As a Pole my biggest anxiety for the country is without doubt the threat from Russia. This will unfortunately reverberate as fewer compatriots will want to trust their fortunes to a country that is at risk of unending violent assault and I imagine that fewer foreign enterpreneurs will want to tie up their enterprises in a place with significant geopolitical risk.
> I imagine that fewer foreign enterpreneurs will want to tie up their enterprises in a place with significant geopolitical risk.
It's an unrealistic anxiety that doesn't come up when deciding FDI destinations within the EU.
A bigger issue for me would be around the administrative capacity within Poland. What's to prevent PiS or a PiS-style populist party from returning to power, and redeveloping acrimonious relations with Brussels?
(Btw, this is a common concern across the CEE - Babis and Duda's losses were too close for comfort, and if it weren't for generous tax holidays, some serious AoP planning would have happened)
The difference between Hungary and Poland's GDP per Capita and development indicators is marginal, but Hungary's acrimonious relations with the EU has caused companies to shift greenfield investments to Poland, Czechia, and Romania.
Also, the larger economic boom across the CEE is largely a result of investment outflows from Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus in the 2015-2016 when the Ukraine war started, and the sanction regimes began. This is reflected in GDP per Capita across the entire CEE
> If Russia attacks Poland, there will be a nuclear war.
How do you figure? Even if NATO actually invokes article 5, nuclear doctrines of involved countries do not suppose immediate nuclear escalation from a conventional war. Of course, risk of nuclear war goes up if Russia invades, but it doesn't automatically go all the way to 100%.
This has been wargamed repeatedly and the conflicts literally always end in nuclear annihilation. I think it's easy to understand why as well. Whatever side is losing will naturally convince themselves that the cost of the risk of nuclear escalation is less than the cost of accepting outright defeat. Yet vice versa, the winning forces will not accept being bullied by nukes, because what's to stop it from happening again in the future, and so also won't back down. Next thing you know everybody's dead, and everybody loses, but at least nobody ever had to admit defeat.
> Whatever side is losing will naturally convince themselves that the cost of the risk of nuclear escalation is less than the cost of accepting outright defeat
Then just don't put them on death ground. If they have a way out, with loss of prestige and resources, but still staying in power, they will take it. India and Pakistan have had border clashes when both countries already had nukes. It was close and very dangerous, but it is still a counter-example to claim that every war between nuclear nations is just automatically bound to become a nuclear war.
In particular, destroy everything Russia puts over the border, and maybe even everything it's staging in an offensive posture near the border, but don't invade Russia.
I deny you the right to put words in my mouth. I also note that the discussion was about Russia vs. Poland (a NATO member), which is rather a different situation than Russia vs. Ukraine. Your reply is therefore a non sequitur as well as a rather shady rhetorical move.
All that said, I do in fact support giving Ukraine what it needs in order to defend itself. I think that is in fact a worthy and noble goal.
> In particular, destroy everything Russia puts over the border, and maybe even everything it's staging in an offensive posture near the border, but don't invade Russia.
Oh, I wouldn't go that far. In fact, I think you could occupy as much as 80% of Russia. As long as you make sure that Putin and his friends were left alive and in charge of the remaining 20%, they wouldn't do a thing.
You're failing to consider the fundamental point. The reason countries escalate is because they think it will bring victory. You can see the exact thing happening in Ukraine today. There have been a million 'game changers'. What happens when those game changers fail to change the game? Further escalation. And the losing side will often delude themselves to this reality til long after it's become an inescapable truth. For instance during WW2 Nazi propaganda continued running and claiming imminent victory all the way up until the Fall of Berlin, even after Hitler's death - who was praised as having died in a glorious battle against Bolshevism. People who listened to the media only began to realize they had lost once the entire government had been dissolved.
Nuclear annihilation will not come because of some desperate last ditch effort, but because of some politicians convincing themselves that they not only survive, but win, a nuclear conflict. And it's easier than ever to see that sort of mentality spreading in a world where narrative has become far more important than reality, at least to the idiots and octogenarians in charge.
I really don't think that follows, especially if Russia pursued the same strategy it has for decades now of generating a low level insurgency that it heavily supports but does not overtly participate in.
I doubt that will work in the specific case of Poland as Russian minority is virtually non-existent here. There is of course a sizable Ukrainian diaspora now but I doubt they will go turncoat in large numbers.
