I don't get the hype around nominal GDP at all – looks great, but tells you little to none about the actual living conditions. Living in Poland, I don't feel richer than an average Belgian person (and I've had contact with many of them across the years).
Polish living standard in major metro areas are significantly above Belgian standards. I lived in Poland and Belgium, among a few other places, and I'd choose Poland over Belgium for a number of reasons. Its a great country, good infra, excellent engineers, high education standards, you can talk to anyone in English, the government usually does work, and if you want an appointment with a specialist doctor, it takes a few days tops (on a private insurance, which is cheap by most countries' standards).
If you're in the bottom 70% of the working class anywhere in western Europe you'll live pretty much the same way: you will never be able to afford a new car, you'll never be able to retire early, you most likely will never own your own place. Nobody feels rich because the entire system is built by parasites exploiting the bottom 2/3rd. The only meaningful difference is how often and how far you can go in vacation and how much a good little consumer bitch you can be, and if that's how you measure your quality of life you already lost the game
You are not European, are you? I know plenty of working class people working ordinary skilled labor jobs who own their homes and drive decent cars. Some people choose to keep renting because we have strong laws guaranteeing renter's rights. Contracts are often unlimited duration with reasonable prices.
Also retiring early is not about the money in your bank account around here. You retire early by using certain government schemes where you might qualify for early retirement by working a physical job, or by reducing your hours to 10 hours are week while getting a full subsidized salary.
That's shifting a bit with electric cars I feel, because people are worried about used batteries. But yes, generally new cars are often just a bad deal.
I'm a software engineer in the capital of the supposed #1 EU economy and at best I'd be able to afford a 50sqm flat in a ghetto tier neighborhood. I'm actually moving to Eastern Europe because of this bs
Poland isn't any better in that matter; we're still facing huge property development and housing "abnormalities", or as is being said here - pathologies.
It tells you little about living conditions but it tells you a lot about importance of a country as a whole. GDP per capita of China might be far from US but due to its size it still makes China very important actor.
Doesn't matter which kind of GDP you use - it won't tell you how wealthy a country or its people are.
That's because GDP measures how much you did in one year, and wealth is accumulated over centuries.
Using GDP to measure wealth is like using speedometer to measure distance. You can be the fastest on the road at the moment, but if you just started driving and people drove faster than you for 100 years it doesn't mean much.
Poland has made a lot of good moves lately. for techies in the UK/US they might not care that much - but there's also an effect on you.
in the U.K - a polish skilled workers are choosing to remaining in Poland instead of moving to the uk.
for the US - a lot of firms are setting up polish offices - hence when you hear 'a.i' efficiency most of those jobs have moved to Poland or India. Whether it's big tech, big banks and small funded VC startups. What remains in the US are just senior+, staff software engineers.
> How much money did they get from EU in last 5 years?
A lot. About 1 percentage point of Polish GDP in 2025.
They also had a lot of government spending, with the 2025 budget deficit being 7% of GDP.
Minimum wage was raised with ~10% in January 2025.
There is an irony in people attributing it to conservatism/rightwing politics rather than pretty much the exact opposite. Spain is another example of economic growth in the EU.
They're probably focusing on people who work rather than trying to tax people who work and innovate to pay for people who don't work or innovate. Strangely, focusing on economics is good for economies
I saw an interesting stat recently that the poorest USA state, Mississippi, has a larger economy and GDP than 1/3rd of all EU members.
It just seems like the EU is too top-heavy and I wonder if that's where a lot of the discontent comes from. It seems like there a lot of micro-nations in eastern Europe that have outsized influence over the union as a whole.
Gdp is not really a great measure of how well an economy works for it's inhabitants, if it was we should all spend our time breaking each others windows.
I don't think you realize how absurdly overpriced everything is in the US, which inflate GDP quite a lot... I paid less to build my entire top of the line house in eastern Europe than some American spend on a garage extension and a concrete driveway
250sqm, 30cm thick brick for load bearing + perimeter walls, 30cm rockwool continuous external insulation, aluminium frame triple pane windows, glazured roof tiles, floor heating + wood stove backup, 15kwp solar panels installation, deep well backup, etc.
