten or twenty years ago, though.

Living in Canada for 40 years, I'm no longer confident that we can continue using economic levers to allow ourselves to output less and buy more from poorer countries. We're stagnating, and the numbers are clear and directional.

We are not a very productive country compared to a younger version of ourselves, and our productivity only falls. Our most recent GDP increases belie population increases that outstripped wealth creation, leading to decreases in GDP per capita. We're growing and yet doing less.

At this rate we will need to be more resourceful, and our relative wages will continue to fall. We should be prepared and capable in all manners of wealth creation, industrial and otherwise.

Our government has stated it will do things like focus on tax competitiveness, internal trade barriers, and AI investment. To me this is depressing as hell. It's nowhere near the fighting spirit we need to make real progress. And frankly, what is AI investment? What the hell is Canada going to do with AI? We have some decent schools and interesting companies, but our government has no business speaking about the matter as an economic opportunity. We may lead the G7 in terms of research outputs here, but our spending plans on AI-related infrastructure and policy are a rounding error on singular US tech firms' balance sheets. We need to be serious. The gap between rhetoric and realistic outcomes is so absurd as to seem irresponsible.

Canadians are getting poorer quickly and at this rate we will eventually have those lower costs, but no trajectory leading us to developing better industrial and high tech manufacturing. We should have been finding ways to leverage our higher cost labour force for advanced manufacturing 20–30 years ago. Now we will have to leverage our middle-cost labour for barely-competitive products in industries with far more competition.

So I agree completely 15–25 years ago, but today I believe Canada's not doing so well, those costs will collapse, and we're going to wish we got ahead of this.

What part of the economic food chain are government employees?

> Most Canadian employment growth is now reliant on the public sector. Public sector employment climbed 0.9% (+41k jobs) to 4.45 million in July. Annual growth shows 4.8% (+205k) jobs added, a rate 8x greater than private sector growth. Canada’s now so dependent on public sector growth that government workers represent 1 in 4 employed workers.[1]

[1] https://betterdwelling.com/a-quarter-of-employed-canadians-n...

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 gets better, not worse, in Poland and on earth.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...

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 built on in its own talks that summer, and that Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and the Baltics drew on as their regimes fell within months.

And it did so from the deepest macroeconomic crisis of any of the satellite states: hyperinflation running into the hundreds of percent by late 1989, an unresolved sovereign default from 1981, and chronic shortages.

Since then Poland has converged fastest of any of them. From a low base it has climbed to the upper-middle of central and eastern Europe by GDP per capita PPP, overtaken Hungary, and is now closing on Czechia and Slovenia.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989

Round Table agreement, which paved the way to the partially free elections in 1989 won by the opposition, preceded similar events in other countries by several months including Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia and the Fall of Berlin Wall.

Are you sure about that? I'm Czech but have lived in Poland for 8 years and visit regularly. Poland used to be way poorer than Czechia, but these days it looks the other way around. I think the stats are either lagging behind or computed wrong. Note I regularly visit both the cities and the countryside in both Czechia and Poland.

Btw, the article has a "GDP per capita growth in post-communist countries" table, with Poland at the top and Czechia at the bottom.

This is a very bad measure of anything, especially wealth.

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 alleviated only by joining EU and people leaving to find employment elsewhere

Signed, Dutchman.

Our greenhouses, factories, trades works, all favorite destinations amongst Polish (season) workers.

That's funny because Poland became dramatically richer after joining the EU, it allowed them access to one of the richest markets on Earth.

I understand that if you're from a smaller village you might also have missed the enormous infrastructure investments (highways, airports, sewage systems, etc.) that have only been possible because of EU money.

Then there's all the foreign companies that you mentioned whose investments have provided jobs directly and indirectly - as a EU member, Poland has become a lot more attractive for foreign investors.

And arguable, Poland carries a much bigger weight in international policies then it used to.

These points are not to say that there's nothing to criticize about the EU. As a matter of fact, there's not shortage of things to criticize. But it's unfair not to see the enormous gains Poland got since joining.

I would go so far as to argue that Poland is one of the biggest success stories of post-1989 Europe.

Ah, the Polish MAGA.

Probably Russian-influenced as well.

Also, people like to complain.

A simple bank transfer into the country does not count as domestic Product.

Examples of significant shareholders include:

* Permira Advisers LLP (UK) * Cinven Group Ltd. (UK) * BlackRock (US) * Vanguard (US)

CD Projekt is listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. Is that an American/German/Singaporean/etc company?

And not everyone needs to succeed in industrial household names, that e.g. much of southern European economies come from tourism is not a bad thing.

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.

Source?