Russias trooo participated fully as insurgents in the donbas conflict. There are even videos of the participating troops admitting to it.So a insurgency is not needed, just the illusion of one.
Salami slicing will not work in Poland, the country is both part of EU and NATO, not only part of the EU but its eastern border, Germany is right next there as a neighbour.
Any aggression towards Poland is a very different level and degree than against Ukraine, Georgia, Chechnya, etc.
Do you really believe the EU and NATO would sit on their hands in case some low level pro-Russia insurgency popped up in Byalystok or Lublin? Not only that, do you believe the Polish government would be doing nothing and accepting pro-Russian separatism cropping up anywhere in its territory?
I don't think there's anything the Poles hate more than Russian imperialism, not even sure if they hate Hitler more than that to be honest...
I don't think there's anything the Poles hate more than Russian imperialism, not even sure if they hate Hitler more than that to be honest...
Rather than alluding to some imagined well-spring of "hate" within the Polish character or soul, another take on the Polish attitude, which I personally favor, goes like this:
They're done with being invaded, occupied, pushed around and/or talked down to by all of their various neighbors and competing empires over the past many centuries.
Meanwhile, most of them (even by far their worst occupier in recent memory -- the Germans) seem to have learned a thing or two, and have moved on to other (more subtle, and in any case non-violent/coercive ) forms of one-up-manship in the great game of national assertiveness of competition.
Except for one of course. And that's the one they rationally devote their concerns in regard to, in the present moment.
Soon. Everyone will want a piece of yellow cake now that everyone has shown its colors. Which makes the Russian conquest a race to gobble up as much territory as possible before every neighborhood goes full selfdefense forever.
Stop repeating FUD. Really, _everything_ about Russian foreign policy has always been to appear larger than they are, to push soft power as hard as they can, and to be very careful to pick only on evidently weaker neighbours with hard power.
There will never nuclear war. It will always be used because it's a threat that works for some people. That's Russia psy-ops for you: even in the open Westerners have trouble accepting it because it confronts them with their own irrationality.
Lol. There are many rockets holding nuclear payloads distributed all over the world. If you think it is impossible that they are ever put to use, you haven't lived long enough.
As a Pole, my biggest anxiety is that Poland will give in and become like the rest of the West.
If they let in migrants (even so many Ukrainians is a problem IMO), if they give in to "diversity is a strength", if they give into equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity.... The country will be lost.
And it's sentiments like these that give me a pause about investing in Poland.
There's no guarantee that voters like this guy won't vote in a PiS or a PiS-style populist due to nativist sentiment as well as anger at non-redistributive development (Warsaw/Lodz/Gdansk/Wclow vs everyone else), and as a result the Polish govt ends up having to give us additional tax breaks and holidays to minimize our concerns (great for us, not as great for Poles).
I hate to say it, but after this summer's elections in France and Germany I really don't think this is a risk unique to any EU country. In fact I would put greater risk on other countries because they're starting out wealthier, people are a lot more open to immigration and centrist/liberal parties when they're getting 10% more money year over year and their children have a brighter and brighter future.
It's not worth taking your investment money if it means destroying one of that last non destroyed European countries.
I moved to the US in 89.
I've watched the US basically be destroyed by policies that basically are even worse over in Europe.
Up until recently, Poland was still a shinning beacon of hope. It's getting worse but hopefully the eastern European rationality kicks in and they wake up before it's too late.
The lefts ideas have made enough places pretty terrible. They don't need to do it to ONE MORE place.
> The lefts ideas have made enough places pretty terrible. They don't need to do it to ONE MORE place.
It's not a left or a right issue - when I want to start a foreign office, I often need to bring in talent from my other offices.
If it's a pain to get short term work visas for my employees (India, China) or if there are fears of safety and xenophobia (Israel, India), my employees don't feel like helping start those on-site offices.
If my employees don't want to visit those countries, we may as well choose one of the several other CEE states like Czechia or Romania.
Already Romania has almost caught up to Poland in GDP per Capita and social indicators despite being much poorer barely a decade ago.
> It's not worth taking your investment money if it means destroying one of that last non destroyed European countries.
Be careful what you wish for.
Hungarian voters thought the same way 10 years ago, and that lead to capital outflows to Poland and Romania.