Keep being smug, it just proves my point, Americans still think Arabs live in tents in the desert, Chinese live in the jungle and eastern European build houses out of cow dung and straw. Enjoy your 1m+ stick and cardboard mcmansion that won't last two generations
Sure buddy, last time I was in the states I witness your glorious single pane sliding windows that weren't even air tight and shitty vinyl flooring that we don't even install in social housing here, that was in a multi million dollar house in Berkley btw
Some of these models are pretty modestly priced (~$500k USD) but more modern than any house you'll find in North America until you reach a price point in the several million range. Certainly higher quality, nicer and more modern than any McMansion.
That example is a good reason nominal GDP has limits on what it can measure, as a drive thru Mississippi would show a poor state with small pockets of wealth
> there a lot of micro-nations in eastern Europe that have outsized influence over the union as a whole
Would you give an example of when that has happened?
> It just seems like the EU is too top-heavy
The EU intentionally admitted many poorer countries, to promote freedom, security and stability in Europe in the long term. Without EU membership, they would be under pressure from Russia and others.
> discontent
What discontent do you mean? There's always something, of course.
> The EU intentionally admitted many poorer countries, to promote freedom, security and stability in Europe in the long term. Without EU membership, they would be under pressure from Russia and others.
This is a bit of a non-sequitur, at least as far as Eurozone's anemic growth is concerned. France and Germany stagnating isn't caused by Poland or Romania growing. It is mostly their own internal systemic problems. There were times when German and Polish economies were both healthy, as little as 10 years ago.
Sweden, another rich EU member, should grow by healthy 2.2 per cent this year, but Sweden is a lot more willing to actually reform its way out of problems than Germany is. Smaller countries have less inertia in such situations, and more maneuvering space.
I mean, Brexit was the ultimate discontent and it didn't just come out of nowhere. It's still very recent history and, as far as I know, the circumstances that caused it haven't really changed.
IMHO, Brexit was mostly an exercise in placing the blame in a single “entity” instead of circumstances. Fishing gets harder due to over fishing. Technical advantages and industries moving have made certain classes of work such as mining and steel factories redundant or moved to other (cheaper) locations. This left a lot of the lower income classes and many middle income classes which jobs depends on servicing the lower income (restaurants, clothing, automotive industry, etc.) hanging in the wind.
Then instead of accepting the changing circumstances of the world, it is blamed on a single entity “EU” that is single handedly causing all their woes. Just leave and your lives will be better. Well, they learned.
This is how you get people to vote for someone like trump. They claim it is all the fault of some X, get people riled up, promise to fix X, get voted, and then you have to actually make their lives better.
Brexit came out of a many years campaign to steer up hate against the EU. Boris Johnson famously said that was his job as a journalist.
And of course, out of the middle class crisis in the 21st century. You have the same discontent outside the EU, except it doesn't get blamed on Bruxelles. That's how Trump gets elected, for example.
The US is a great example of why GDP is a largely meaningless metric.
Yes, the States' GDP is ginormous, and yet it's basically a third-world country masquerading as a first-world one on most metrics that actually matter to people.
The average American has decent health insurance. Our system can be painful and I'm not advocate for it, but the average American is not going bankrupt due to medical issues.
I know this is anecdotal from what I read here and the few engineers I’ve spoken personally. Having a good job is the only way to get good/decent health care.
Even then, there are many surprises in terms of what you have to pay yourself and how expensive certain things are. Basically any chronic disease will be very expensive. And don’t lose your job either because then you can kiss the insurance goodbye as well, kicking you even further down. Potentially deep into debt.
Not really. I was laid off and my daughter literally cut her finger off requiring expensive surgery and orthopedic stuff and my state covered all of it (over 100k in nominal cost) and our overall tax burden is less than most European countries.
To be totally honest a lot of people in America don't apply for public benefits for whatever reason. Plenty of my colleagues decided to pay for cobra instead of using free Medicaid which has a zero copay in my state.
