Life / Who is poor in Poland? [720]

well, I'm happy to discuss what's key or not, or what's the significance of the car sales, or cemetery plot sales, or mosquito bite indexes, but what does it have to do with the topic?

Life / Who is poor in Poland? [720]


true. so is the "Lipstick Indicator."

but one, car sales are not intended to tell you anything about the wealth of the population, unlike the PPP, e.g., and two, it has nothing to do with the cost of the cars: a new, top of the line $90K cadillac is counted as one, just like a $12K kia.

Life / Who is poor in Poland? [720]


LMAO!!! since when is the model of your car an economic indicator? How about we compare toasters? 'cause I have a pretty nice one, with a setting for large bagels... Our mower is kinda crappy, though, so I hope we're not comparing those...

how about the percentage of income spent on food?
how about the number of dwellings per 1,000 people?
purchasing power parity?
percentage of population living under national poverty line?

Nah, let's just go by the car preferences of vets. Because I would really hate to see your car observations fade into statistical insignificance...

Life / Who is poor in Poland? [720]


lol, all over the place!

who cares about cars? what's the Polish people's obsession about cars? Anyone we meet from Poland always wants to know what cars we have.

A car is not a status symbol anywhere (well, I guess in Poland it is). Our receptionist drives a BMW (and no, she does not have a wealthy husband, or parents, she lives by herself). Our CFO drives an old beat-up chevy, and he's making multiple times what she is. Our landscape guy drives a $60K truck. We bought a brand-new Chrysler right after high-school. Now we have cars that are less flashy but more efficient, even though we could afford something much bigger. How exactly does it matter?

Life / Who is poor in Poland? [720]


dope, you make so little sense, it's heartbreaking...

ok, so some criminals smuggle cigarettes across the border. make up your mind, is it entrepreneurship or criminal activity? apparently you think it's a great way to make extra money. I think it's criminal at worst, and embarrassing at the very, very generous best.

I'm not looking down on people who try to make extra money, dope. I'm saying that spending all your weekends on a questionable activity for the kind of money that most people would consider quite modest speaks to the fact that Poles are not wealthy, and the situation where you need to be that "enterprising" to get a just little bit of extra disposable income is quite telling about the lack of opportunities of making a comfortable living in Poland. And by comfortable, I mean above satisfying the basic needs of housing, clothing, food, medical care, schooling and transportation.


and how is that relevant?


Yes. so i gather a doctor can't make decent money working at a state hospital or clinic in Poland. The fact that they need to work essentially two jobs actually goes against your point. And it's not that people are "willing" to go to see their doctor in their private practice, it's that they don't have a choice, because it takes weeks or months to see a specialist at a state hospital. So you literally have to be retired or unemployed to spend hours waiting in lines at the state clinic. This is pretty grotesque, and very far from what people would normally consider a comfortable standard of living.

Life / Who is poor in Poland? [720]


how about having a job that pays decent money so you don't have to sacrifice 8 days a month to make an extra $650?

Not sure what side businesses doctors in Poland tend to have... Not sure if I want to know, either.

You can't tell me or any reasonable person that wasting 8 days on a pretty embarrassing activity for $650 is worth it, unless you're really desperate.

Life / Who is poor in Poland? [720]


you need to make the correction for any country, unreported income is not a Polish invention.

Life / Who is poor in Poland? [720]


that's what the Indians said about glass beads...

really, it's not business, though. it's a crude means for people to eke out their income by sacrificing weekends and time off from their day jobs, which pay insufficient wages, in order to make ends meet.

if someone didn't know one thing about Poland, and simply assumed it's just a European country of average wealth, this one post would convince them it's not. also the post about whether wealth can measured based on what car you drive. or the contents of your fridge...

Life / Who is poor in Poland? [720]


LOL, dope, are you for real? Are you saying that people in Poland are rich in reality because they can sell cigarettes or vodka to Germans?

Are you seriously not seeing anything wrong with that picture?

Off-Topic / How do Polish people operate? what makes them tick? [103]


c'mon, that's Havok's quote...

Off-Topic / How do Polish people operate? what makes them tick? [103]


haha!

Off-Topic / How do Polish people operate? what makes them tick? [103]

Hallelujah! Praise god for Z-Darius and PF because otherwise 400 million Americans would still be living in ignorance... And just in time, too, since the world is ending tomorrow!

You know nothing about this country, except what you hear in the media. You are the one who keeps popping the Blue Pill...

