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Posts by convex  

Joined: 25 Nov 2009 / Male ♂ 		Last Post: 28 Nov 2011
Threads: Total: 20 / In This Archive: 13
Posts: Total: 3928 / In This Archive: 3150 		From: Wroclaw
Speaks Polish?: un poco...wait
Interests: aviation

Displayed posts: 3163 / page 32 of 106
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convex   
6 Nov 2010
Law / Ease of doing business in Poland [32]

You could start by ridiculing the need to "register" what your business does - the PKD codes.

Most countries require that. It actually makes sense. Allows auditors to be more targeted when looking for pasterns.

The worst part of running a business here are the costs of employing labor when selling services to domestic market.
convex   
6 Nov 2010
Life / Any treatment centres for homos in Poland? [455]

The flamboyant gay parades are more about flaunting their perversions than bringing attention to any injustice. They are in-your-face, over-the-top, inappropriate public displays and quite offensive.

Absolutely, as has been mentioned before, that's unacceptable and they should be arrested if they were breaking the law. Keep in mind though that wasn't the case in Warsaw.
convex   
6 Nov 2010
News / People says that EU bringing many nice things to Poland. Tell me about it [104]

Poland Recognizes Kosovo

Yup, the EU put a gun to the governments head. Interesting side note, quite a few Poles seem to support recognition of Kosovo..Will of the people?

PS, interesting PF factoid. There are more topics started here by Serbians on Kosovo than by Poles on Kresy :)
convex   
6 Nov 2010
News / America's Tea Party like Poland's Solidarnosc? [59]

I can do that.

Send me your resume. If you're interested in travel and working your way up to doing engineering work, then send it on over.

Get to live in Poland too and steal good Polish jobs.

Anyway, moving way off topic here.
convex   
6 Nov 2010
News / America's Tea Party like Poland's Solidarnosc? [59]

Is there any rationale for it?

Citizens responsibility. I don't feel too bad about voting and not living there though...

But in the Canadian Model, one level of government usually tends to "look out for themselves".

Which is one of the reasons that 95% of tax revenue shouldn't leave the local government. That remaining 5% can be divided up for national defense and treaties.

That's the "original" Tea Party idea. The new one is a much much more diluted selfish version of that.
convex   
6 Nov 2010
News / America's Tea Party like Poland's Solidarnosc? [59]

You're kidding me! I did wonder why you flew off.... :P

Americans are taxed on world wide income with a fairly low exemption.

Anyway, check for yourself.

$50k in New York nets you $710 a week

$50k in Paris nets you $822 a week

Poland, $730 a week....

But only for them. And no-one else, and certainly not anyone who doesn't agree with them.

And therein lies a difference. Solidarity had a much larger base of people that were being fought for, and that supported them through action or thoughts...
convex   
6 Nov 2010
News / America's Tea Party like Poland's Solidarnosc? [59]

Centralisation never seems to work - isn't one of the reasons America is so competitive is due to the way that the individual states have quite a lot of control over taxation?

It was one of the reasons. Tax burdens for citizens in the US making an average wage are now higher than the majority of EU citizens making the same amount of money, so tax rates are kind of irrelevant now :(

There does need to be a safety net to catch those that can't, and weed out those that won't.

Of course, but that safety net needs to be local. One size fits all doesn't work. That's why planned economies fail. Too much bureaucratic top down legislation, not enough common sense local approaches. If the crackhead on the corner keeps spending money on crack instead of feeding her family, take away the kids and put the mother in rehab...stop sending the woman a check every month.

Come to think of it, the Tea Party is a lot like Solidarity. They both want their handouts.
convex   
6 Nov 2010
News / America's Tea Party like Poland's Solidarnosc? [59]

It depends on how much you trust and believe in people to be able to take care of themselves. What I do believe works, is local government. Unfortunately, we keep outsourcing decision making further and further away from the people affected by the decisions. People become disillusioned thinking that their vote no longer means anything. That's one of the reasons that we now just support parties instead of individual issues. In the US, it's happening by diluting the citizens vote by not increasing members of the House proportionate to the population. A member of the House today represents well over 10 times as many people as 200 years ago. In Europe, decisions are being made on an EU level, which most of the voters don't know or care about.

Representational Democracy works well when the people are represented....
convex   
6 Nov 2010
News / America's Tea Party like Poland's Solidarnosc? [59]

Solidarity wasn't bank rolled by billionaires. They were as mentioned above, socialists. And Solidarity members were beaten up, thrown in jail, and of course, murdered.

The only spontaneous bit of the tea party was when it was Ron Paul supporters getting together and raising money for his campaign. After the election, the "Tea Party" was formed based on the grass roots organization that supported Ron, and injected with cash and steered towards a socially conservative direction.

I don't think you can compare the two.
convex   
6 Nov 2010
News / People says that EU bringing many nice things to Poland. Tell me about it [104]

On the other hand, There are quite a few more Dutch trucks rolling around now, and Dutch money is being invested heavily all around (with tidy profits).

The problem though, is a good one. Dutch taxpayers are paying for it. It should be coming out of corporate income taxes, as companies see the biggest benefit (which of course in the end is a benefit to the employee, but it's too indirect).

I don't even think that most of the EU-12 countries should have been allowed to join in the first place. Slovenia, yes - it's catching up rapidly. Estonia too. But the rest? No way.

The entire idea was equilibrium. Are the Dutch getting any poorer? Social welfare for the poorer countries, and corporate welfare for the richer countries.