In another situation, my brother's high school friends dad was preparing to die from prostate cancer because he could afford treatment. My mom made him sign up for public benefits and they covered everything
Dying in the third-world from cancer means you die. Dying in the US from cancer means you probably will bankrupt your family first, and ultimately die faster due to the financial burden/stress.
Apparently HN commenters have difficulty with the concept of "metrics." What are the numbers?
The US system sucks in a lot of ways, but it works OK for most Americans. If you're very poor, you'll have Medicaid and it'll cost you nothing. If you're an average middle class person, you'll have decent health insurance and your costs will be affordable. There's a slice of people in the middle who don't qualify for medicaid but don't have decent health insurance, and they're going to have serious financial trouble. But most Americans aren't in that situation.
There's a tendency to look at the worst situations and assume it applies to everyone. How we treat the least fortunate is extremely important and I won't defend the US here, but there's a pretty big gulf between a significant minority who can face massive financial burdens from medical care, and "it's basically a third-world country...."
The health care system is the most expensive in the world, while not producing the best life expectancy. It is in fact very much in line with Poland, except if you have $20k/yr in Poland for medical expenses you can expect concierge level treatment.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health...
Now you can blame it on bad lifestyle, addictions, car culture, crime rate, etc. All true, and idiotic healthcare system is indirectly influencing all of that.
I spent some time in Poland three years ago and have not stopped talking about it ever since. It stood out from the other Eastern European countries that I visited on that trip.
Had a lunch in Warsaw with a German friend who had relocated there. He said it was more Conservative than Germany and there was more freedom of expression.
Over forty years of Communist rule and they were never able to pull them away from their commitment to the Catholic church. Also lots of excellent museums and large parks.
Not if your tradition is to have freedom. Then to be a conservative means to conserve freedom. Think about the UK & US. The conservatives don't want to change what it means to be American/British, but the far left want to change it all. They want to change: ownership, innovation, free market, property, freedom of speech/expression, freedom of thought/opinion, employment, government, you name it.
and change goes both ways -/+ right? We know this.
In Poland, they want to have a place to call home that feels European, feels Western. In the UK if you say that, straight-to-jail.gif or less flippantly, threatened and shunned by either people who don't want you to have an opinion or people afraid of them.
But why the did Poland introduce a de-facto abortion ban in early 2021, with terminations only permitted in cases of rape, incest or if there is a threat to the mother's health or life?
And abortions due to fetal abnormalities are no longer permitted in Poland.
If you believe a fetus is a human then banning abortion is conserving freedom of the fetus. This is no different than saying banning murder of a person who is born is a way of conserving freedom. Obviously you disagree that a fetus is human or has human rights, but for somebody who does it makes perfect sense.
Many examples of “liberal” governments being extremely illiberal WRT freedom of expression. More people are locked up in the UK for speech than in many more conservative countries.
More conservative if you understand how the term is used. In my experience and observing Poland today, "freedom of expression" is the term favoured by the right wing, denoting that it is OK to spew racist / nationalist nonsense somewhere because a) "FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION" and b) a lot of the public is sadly quite accepting of it. This is what I typically see when people mention Poland and freedom of expression. Because if people call out hatred for what it is, it's censorship.
It would be good to have real insights into how Poland is doing well just now, but (gestures at thread) it seems to be a lot of people bringing out their pet solutions.
Is the boom related to the removal of PiS in 2023? Is it linked to Ukraine (businesses and people relocating across the border? Arms sales?)
That commitment probably won't change anytime soon but more and more people are dissatisfied of the church here - how it interferes with politics, tries to dictate what is morally right and of course covers up pedophilia cases.
During pandemic (which also happen during the right-wing coalition govt) public TVP2 channel ran breakfast TV segment where one of questions was if audience should kneel at homes during the broadcast of the Mass if they decided to "participate".
I am really happy for Poland getting rich (they deserved it!), but with little knowledge about Polish politics you just have to shack your head.
" Warsaw with a German friend who had relocated there. He said it was more Conservative than Germany and there was more freedom of expression." In Poland the constitutional court isnt working very good because of the former authoritarian Orban like PiS government. In case of a next Pis government only the European courts might help in case of a freedom of speech matter.