Feel free to keep repeating the sound bites about invading countries, media brainwashing, oil, blah blah blah, I honestly don't give a crap what someone like you thinks. The fact is that there are so many diverse people, and opinions, and lifestyles, and viewpoints, and ideas, and convictions, that all your trite generalizations can never be true, and you won't even scratch the surface of the diversity of this country until you have lived here for a while (and not in a "Little Poland").

Off-Topic / How do Polish people operate? what makes them tick? [103]


This has to be today's record of packing as much BS into two sentences as possible, and I don't think anyone could reasonably dignify this with a response.

I will, however, point out the template behind your typical response, which can be paraphrased into "Even though I don't understand what you guys are saying, you're saying something critical about Poland so I'm going to respond with, America sucks, too."

And not that there are no reasons to criticize America, but the stuff that you invariably come up with is never insightful, never accurate, just the same stuff, repeated over and over, without any reflection or concern for truth.

Off-Topic / How do Polish people operate? what makes them tick? [103]


You have it backwards. You won't find Americans playing the victim card.

"What is rather odder is that praising Poland can go down badly too. A mild remark about the variety and excellence of the country's media or the growing strength of its private sector can be taken as being insensitive to poverty, unemployment and the inadequacy of public services, let alone the country's historical tragedies."

You won't find that in America, either.

Off-Topic / How do Polish people operate? what makes them tick? [103]


or we can say something that doesn't offer consolation but let's them see the reality in a proper perspective. Poles have historically had the mindset of a victim nation, with the Partitions, and the two world wars, it keeps coming up over and over again, both in Polish foreign relations as well as the attitudes of regular people. Is it fair that Germans witness the struggle of Polish immigrants from the comfort of their high standard of living while the Poles are busy cleaning rooms or plucking strawberries? No. But if the martyr-pose of Polish people causes them to resent all richer nations, and particularly Poles who have moved there and are somehow not at the bottom of the society (which you can see evidenced on this form every hour of every day), then rather than being offered kind words, they should be slapped into reality.

Off-Topic / How do Polish people operate? what makes them tick? [103]

POLAND is a country that foreigners criticise at their peril. Even the mildest mention of habitual unpunctuality, brusque telephone manners or bad roads can prompt a lengthy and emotional review of the outside world's insensitive and ignorant attitude to the country's tragic history.

(2006)

economist/node/6875791

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Life / IS Poland in danger of becoming the next multi cultural sink hole? [201]

ok, let me ask you about Russians in the UK then. Are they welcome there? Is their culture treated as equal by the locals?

Life / IS Poland in danger of becoming the next multi cultural sink hole? [201]

how many of those do you have in Poland?

what would you say about Poles going to live in the UK? is it enrichment or contamination?

Life / IS Poland in danger of becoming the next multi cultural sink hole? [201]

So if foreigners, when they come to Poland, "contaminate" the Polish culture, does it mean that Polish people going to live abroad "contaminate" the British culture, or the Irish culture, the French culture or whatever other culture?

USA, Canada / Do many Polish people in America hate Americans? [592]

Polish people complain about everything and everybody. They complain about America, they complain about the UK, France, Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, and the rest of the Europe. Look at all the other threads - whine, whine, whine... Even the threads that start on a positive note (Polish accomplishments) end up in a b*tch session about other nations. I don't think there's a topic they wouldn't complain about. You take away their potato, they b*tch; give them a potato, they b*tch some more that it's too small and not like the one they had before. They complain about their own country and their government (that they voted for), they leave, and they set up "Little Polands" all over the place, stick together, and b*tch that nothing's like it was back in Poland. The average Pole is chronically unhappy, stubborn, argumentative and continuously whining.

Perhaps it's time to realize that other nations are not going to adjust to Polish mentality, so something's gotta give. I'd say if someone doesn't like it here, they're free to leave. So far, more people are coming in than leaving. Something tells me this is not the worst place to live.

Life / Positive things which make a Pole stand out positively in the World! [30]

really???

News / Don't let Poland become like my country, France. [630]


Perhaps it has something to do with how the immigrants feel about the country. A lot of people come to the US and they want to become American, because they buy into the American Dream. Is there a French Dream? A British Dream? That's why the Moroccans stay Moroccan, and the Pakis stay Pakis.

And I agree, the local authorities shouldn't make special accommodations for foreigners (frankly, we do sometimes, and it's regrettable) but, at the same time, if the French weren't feeling so snotty and superior to everyone else, I bet the immigrants wouldn't be so defensive and go to the other extreme.