Almost every large private sector Polish employer by revenue is owned by a foreign MNC. 40% of the Polish economy is owned by us "foreign investors".
We're fine moving that money away, and that did start towards the end of the Duda administration due to political instability, with a lot of capital outflows to Romania which rolled out the red carpet for us.
I'd rather be poorer than deal with everything the west is throwing on everyone. A poorer Poland is still a better Poland than a wealthier not so Poland anymore.
And if you want to start a Polish office, hire Polish people. Don't tell me you need Indians and Chinese people. If you can't do it with Polish people because we're too dumb or lazy or uneducated for your business, oh well. Don't just import people. Most poles don't want them.
However bad you think right wing Polish people are, it's probably worse when you're not in the room. So please consider than in your next round of investment.
Honestly Poland already has a sever labor shortage and the natives have one of the worst birth rates of Europe[1]. This is actually one of the major sources of domestic inflation compared to the European block. If not for the inflow of Ukrainians labor shortages would cripple the economy, much more the growth. Also the newer generation is very very different from the older ones, even Millenials->GenZ, but this I have good hopes.
Even so i disagree with the article author that claims Poland has not left the middle income trap. On the contrary, with the recent huge increases in minimum wage and still strong dependency on manufacturing, the moment to check is actually now. Of course there is a lot of inertia in DFI but in my surroundings I hear of big corporations leaving for cheaper places. Volvo for example just left and 3M will have a local restructuring. There has been an inflection point on IT wages a well. Maybe it is a blip, but I think there is reason to worry.
All in all, Poland is a great place to live, and you kind of can see progress as time goes by. Something that cannot be said of many other developed places.
> Even so i disagree with the article author that claims Poland has not left the middle income trap.
You're being downvoted but you aren't wrong.
A lot can go wrong in a decade.
In 2024, Poland (and Hungary) are at the same comparative level of development they were in 2014 (using distance from the WB High Income GDP per Capita threshold as a proxy), yet their 2014 peer Slovakia was able to significantly increase it's GDP per Capita to near Czechia levels (tbf Slovakia was also able to leverage Czechia's development).
Historically poorer Romania has also started catching up to both Poland and Hungary recently due to significant FDI inflows due to political instability in both countries in the late 2010s.
Both Poland and Hungary are at a precipice - if they can conduct lasting reforms within their administrative system over the next decade, then they are absolutely on track to becoming a developed country. Medium case, they could end up like their 2014 peer Uruguay and Panama - stuck with laggard growth. Worst case, they could end up like their 2014 peer Argentina (but stuff would have to go seriously wrong).
> If not for the inflow of Ukrainians labor shortages would cripple the economy
And Belarusians and Russians - Poland and much of the CEE became nations of immigrants by 2016 as labor and capital inflows from Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia began due to the start of the Ukraine War in 2014, and the subsequent sanctions regimes.
> There has been an inflection point on IT wages a well. Maybe it is a blip, but I think there is reason to worry
I think T1 salaries are around $30-60k now across the CEE, which is largely comparable to similar talent in every country excluding the US and Canada.
The hard work for Poland is to now leverage it's existing talent (both domestically and in the diaspora) to build strong global players. Historically poorer Romania is following this path with companies like UIPath and BitDefender, and Czechia did something similar with Avast and JetBrains.
Aside from Allegro and CD Projekt, I can't think of a major multinational Polish tech company.
In fact, almost every major Polish company is either entirely owned by a foreign investor or state owned. I think Eurocash is the only notable exception.
I wonder how the situation compares to South Korea, which has been quite economically successful despite being in low level conflict with NK with a constant risk of escalation. Compared to that I feel like Poland is in a much better situation but I really don't know details. Israel might be another good comparison too.
Poland is in NATO and has oodles of allied countries right next door, from Finland to down to Turkey. They have strong reason to be weary, but they're also not solely dependent on aid from across a giant ocean like SK.
Israel has won or at least didn't lose multiple wars against their neighbors over multiple decades, and has mostly solid peace deals with Egypt and the Saudis. Few middle eastern countries can throw military resources around like Russia or NK, too.
> the war truly could have been avoided (multiple times, even in the first week after Russia invaded) but Ukrainian "leadership" succumbed to foreign (US/UK) pressure.