In Germany the constitutional court does work.
"they were never able to pull them away from their commitment to the Catholic church. " They do. Poland and especially the younger generation is securalising and also becomes more open to queer people. Also you can ask catholic officials how much they are willing to do for freedom of expression of atheism ("crazy") and gay men ("perverts").
Poland has earned this. Reputation of Poland is amazing.
And the people I've had the luck of meeting at a very early age during a student exchange lived up to that.
Poland is an indispensable pillar of the EU, and integrates countries such as UK, Italy, Germany, Greece, Austria, Romania, and many more countries in the east (I just don't want to list all of them here, because it's a slippery slope).
And Poland as a society has gone through a hard struggle to earn their very own power, stance and leverage.
Heise.de, German IT and developer news portal, recently posted a story for German software devs about how to become an expat in Poland. What a shift in tonality for German media: From Polish handymen continuosly voting in right-wing "democracy-abandoning" parties to … somehow … doing better than Germany, economically (in terms of growth and outlook).
Probably so, since the article text does not even mention Switzerland at all! And from what I can find, Poland is ahead of Sweden but not Switzerland (currently neck and neck with Switzerland).
Technically correct. However, it's so closely aligned with and integrated into the EU that it's quite convenient to include it in comparisons.
Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein (EEA), and Switzerland ("Special Relationship") are basically EU in all but final official membership. They even contribute to the EU financially.
But it does look that they probably meant Sweden (according to the text of the article)
I don't get the hype around nominal GDP at all – looks great, but tells you little to none about the actual living conditions. Living in Poland, I don't feel richer than an average Belgian person (and I've had contact with many of them across the years).
Polish living standard in major metro areas are significantly above Belgian standards. I lived in Poland and Belgium, among a few other places, and I'd choose Poland over Belgium for a number of reasons. Its a great country, good infra, excellent engineers, high education standards, you can talk to anyone in English, the government usually does work, and if you want an appointment with a specialist doctor, it takes a few days tops (on a private insurance, which is cheap by most countries' standards).
If you're in the bottom 70% of the working class anywhere in western Europe you'll live pretty much the same way: you will never be able to afford a new car, you'll never be able to retire early, you most likely will never own your own place. Nobody feels rich because the entire system is built by parasites exploiting the bottom 2/3rd. The only meaningful difference is how often and how far you can go in vacation and how much a good little consumer bitch you can be, and if that's how you measure your quality of life you already lost the game
You are not European, are you? I know plenty of working class people working ordinary skilled labor jobs who own their homes and drive decent cars. Some people choose to keep renting because we have strong laws guaranteeing renter's rights. Contracts are often unlimited duration with reasonable prices.
Also retiring early is not about the money in your bank account around here. You retire early by using certain government schemes where you might qualify for early retirement by working a physical job, or by reducing your hours to 10 hours are week while getting a full subsidized salary.
Nobody buys new though, these are for companies and posh people
That's shifting a bit with electric cars I feel, because people are worried about used batteries. But yes, generally new cars are often just a bad deal.
I'm a software engineer in the capital of the supposed #1 EU economy and at best I'd be able to afford a 50sqm flat in a ghetto tier neighborhood. I'm actually moving to Eastern Europe because of this bs
Poland isn't any better in that matter; we're still facing huge property development and housing "abnormalities", or as is being said here - pathologies.
Germany?
I happen to know a few software Engineers living there.
Berlin is pretty expensive, and some had to live in more outskirt areas (Potsdam for example). But none were living in gettho tier neighborhoods.
87% of Poles own a house in comparison to 67% in US.
This is about country's total GDP. Per capita graph in TFA shows Poland is still behind Belgium [1].
[1] https://images.euronews.com/articles/stories/09/86/71/11/108...
It tells you little about living conditions but it tells you a lot about importance of a country as a whole. GDP per capita of China might be far from US but due to its size it still makes China very important actor.
Can you share more? What makes you feel less rich in comparison?