Food / Polish food at home or out? [57]

In fact, monounsaturated fatty acids found in olive oil and avocados that lower heart attack risk and aid in cancer prevention are in the brisket of a corn-fed cow, too. There was a Texas A&M study not so long ago, for real, that showed that brisket has nearly as much oleic acid as olive oil. If you've ever been to Texas, you know brisket is one of our major food groups, so yee-haw!

On the other hand, also for real, the corn-feeding of cows and other industrial forms of farming is really bad for the environment and quite inhumane for the livestock.

So I've decided to eat brisket only on Good Friday, pierogis (in very small, traditional Polish portions of half a pierogi and half a liter of potato vodka with beets, lard, and sauerkraut) on weekdays, and on weekends we'll fly to London to have the full English: black pudding

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_pudding

baked beans, and fried bread. Yum!

Life / Uptight Poles [262]


would that be in the documnentary or the horror movie category?

Life / Uptight Poles [262]

Can you elaborate on how they're dominating you? Anyone jumping you, telling you to bend over and be gay?

Life / Uptight Poles [262]


Yeah. I told you there is no god, and you get all up in arms about it. You're insisting on your religious beliefs, and I don't care. You can worship whatever you can possibly come up with, god, calf, or a gopher. As long as you're not making me do the same.


Did anyone hold you at d*ckpoint to join their parade? Don't you get it? There is nothing more righteous, honorable, or commendable about your parades than theirs. You think throwing flower petals around makes your god happy. They think walking around in groups wearing flowery dresses makes them happy. They have an opinion, you have an opinion. The ONLY difference is, there's more of YOU than there is of THEM, so you think you can gang up on them and impose your morals on them.This doesn't make you right, it makes you hypocritical.


. Guess what, no practicing gay can accept Catholicism. So you're even.


. How magnanimous of you! Lucky them! They should drop to their knees and sing their Hallelujahs, right? You know, I'm sure they care as much about your forgiveness as you care about theirs. So get over your righteousness and "tolerance."


No. Do you read much at all? Or do all of your ideas come out of your a*s? Or did the priest tell you what to believe about it, too?


if you find truth offensive, it's not my problem. and, btw, doesn't your manual say, "But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." Consider yourself smitten. Now, write something back and get the other cheek ready...

Real Estate / Poland land ownership documents - what do they look like / where to obtain [15]

did you ask the court? do you know if there is a cost associated?

Food / Polish food at home or out? [57]


lol, you know, it's legal in this country to leave food on your plate.

so, Antek, you're quoting my question but you're not answering it.

Life / Uptight Poles [262]


First I thought I'd just ignore you but maybe I'll tell you something seriously.

Seriously, no clue what you're talking about regarding the Linux people. In fact, the rest of it doesn't make much sense, either.


Yeah, I know. In fact, they don't care so vehemently and so strongly, they'll drown you in holy water if you say there is no God. THERE IS NO GOD. YOUR GOD CAN KISS MY AMERICAN A*S. Now let's wait and see what happens...


I was replying to GrzegorzK, who said that Polish people, because of their Catholic religion, are not tolerant of gays. Now, you're saying, you are tolerant, if only gays would hide that they're gay, stay quiet, and conform to the rest of your norms... Very tolerant, indeed. Do you know what it means to live in a free country? It means that if you want to have public masses and carry around your Virgin Mary statues and do other medieval nonsense like that, the gays can do their parades. Freedom of thought means freedom for the thought you hate. Come to America. You can say all kinds of stuff here, and nobody can tell you to shut up.


I don't know, either, but GrzegorzK had a lot of problems with it, and then he was bragging his d*ck was bigger than mine... One can only hope so.


oh, wow, yeah, that proves it... yup, it's a conspiracy, big as all hell and half of Texas. No doubt about it!
Did they come up with dictionaries yet in East Bumblef*ck... er.. I mean, Brwinow? Then look up "c-l-i-m-a-t-e." Then look up "w-e-a-t-h-e-r."

If dumb was dirt, you'd cover about an acre...

Food / Polish food at home or out? [57]

so why do you think it is that there are over a thousand Mexican restaurants in Houston (well, that part is not very surprising...), hundreds of Italian, Chinese, Vietnamese, or Indian, a few dozen French, Cajun, Creole, Greek, Thai, or Pakistani, at least a dozen Brazilian, Cuban, or Spanish, seven Turkish ones, four Afghan ones, three Ethiopian (!), a bunch of ones I can't even think of now, and only ONE Polish restaurant? You can't argue that there are more Ethiopians in Houston than Poles, and I wouldn't expect Ethiopian food to be spectacular.