If we want to play "woulda coulda shoulda", Ukraine arguably could have avoided this by not letting Russia repatriate Soviet weapons that could be used as deterrence. Ukraine used to have ICBMs that could strike deep into Russia, an obvious deterrent had they not been forced to give them up.
Ukraine never had control of those nukes. The USSR centralized control of all nuclear weapons and everything related to them (launch sequences, codes, etc). And that centralization remained within Russia. They could have tried to override the lockouts and somehow manage to get them working but it probably would have been met with global sanctions on top of an invasion from multiple countries. Their other choice is go the route they went - exchange the nukes for a bunch of money and some mostly meaningless pledges of good will.
The reality of life is that in many situations you don't have a good option and a bad one, but rather a bad one and a terrible one. So demonstrating one choice is bad does not make the other inherently better. And when you're a small power stuck between two giants, this is the name of the game. See: Switzerland managing to remain neutral throughout both WW1 and WW2. A tiny little power pissing off both the Allied and Axis powers, leaving them standing completely alone? Clearly a bad decision, but also clearly the best decision. Same here.
This makes... No sense. There is no guarantee that any action Ukraine took would have prevented war. The counterfactual could have just meant more war.
If it makes no sense, then clearly you haven't been paying attention to the facts on the ground. How can you say peace has no chance if you never give peace a chance?
Please show a single instance where Ukraine made any significant concrete effort to implment the Minsk accords, for instance.
I don't understand how someone could believe this in 2024, it's extremely clear that Russia's design for Ukraine was to incorporate it back as a client state at least if not completely annex it. This has been their stated objective from day one of the invasion that they have continued to pursue to today.
That's a very personal question, one that you can only answer for yourself. Do you value freedom? Do you think it's worth fighting for? Is it worth suffering now so your nation can thrive later? Do you think it's worth taking a fight with a "bully" (aka a belligerent, exploitative actor) instead of giving in?
Ukraine was among the most corrupt countries in Europe since 1991 -- no one (West or Rest) disputes this. It was politically very weak and prone to gravity from both Moscow and Brussels.
To assert that Moscow wanted Ukraine as a "client state" but imply by omission that Brussels/Washington did not want Ukraine as a "client state" is simply disingenuous and disregards the entire political history of Ukraine since 1991.
> Ukraine was among the most corrupt countries in Europe since 1991
Among who, the USSR? It makes perfect sense that a nation seeking independence from the most corrupt European country would retain oligarchs that abuse their power. Plus, compared to other socialist republics like Hoxha's Albania, Ukraine had economic and political stability in spades.
The war truly could have been avoided (multiple times, even in the first week after Russia invaded) but Ukrainian "leadership" succumbed to foreign (US/UK) pressure.
This is a myth and is easily debunked. But unfortunately your use of square quotes here signals an intent to discourage reasoned discussion on the topic.
A leader does not sacrifice a million of their people ...
The highest estimates (from anything resembling reliable sources) point to an upper bound of 200k (likely closer to 150k) deaths on the Ukrainian side as of the current moment.
Which is of course a horrendous number, but the question here is: why are you intentionally providing us with number that is at least 5x of even the highest of reliable estimates we have for the real number for the losses that Russia has inflicted upon Ukraine so far?
When relatively modest, peaceful concessions could be made
The very article you linked to indicates that the redline concessions demanded by the Russian side would have been neither modest, nor peaceful. This (in addition to Russian atrocities on the ground, and Russia's rapidly deteriorating performance on the battleground at the time) were why Ukraine (very rationally) chose not to take the bait that was offered to them.
Basically the article is putting a severe and misleading spin on what Nuland actually did say. And it seems you are uncritically accepting this spin at face value.
Fine, Zelensky has electively sacrificed between 100K-1M of his fellow countrymen on behalf of foreign interests. Still awful.
And sorry, but no amount of condescension will convince me (or anyone) that Ukraine is better off today in 2024 than they were in early 2022 when, as Nuland implied, US/UK sabotaged the peace talks at the start of the war. As a national leader, Zelensky acted extremely irrationally. As an agent of foreign powers, he performed well.
You're pulling numbers (and a whole lot of other dodgy assertions) out of the air, and no, it's not fine at all.
On top of that -- when politely confronted for having done so, rather than simply acknowledge what (up until then) might have been charitably dismissed as a mistake -- you doubled down on these purely invented numbers.
