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More and more jobs moving to Poland from other parts of Europe... [50]
As my brother (a skilled programmer with a MSC in Computer Science) recently noted: "All tech companies would be smart to ship their industry to Eastern Europe." Although you can also find programmers in the Asian markets, Eastern European markets are less volatile in current times, provide a phenomenal amount of skilled labor in programming, and are not publicized as locations which will have bad working conditions/pay even though the incomes are substantially lower than elsewhere. It is also much easier to maintain support staff in Eastern Europe which can communicate efficiently with individuals in European/American markets. Do you know many Indians or Chinese individuals who speak Polish, Lithuanian, Russian, Italian, French, Spanish, English and other languages? Polish individuals are very skilled in terms of the plethora of languages represented by native workers. Their English is also much easier to understand than the Indish spoken by individuals in Indian Call Centers. The best place to set up shop is there, and that can be noted by the large establishment of offices by people such as IBM, Dell, etc. in various locations throughout Poland. You are naive to think that these companies will ship anywhere except back to the U.S. in present times. If anything, the U.S. will create incentives to localize their workforce but has no incentive to move more work to Asian markets.
All told, I doubt that there is much to worry about in Poland and I think people are just overly paranoid. The real people who have to worry are the individuals in the 40-50 year old range in the U.S. who are seeing their retirement funds shrivel up. These individuals rely on their retirement savings in ways in which Polish citizens never need to. 500,000USD in a retirement account by the time you reach 65 is usually not enough to live a comfortable existence in the U.S. during your final years in the big cities. We do not pay off our mortgages often, but tend to refinance to longer term loans, upgrade our homes and do other things which soak up income. The main goal of Polish people is to own their house/apartment by the time they finish working, and their other costs of living are low enough that they can survive on Social Security benefits. Social Security will not even pay for basic necessities in America. Quality of life will decrease for the average American citizen and this will affect worldwide markets marginally but not to the extent people envision.
Yes this is a gross redistribution of wealth. No it is not very fair. However, the U.S. taxpayer will control a large amount of equity in these firms. In the end loans will be repaid and the general cost to the average citizen won't be deep. The real issue is going to be the growing debt that is being placed on the taxpayer due to years of deficit. I believe the shared debt is 35,000USD per citizen is the real killer. Imagine if you took a mortgage out for this amount, you would be paying roughly 350 dollars per month. This means the debt is lowering actual salaries in the U.S. by 4000USD per year. Hopefully we can rein in spending and begin to run surpluses and repay our debts abroad and to ourselves.