Not enough power for the people who are paying for the experiment. There need to be way more referendums on issues. People are confused as to what MEPs and MPs are responsible for anymore, and they stopped caring. Huge blow to democracy.
convex   
6 Nov 2010
Law / Ease of doing business in Poland [32]

It,s a free europe, so you can chose where you wish to reside.( permanent )

Still have to register, that's local law in most countries. Poles have to register themselves, Germans, French, Italians...

What aid does Poland give to other EU members when they wish to start a business or even reside in the country ?

Quite a bit depending on where you want to open your business, and more importantly, how much you're investing.
convex   
6 Nov 2010
News / People says that EU bringing many nice things to Poland. Tell me about it [104]

Which part of Europe is that gentleman from?

Anyway, Poles are happy to be in the EU (eurobaramoter). The EU has brought money in the form of grants and private investment. Farmers are being subsidized instead of closing up shop, and my favorite part, more Poles are intermarrying and having children with fellow proto-Slavs, the Germans, Anglo-Saxons, and Celts.
convex   
5 Nov 2010
Law / Polish business haven't got a clue: Discuss. [72]

That should have read "had" a huge market cap.

Anyway, read the thread for what I was getting at. You just kind of ruined the subtle point I was trying to make.

Market cap doesn't equal success.
convex   
5 Nov 2010
Law / Polish business haven't got a clue: Discuss. [72]

Asseco = mom&pop’s, plus a big employee overhead... and makes no real money, I wouldn't touch Asseco's stock with a 10-foot pole.

$70m in profit the first 6 months of '10, that's making money as far as I can tell.

They're a software house, they make real money, and lots of it. They're very well respected in the finance industry.

Let me quote:

EBIT margin of 17.5% as well as the net profit margin of 14.1% achieved by the Asseco Group are still among the highest scores in the whole IT industry.

If you think those are bad margins, you should stay away from business.

same for the Polish telecom, how would that even compare to Comcast, At&t or Verison?

Dunno, you mentioned carriers, I mentioned IT companies.

This thread is about well run companies. Those are well run companies, who have grown completely on their own without big subsidies, and are making a very healthy profit, incredibly lean, and are showing constant growth.

If you use market cap as a guide as to which companies are run well, you're not going to get very far. GM has a huge market cap, Fannie and Freddie as well, so does AIG, Citi....

Yea, for what it's worth, I'd rather put my money into Asseco and see returns than MSFT and see sad faces.

Investing in securities is, a bit, meh. Going to go pull out the dartboard and take up some drunken positions on commodities.
convex   
5 Nov 2010
News / Tusk cracks down on designer drugs ("dopalacze") in Poland [171]

As previously discussed, epic fail on the law.

Recent article from NPE:

Designer drug firms back in business

Cunning 'dopalacze' sellers have
found loopholes in the law which
will allow them to sell the so-called
'designer drugs' to customers.
Little over a month after the nationwide
government crackdown, traders
are simply moving their businesses
to different countries and sending
the goods to clients via the post,
according to Poland's legal paper,
Gazeta Prawna.
convex   
5 Nov 2010
Law / Polish business haven't got a clue: Discuss. [72]

There are some large IT companies out there as well. Asseco comes to mind, Ericpol is pretty big too...There are actually quite a few big homegrown companies in IT and Telecom..
convex   
5 Nov 2010
Law / Polish business haven't got a clue: Discuss. [72]

when i visited the post office to get my passport they asked for a pesel (which i didn't have) or my passport for ID, my passport was in the bloody envelope i was trying to collect.

Just out of curiosity, how'd you collect it in the end? British consulates don't provide you with temporary passports while waiting for your replacement? I'm guessing that's only in the EU?
convex   
5 Nov 2010
Travel / Very dangerous defrauding trend started in some hotels in Krakow [49]

There is no schengen law for private business to have copies after your passport...

Every hotel that I've ever been to required that a card be filled out with your information, including the number of your identity card/passport. I've never been asked to have it copied. For what it's worth, I use booking. for travel (including to some pretty shady place), and have never had a problem.
convex   
5 Nov 2010
Law / Polish business haven't got a clue: Discuss. [72]

I wonder are there any other expats here who work for mickey mouse Polish companies who haven't got clue what they are doing?

Anywho, could you give us some examples of not knowing what they're doing? Anything in particular that stands out?
convex   
5 Nov 2010
Law / Polish business haven't got a clue: Discuss. [72]

Thats not really the point though, i expect most English speaking foreigners are teaching English, thus they are working and getting paid. The companies "not having a clue" is irrelevant as long as one gets paid.

That's fair enough, but money isn't everything. If you work with idiots because the pay is a little better, is it really worth the tradeoff? Everyone has their own limits for that tradeoff..
convex   
5 Nov 2010
Travel / Starbucks in Wawel Castle, Krakow. Is this a joke or true? [42]

I actually stopped in the first Starbucks at Pasaz Grunwaldzki at around 1:30 p.m. a few weeks ago, it was absolutely packed with college students.

Students and bank employees. It does well pretty much all the time. Selling cups of coffee for the price of a meal :)
convex   
3 Nov 2010
Love / What do Polish girls think about Gypsies? [116]

Wrong, Romanians do not have free movement and are in general not very welcome in most if not all European countries

Romanians, as EU citizens, have the right of free movement* ....including the gypsies.

*as long as they can financially support themselves.

Speaking of nice cultures
dailymail.co.uk/health/article-385968/Girl-11-Britains-youngest-mother.html
convex   
3 Nov 2010
Life / Legal Graffiti Walls in Poland? [45]

He targets the ones that only require repainting, in case he gets caught. ;)

Moral of the story, prosecute to the full extent of the law if you own containers in order to keep them from getting, ahem, decorated.

There are a couple of commissioned projects here in Wroclaw. Will try to get some pictures.