It's flame bait, and against site guidelines, which instruct us that comments be "more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive".
YMMV but I don’t think this is a widespread opinion in Poland at all. If anything, most people don’t even think about it. It’s still largely a thing that happens over there somewhere, not at home.
I was in south east Poland for the last 2 weeks and the cafes I went to there were definitely a cut above what I’m used to in the UK.
The article doesn’t mention how good the roads and rail have become. When I first went to Poland about 20 years ago I spent all day on a train that stopped at farm fields and travelled no faster than 20mph. The main roads I drove on were hilariously bad, utterly destroyed by long lines of HGV trucks. Even many roads in more affluent areas like around Krakow were poorly engineered (flooding).
The roads this time were massively better. I still found plenty of old bad roads in more rural areas but the top tier roads (autostrada) are better than anything we have in the UK. The tier below that are generally better than most motorways current state of repair in the Uk - but it helps that the Polish high speed roads (~120kph - where the top tier autostrada are 140kph) are just better designed.
Now there’s high speed high quality rail (again quite a bit better than my experience in the UK), maybe the old PkP rolling stock is still there somewhere but I only saw modern high speed or freight trains.
UKians don't like to hear this, but from a Dutch perspective it is really a notch below the rest of Western Europe. Most Dutch people experience underdevelopment when they go south in certain parts of France, but these regions are generally rural and remote-ish. In the UK major road connections are ungraded, narrow roads occasionally still going through town centers,; French departmental route level if you are lucky. On British highways, you will just suddenly drive into a roundabout...
Time stood still. It reminds me of eastern Europe pre-EU.
I was being generous by including A Roads in 'highways'. Britain has the same length of highways as the Netherlands if you only consider M classification, which is to say, deplorably little. Over 5x less than Germany and France.
But if you insist, sure, the few miles of British motorway don't include roundabouts. They do tend to start or end with them though ;)
It’s so strange to me when articles talk about Poland being invaded by Russia without even mentioning NATO. It’s a whole lot harder to imagine Russia invading Poland than a non-NATO nation like Ukraine.
I have zero doubt we’d invoke Article V immediately and even if we were lucky and nuclear war was not the result, Russia’s conventional forces are at an order of magnitude more of a disadvantage to the west.
I also believe that. People locally are quite more wary understandably so, given history, but I also believe Poland, a EU and NATO country would not be invaded as lightly. Even from the logistical point of view, Poland has borders with many friendly countries and shipments of weapons and personnel would be to easy for the relatively weak Russian conventional forces. All this unless a Ribbentrop-Molotov happens again but I dont see it.
Right. And I totally understand why the people of Poland would not just blindly assume NATO would keep them safe. Nobody should leave their security to others.
It’s just strange to me when people act like it isn’t a huge part of the calculus, or that invading a NATO nation is an obvious next move for Russia, when 70 years of history indicates otherwise.
The contingency feared by Western planners is Russia invading while the US is unable or unwilling to come to Poland's aid. The two most obvious scenarios are Trump getting elected and withdrawing the US from NATO (either officially, or by using his authority as commander in chief to refuse to deploy US forces in support of Article V), or US forces being tied up in a war with China. European nations would probably help, but European militaries don't have the same expeditionary capabilities as the US so they'd probably be limited in how much they could practically do.
From the russian view they are fighting an exiatential threat here though. They need to get off the plain to a shrunken border they can defend and that means being in poland and also going a bit further south to natural chokepoints. The alternative is joining the wwstern party and that means elections and reforms that would inevitably remove most of the current elite from power and decimate their earnings. Further their demographics are waning to the point they wont be able to field much of an army in the coming decades vs now so that outs more pressure on them to respond now. To me its strange to think it will stop here now that russia has paid such a high price. Its do or die time for their elites.
If there's an existential threat to Russia, it's not military, and for the same reason. They have over 5,000 nuclear warheads too. Nobody is invading them. They know that. They are still showing off bigger, scarier missiles.
They won't go pay an exponentially higher price by invading a nuclear state, which, thanks to NATO, is what they'd be doing invading Poland. It's strange to think there's not a substantial difference between invading a non-NATO, non-nuclear state and one that is.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 276 ms ] threadIt's an unrealistic anxiety that doesn't come up when deciding FDI destinations within the EU.