It doesn't matter for quality of life but it matters politically. Larger GDP in nominal terms = more influence in the world.
Doesn't matter which kind of GDP you use - it won't tell you how wealthy a country or its people are.
That's because GDP measures how much you did in one year, and wealth is accumulated over centuries.
Using GDP to measure wealth is like using speedometer to measure distance. You can be the fastest on the road at the moment, but if you just started driving and people drove faster than you for 100 years it doesn't mean much.
You need to integrate it over time.
Look at household income adjusted for PPP, that gives a more accurate global ranking in that respect (20s-30s). I expect this has improved as well.
Poland has made a lot of good moves lately. for techies in the UK/US they might not care that much - but there's also an effect on you.
in the U.K - a polish skilled workers are choosing to remaining in Poland instead of moving to the uk.
for the US - a lot of firms are setting up polish offices - hence when you hear 'a.i' efficiency most of those jobs have moved to Poland or India. Whether it's big tech, big banks and small funded VC startups. What remains in the US are just senior+, staff software engineers.
This is not viable long term, but cool to ride the train while the outsourcing lasts.
How much money did they get from EU in last 5 years? Combine that with a lot of ukrainian migrants that actually work and open businesses you get this
Indeed, this is a great example of how the EU manages to grow its internal market.
> How much money did they get from EU in last 5 years?
A lot. About 1 percentage point of Polish GDP in 2025.
They also had a lot of government spending, with the 2025 budget deficit being 7% of GDP.
Minimum wage was raised with ~10% in January 2025.
There is an irony in people attributing it to conservatism/rightwing politics rather than pretty much the exact opposite. Spain is another example of economic growth in the EU.
They're probably focusing on people who work rather than trying to tax people who work and innovate to pay for people who don't work or innovate. Strangely, focusing on economics is good for economies
I saw an interesting stat recently that the poorest USA state, Mississippi, has a larger economy and GDP than 1/3rd of all EU members.
It just seems like the EU is too top-heavy and I wonder if that's where a lot of the discontent comes from. It seems like there a lot of micro-nations in eastern Europe that have outsized influence over the union as a whole.
15-20% of Mississippis GDP is healthcare cost.
Gdp is not really a great measure of how well an economy works for it's inhabitants, if it was we should all spend our time breaking each others windows.
I don't think you realize how absurdly overpriced everything is in the US, which inflate GDP quite a lot... I paid less to build my entire top of the line house in eastern Europe than some American spend on a garage extension and a concrete driveway
What constitutes a top of the line house in Eastern Europe? It's unlikely to be what Mississippians consider top of the line.
250sqm, 30cm thick brick for load bearing + perimeter walls, 30cm rockwool continuous external insulation, aluminium frame triple pane windows, glazured roof tiles, floor heating + wood stove backup, 15kwp solar panels installation, deep well backup, etc.
Keep being smug, it just proves my point, Americans still think Arabs live in tents in the desert, Chinese live in the jungle and eastern European build houses out of cow dung and straw. Enjoy your 1m+ stick and cardboard mcmansion that won't last two generations
>250sqm, 30cm thick brick for load bearing + perimeter walls, 30cm rockwool continuous external insulation, aluminium frame triple pane windows, glazured roof tiles, floor heating + wood stove backup, 15kwp solar panels installation, deep well backup, etc.
Even in Mississippi what you describe would not qualify as a "top of the line house". In fact that would be pretty average working class home.
Sure buddy, last time I was in the states I witness your glorious single pane sliding windows that weren't even air tight and shitty vinyl flooring that we don't even install in social housing here, that was in a multi million dollar house in Berkley btw
We're not talking commie blocks here, nor macmansions, which is what passes for top-of-the-line in a disappointingly large segment of the US.
https://www.moderndream.cz/katalog-domu/
Some of these models are pretty modestly priced (~$500k USD) but more modern than any house you'll find in North America until you reach a price point in the several million range. Certainly higher quality, nicer and more modern than any McMansion.
That example is a good reason nominal GDP has limits on what it can measure, as a drive thru Mississippi would show a poor state with small pockets of wealth
Poorest is a function of per-capita income and larger economy is a function of population. You're comparing different things.