A bigger issue for me would be around the administrative capacity within Poland. What's to prevent PiS or a PiS-style populist party from returning to power, and redeveloping acrimonious relations with Brussels?
(Btw, this is a common concern across the CEE - Babis and Duda's losses were too close for comfort, and if it weren't for generous tax holidays, some serious AoP planning would have happened)
The difference between Hungary and Poland's GDP per Capita and development indicators is marginal, but Hungary's acrimonious relations with the EU has caused companies to shift greenfield investments to Poland, Czechia, and Romania.
Also, the larger economic boom across the CEE is largely a result of investment outflows from Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus in the 2015-2016 when the Ukraine war started, and the sanction regimes began. This is reflected in GDP per Capita across the entire CEE
How do you figure? Even if NATO actually invokes article 5, nuclear doctrines of involved countries do not suppose immediate nuclear escalation from a conventional war. Of course, risk of nuclear war goes up if Russia invades, but it doesn't automatically go all the way to 100%.
Then just don't put them on death ground. If they have a way out, with loss of prestige and resources, but still staying in power, they will take it. India and Pakistan have had border clashes when both countries already had nukes. It was close and very dangerous, but it is still a counter-example to claim that every war between nuclear nations is just automatically bound to become a nuclear war.
All that said, I do in fact support giving Ukraine what it needs in order to defend itself. I think that is in fact a worthy and noble goal.
Oh, I wouldn't go that far. In fact, I think you could occupy as much as 80% of Russia. As long as you make sure that Putin and his friends were left alive and in charge of the remaining 20%, they wouldn't do a thing.
Nuclear annihilation will not come because of some desperate last ditch effort, but because of some politicians convincing themselves that they not only survive, but win, a nuclear conflict. And it's easier than ever to see that sort of mentality spreading in a world where narrative has become far more important than reality, at least to the idiots and octogenarians in charge.
Any aggression towards Poland is a very different level and degree than against Ukraine, Georgia, Chechnya, etc.
Do you really believe the EU and NATO would sit on their hands in case some low level pro-Russia insurgency popped up in Byalystok or Lublin? Not only that, do you believe the Polish government would be doing nothing and accepting pro-Russian separatism cropping up anywhere in its territory?
I don't think there's anything the Poles hate more than Russian imperialism, not even sure if they hate Hitler more than that to be honest...
Rather than alluding to some imagined well-spring of "hate" within the Polish character or soul, another take on the Polish attitude, which I personally favor, goes like this:
They're done with being invaded, occupied, pushed around and/or talked down to by all of their various neighbors and competing empires over the past many centuries.
Meanwhile, most of them (even by far their worst occupier in recent memory -- the Germans) seem to have learned a thing or two, and have moved on to other (more subtle, and in any case non-violent/coercive ) forms of one-up-manship in the great game of national assertiveness of competition.
Except for one of course. And that's the one they rationally devote their concerns in regard to, in the present moment.
sounds like a pretty good reason to me to worry about it.
Stop repeating FUD. Really, _everything_ about Russian foreign policy has always been to appear larger than they are, to push soft power as hard as they can, and to be very careful to pick only on evidently weaker neighbours with hard power.
There will never nuclear war. It will always be used because it's a threat that works for some people. That's Russia psy-ops for you: even in the open Westerners have trouble accepting it because it confronts them with their own irrationality.
If they let in migrants (even so many Ukrainians is a problem IMO), if they give in to "diversity is a strength", if they give into equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity.... The country will be lost.
There's no guarantee that voters like this guy won't vote in a PiS or a PiS-style populist due to nativist sentiment as well as anger at non-redistributive development (Warsaw/Lodz/Gdansk/Wclow vs everyone else), and as a result the Polish govt ends up having to give us additional tax breaks and holidays to minimize our concerns (great for us, not as great for Poles).
True! But I'm fine dealing with populist headaches in a $4T and $2.7T economy instead of a $690B economy.
I moved to the US in 89.
I've watched the US basically be destroyed by policies that basically are even worse over in Europe.
Up until recently, Poland was still a shinning beacon of hope. It's getting worse but hopefully the eastern European rationality kicks in and they wake up before it's too late.
The lefts ideas have made enough places pretty terrible. They don't need to do it to ONE MORE place.
It's not a left or a right issue - when I want to start a foreign office, I often need to bring in talent from my other offices.
If it's a pain to get short term work visas for my employees (India, China) or if there are fears of safety and xenophobia (Israel, India), my employees don't feel like helping start those on-site offices.
If my employees don't want to visit those countries, we may as well choose one of the several other CEE states like Czechia or Romania.
Already Romania has almost caught up to Poland in GDP per Capita and social indicators despite being much poorer barely a decade ago.
> It's not worth taking your investment money if it means destroying one of that last non destroyed European countries.
Be careful what you wish for.
Hungarian voters thought the same way 10 years ago, and that lead to capital outflows to Poland and Romania.
Almost every large private sector Polish employer by revenue is owned by a foreign MNC. 40% of the Polish economy is owned by us "foreign investors".
We're fine moving that money away, and that did start towards the end of the Duda administration due to political instability, with a lot of capital outflows to Romania which rolled out the red carpet for us.
And if you want to start a Polish office, hire Polish people. Don't tell me you need Indians and Chinese people. If you can't do it with Polish people because we're too dumb or lazy or uneducated for your business, oh well. Don't just import people. Most poles don't want them.
However bad you think right wing Polish people are, it's probably worse when you're not in the room. So please consider than in your next round of investment.
Even so i disagree with the article author that claims Poland has not left the middle income trap. On the contrary, with the recent huge increases in minimum wage and still strong dependency on manufacturing, the moment to check is actually now. Of course there is a lot of inertia in DFI but in my surroundings I hear of big corporations leaving for cheaper places. Volvo for example just left and 3M will have a local restructuring. There has been an inflection point on IT wages a well. Maybe it is a blip, but I think there is reason to worry.
All in all, Poland is a great place to live, and you kind of can see progress as time goes by. Something that cannot be said of many other developed places.
[1] https://notesfrompoland.com/2024/02/01/births-drop-to-new-po...
You're being downvoted but you aren't wrong.
A lot can go wrong in a decade.
In 2024, Poland (and Hungary) are at the same comparative level of development they were in 2014 (using distance from the WB High Income GDP per Capita threshold as a proxy), yet their 2014 peer Slovakia was able to significantly increase it's GDP per Capita to near Czechia levels (tbf Slovakia was also able to leverage Czechia's development).
Historically poorer Romania has also started catching up to both Poland and Hungary recently due to significant FDI inflows due to political instability in both countries in the late 2010s.
Both Poland and Hungary are at a precipice - if they can conduct lasting reforms within their administrative system over the next decade, then they are absolutely on track to becoming a developed country. Medium case, they could end up like their 2014 peer Uruguay and Panama - stuck with laggard growth. Worst case, they could end up like their 2014 peer Argentina (but stuff would have to go seriously wrong).
> If not for the inflow of Ukrainians labor shortages would cripple the economy
And Belarusians and Russians - Poland and much of the CEE became nations of immigrants by 2016 as labor and capital inflows from Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia began due to the start of the Ukraine War in 2014, and the subsequent sanctions regimes.
> There has been an inflection point on IT wages a well. Maybe it is a blip, but I think there is reason to worry
I think T1 salaries are around $30-60k now across the CEE, which is largely comparable to similar talent in every country excluding the US and Canada.
The hard work for Poland is to now leverage it's existing talent (both domestically and in the diaspora) to build strong global players. Historically poorer Romania is following this path with companies like UIPath and BitDefender, and Czechia did something similar with Avast and JetBrains.
Aside from Allegro and CD Projekt, I can't think of a major multinational Polish tech company.
In fact, almost every major Polish company is either entirely owned by a foreign investor or state owned. I think Eurocash is the only notable exception.
Japan was SK's largest trade partner well into the 1990s, and most chaebols started off as JVs or tech transfers with Japanese keiretsus.
Same thing in Taiwan.
Germany was post-Warsaw Pact Poland's "Japan".
Israel has won or at least didn't lose multiple wars against their neighbors over multiple decades, and has mostly solid peace deals with Egypt and the Saudis. Few middle eastern countries can throw military resources around like Russia or NK, too.
If we want to play "woulda coulda shoulda", Ukraine arguably could have avoided this by not letting Russia repatriate Soviet weapons that could be used as deterrence. Ukraine used to have ICBMs that could strike deep into Russia, an obvious deterrent had they not been forced to give them up.