Per capita GDP of Mississippi still puts it in about the middle of the pack of EU countries, despite being the lowest among US states by some margin.
I'm sure that's true but GDP is also not a good metric because for example it includes health care spend.
If MS spends more on insulin than an EU state it improves that metric which is the opposite of what we're trying to measure I imagine.
> there a lot of micro-nations in eastern Europe that have outsized influence over the union as a whole
Would you give an example of when that has happened?
> It just seems like the EU is too top-heavy
The EU intentionally admitted many poorer countries, to promote freedom, security and stability in Europe in the long term. Without EU membership, they would be under pressure from Russia and others.
> discontent
What discontent do you mean? There's always something, of course.
> The EU intentionally admitted many poorer countries, to promote freedom, security and stability in Europe in the long term. Without EU membership, they would be under pressure from Russia and others.
This is a bit of a non-sequitur, at least as far as Eurozone's anemic growth is concerned. France and Germany stagnating isn't caused by Poland or Romania growing. It is mostly their own internal systemic problems. There were times when German and Polish economies were both healthy, as little as 10 years ago.
Sweden, another rich EU member, should grow by healthy 2.2 per cent this year, but Sweden is a lot more willing to actually reform its way out of problems than Germany is. Smaller countries have less inertia in such situations, and more maneuvering space.
> What discontent do you mean?
I mean, Brexit was the ultimate discontent and it didn't just come out of nowhere. It's still very recent history and, as far as I know, the circumstances that caused it haven't really changed.
IMHO, Brexit was mostly an exercise in placing the blame in a single “entity” instead of circumstances. Fishing gets harder due to over fishing. Technical advantages and industries moving have made certain classes of work such as mining and steel factories redundant or moved to other (cheaper) locations. This left a lot of the lower income classes and many middle income classes which jobs depends on servicing the lower income (restaurants, clothing, automotive industry, etc.) hanging in the wind.
Then instead of accepting the changing circumstances of the world, it is blamed on a single entity “EU” that is single handedly causing all their woes. Just leave and your lives will be better. Well, they learned.
This is how you get people to vote for someone like trump. They claim it is all the fault of some X, get people riled up, promise to fix X, get voted, and then you have to actually make their lives better.
Brexit is widely regarded as both a failure (in the UK) and a cautionary lesson (in the rest of the EU).
Brexit came out of a many years campaign to steer up hate against the EU. Boris Johnson famously said that was his job as a journalist.
And of course, out of the middle class crisis in the 21st century. You have the same discontent outside the EU, except it doesn't get blamed on Bruxelles. That's how Trump gets elected, for example.
The conclusion you should draw from this is therefore "GDP is a shit metric for measuring anything and even worse as a target".
The US is a great example of why GDP is a largely meaningless metric.
Yes, the States' GDP is ginormous, and yet it's basically a third-world country masquerading as a first-world one on most metrics that actually matter to people.
Which metrics are those?
Things don’t look great for the poorest Americans, but the average American isn’t living a life that’s even remotely third world.
Looking at more holistic metrics, the lowest HDI US state (Mississippi) has a HDI of 0.868 [1], around the level of Argentina/Uruguay/Oman [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev...
Childbirth mortality, lifespan-healthspan, murder rate, paid vacation, worked hours per year, job security, etc.
Not facing the choice of dying or going bankrupt?
What’s the metric for that?
The average American has decent health insurance. Our system can be painful and I'm not advocate for it, but the average American is not going bankrupt due to medical issues.
I know this is anecdotal from what I read here and the few engineers I’ve spoken personally. Having a good job is the only way to get good/decent health care.
Even then, there are many surprises in terms of what you have to pay yourself and how expensive certain things are. Basically any chronic disease will be very expensive. And don’t lose your job either because then you can kiss the insurance goodbye as well, kicking you even further down. Potentially deep into debt.
Not really. I was laid off and my daughter literally cut her finger off requiring expensive surgery and orthopedic stuff and my state covered all of it (over 100k in nominal cost) and our overall tax burden is less than most European countries.
To be totally honest a lot of people in America don't apply for public benefits for whatever reason. Plenty of my colleagues decided to pay for cobra instead of using free Medicaid which has a zero copay in my state.
In another situation, my brother's high school friends dad was preparing to die from prostate cancer because he could afford treatment. My mom made him sign up for public benefits and they covered everything
Dying in the third-world from cancer means you die. Dying in the US from cancer means you probably will bankrupt your family first, and ultimately die faster due to the financial burden/stress.
It's actually worrying that people seriously believe stuff like this.
This is some Reddit ass "America bad" diatribe that doesn't mesh with reality
Simply wrong in most states.
Most? This kinda affirms my point. Where healthcare is free at point of use, the problem is non-existent.
Apparently HN commenters have difficulty with the concept of "metrics." What are the numbers?
The US system sucks in a lot of ways, but it works OK for most Americans. If you're very poor, you'll have Medicaid and it'll cost you nothing. If you're an average middle class person, you'll have decent health insurance and your costs will be affordable. There's a slice of people in the middle who don't qualify for medicaid but don't have decent health insurance, and they're going to have serious financial trouble. But most Americans aren't in that situation.
There's a tendency to look at the worst situations and assume it applies to everyone. How we treat the least fortunate is extremely important and I won't defend the US here, but there's a pretty big gulf between a significant minority who can face massive financial burdens from medical care, and "it's basically a third-world country...."
The health care system is the most expensive in the world, while not producing the best life expectancy. It is in fact very much in line with Poland, except if you have $20k/yr in Poland for medical expenses you can expect concierge level treatment. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health...
It doesn't work OK at all, you spend twice as much per capita for worse services on average
US life expectancy is 79.76 years. That's 62nd in the world, lover than EU average, lower than many less wealthy countries.
It's objectively not "working OK" for most Americans, especially when you consider how much you spend for subpar results.
Source: https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/
Now you can blame it on bad lifestyle, addictions, car culture, crime rate, etc. All true, and idiotic healthcare system is indirectly influencing all of that.
I spent some time in Poland three years ago and have not stopped talking about it ever since. It stood out from the other Eastern European countries that I visited on that trip.
Had a lunch in Warsaw with a German friend who had relocated there. He said it was more Conservative than Germany and there was more freedom of expression.
Over forty years of Communist rule and they were never able to pull them away from their commitment to the Catholic church. Also lots of excellent museums and large parks.
Wouldn’t „more freedom of expression“ imply less conservative?
Or what aspects of conservatism, and what aspects of freedom of expression, are you referring to here?
No, think of the US founders who were freedom of speech champions.
Yet conservative in sense that they... declared independence? I'm trying to follow the second half of that logic train.
Not if your tradition is to have freedom. Then to be a conservative means to conserve freedom. Think about the UK & US. The conservatives don't want to change what it means to be American/British, but the far left want to change it all. They want to change: ownership, innovation, free market, property, freedom of speech/expression, freedom of thought/opinion, employment, government, you name it.
Conservatives = resist change Progressive = encourage change
and change goes both ways -/+ right? We know this.
In Poland, they want to have a place to call home that feels European, feels Western. In the UK if you say that, straight-to-jail.gif or less flippantly, threatened and shunned by either people who don't want you to have an opinion or people afraid of them.
It's a sorry state of affairs.
But why the did Poland introduce a de-facto abortion ban in early 2021, with terminations only permitted in cases of rape, incest or if there is a threat to the mother's health or life?
And abortions due to fetal abnormalities are no longer permitted in Poland.
Isn’t that at odds with „conserve freedom“?
If you believe a fetus is a human then banning abortion is conserving freedom of the fetus. This is no different than saying banning murder of a person who is born is a way of conserving freedom. Obviously you disagree that a fetus is human or has human rights, but for somebody who does it makes perfect sense.
Many examples of “liberal” governments being extremely illiberal WRT freedom of expression. More people are locked up in the UK for speech than in many more conservative countries.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr...