The reality of life is that in many situations you don't have a good option and a bad one, but rather a bad one and a terrible one. So demonstrating one choice is bad does not make the other inherently better. And when you're a small power stuck between two giants, this is the name of the game. See: Switzerland managing to remain neutral throughout both WW1 and WW2. A tiny little power pissing off both the Allied and Axis powers, leaving them standing completely alone? Clearly a bad decision, but also clearly the best decision. Same here.
Please show a single instance where Ukraine made any significant concrete effort to implment the Minsk accords, for instance.
To assert that Moscow wanted Ukraine as a "client state" but imply by omission that Brussels/Washington did not want Ukraine as a "client state" is simply disingenuous and disregards the entire political history of Ukraine since 1991.
Among who, the USSR? It makes perfect sense that a nation seeking independence from the most corrupt European country would retain oligarchs that abuse their power. Plus, compared to other socialist republics like Hoxha's Albania, Ukraine had economic and political stability in spades.
The war truly could have been avoided (multiple times, even in the first week after Russia invaded) but Ukrainian "leadership" succumbed to foreign (US/UK) pressure.
This is a myth and is easily debunked. But unfortunately your use of square quotes here signals an intent to discourage reasoned discussion on the topic.
The highest estimates (from anything resembling reliable sources) point to an upper bound of 200k (likely closer to 150k) deaths on the Ukrainian side as of the current moment.
Which is of course a horrendous number, but the question here is: why are you intentionally providing us with number that is at least 5x of even the highest of reliable estimates we have for the real number for the losses that Russia has inflicted upon Ukraine so far?
When relatively modest, peaceful concessions could be made
The very article you linked to indicates that the redline concessions demanded by the Russian side would have been neither modest, nor peaceful. This (in addition to Russian atrocities on the ground, and Russia's rapidly deteriorating performance on the battleground at the time) were why Ukraine (very rationally) chose not to take the bait that was offered to them.
Basically the article is putting a severe and misleading spin on what Nuland actually did say. And it seems you are uncritically accepting this spin at face value.
And sorry, but no amount of condescension will convince me (or anyone) that Ukraine is better off today in 2024 than they were in early 2022 when, as Nuland implied, US/UK sabotaged the peace talks at the start of the war. As a national leader, Zelensky acted extremely irrationally. As an agent of foreign powers, he performed well.
On top of that -- when politely confronted for having done so, rather than simply acknowledge what (up until then) might have been charitably dismissed as a mistake -- you doubled down on these purely invented numbers.
It's flame bait, and against site guidelines, which instruct us that comments be "more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive".
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
regardless of which side wins that war their demographics are dwindling
Source: living in Warsaw for many years.
I was in south east Poland for the last 2 weeks and the cafes I went to there were definitely a cut above what I’m used to in the UK.
The article doesn’t mention how good the roads and rail have become. When I first went to Poland about 20 years ago I spent all day on a train that stopped at farm fields and travelled no faster than 20mph. The main roads I drove on were hilariously bad, utterly destroyed by long lines of HGV trucks. Even many roads in more affluent areas like around Krakow were poorly engineered (flooding).
The roads this time were massively better. I still found plenty of old bad roads in more rural areas but the top tier roads (autostrada) are better than anything we have in the UK. The tier below that are generally better than most motorways current state of repair in the Uk - but it helps that the Polish high speed roads (~120kph - where the top tier autostrada are 140kph) are just better designed.
Now there’s high speed high quality rail (again quite a bit better than my experience in the UK), maybe the old PkP rolling stock is still there somewhere but I only saw modern high speed or freight trains.
Time stood still. It reminds me of eastern Europe pre-EU.
But if you insist, sure, the few miles of British motorway don't include roundabouts. They do tend to start or end with them though ;)
I have zero doubt we’d invoke Article V immediately and even if we were lucky and nuclear war was not the result, Russia’s conventional forces are at an order of magnitude more of a disadvantage to the west.
It’s just strange to me when people act like it isn’t a huge part of the calculus, or that invading a NATO nation is an obvious next move for Russia, when 70 years of history indicates otherwise.
They won't go pay an exponentially higher price by invading a nuclear state, which, thanks to NATO, is what they'd be doing invading Poland. It's strange to think there's not a substantial difference between invading a non-NATO, non-nuclear state and one that is.