More conservative if you understand how the term is used. In my experience and observing Poland today, "freedom of expression" is the term favoured by the right wing, denoting that it is OK to spew racist / nationalist nonsense somewhere because a) "FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION" and b) a lot of the public is sadly quite accepting of it. This is what I typically see when people mention Poland and freedom of expression. Because if people call out hatred for what it is, it's censorship.
It would be good to have real insights into how Poland is doing well just now, but (gestures at thread) it seems to be a lot of people bringing out their pet solutions.
Is the boom related to the removal of PiS in 2023? Is it linked to Ukraine (businesses and people relocating across the border? Arms sales?)
No it’s not related to removal of PiS at all. Poland’s economy was booming under PiS
There’s a reason the solidarity movement arose in Poland
Remarkable culture
That commitment probably won't change anytime soon but more and more people are dissatisfied of the church here - how it interferes with politics, tries to dictate what is morally right and of course covers up pedophilia cases.
During pandemic (which also happen during the right-wing coalition govt) public TVP2 channel ran breakfast TV segment where one of questions was if audience should kneel at homes during the broadcast of the Mass if they decided to "participate".
https://natemat.pl/303229,czy-klekac-przed-telewizorem-w-cza... (in Polish obv)
Still, this isn't as easy to digest as it may seem - you'd of course have to study our history to understand that connection to faith.
I am really happy for Poland getting rich (they deserved it!), but with little knowledge about Polish politics you just have to shack your head.
" Warsaw with a German friend who had relocated there. He said it was more Conservative than Germany and there was more freedom of expression." In Poland the constitutional court isnt working very good because of the former authoritarian Orban like PiS government. In case of a next Pis government only the European courts might help in case of a freedom of speech matter.
In Germany the constitutional court does work.
"they were never able to pull them away from their commitment to the Catholic church. " They do. Poland and especially the younger generation is securalising and also becomes more open to queer people. Also you can ask catholic officials how much they are willing to do for freedom of expression of atheism ("crazy") and gay men ("perverts").
They deserve it.
I'm in the UK. The smartest developers I worked with in my ~20 year career were all Polish.
The hardest-working and most skilled tradespeople that worked on my houses were Polish.
Poland has earned this. Reputation of Poland is amazing.
And the people I've had the luck of meeting at a very early age during a student exchange lived up to that.
Poland is an indispensable pillar of the EU, and integrates countries such as UK, Italy, Germany, Greece, Austria, Romania, and many more countries in the east (I just don't want to list all of them here, because it's a slippery slope).
And Poland as a society has gone through a hard struggle to earn their very own power, stance and leverage.
Not to remove any merit from Poland, but I think the EU deserves a bit of recognition here.
Great news, but could we have a higher GDP per capita, please? That's the most important part, isn't it?
GDP is a scam and a shit metric. Natural disasters increase GDP and so does pollution because of the money spent cleaning it up.
Poland also has 4x the population of Switzerland.
Normalise the GDP and then let’s start having a conversation. Look at the PPP.
Not surprising at all. Sane government that’s been focusing on what Poland needs above what anyone else demands.
Heise.de, German IT and developer news portal, recently posted a story for German software devs about how to become an expat in Poland. What a shift in tonality for German media: From Polish handymen continuosly voting in right-wing "democracy-abandoning" parties to … somehow … doing better than Germany, economically (in terms of growth and outlook).
Lol Switzerland isn’t in the EU.
It isn't an EU member but it is part of the EU single market.
I wonder if the title was meant to say Sweden, as the text mentions Sweden and Belgium?
The map at the bottom correctly excludes Switzerland. It does however include Norway and Iceland.
Probably so, since the article text does not even mention Switzerland at all! And from what I can find, Poland is ahead of Sweden but not Switzerland (currently neck and neck with Switzerland).
Technically correct. However, it's so closely aligned with and integrated into the EU that it's quite convenient to include it in comparisons.
Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein (EEA), and Switzerland ("Special Relationship") are basically EU in all but final official membership. They even contribute to the EU financially.
But it does look that they probably meant Sweden (according to the text of the article)