Who is poor in Poland?

Right, and other points of yours are valid, too, now.

I do not however think the wars are major problem. The major problem is making the U.S. (and not only U.S.) the economic hostage of China. The greediness of world corporations is the main culprit. You Grzegorz seem to be an economy expert. Do not you think massive imports from China paid in USD simply mean creating inflation on world's scale and involving the rest of the world in it. Not that all other countries are not guilty.

You know what my dream is? PLN/USD = 4.50. Polish product more competitive in the U.S. market for example, less imports to Poland...

There's no if. No country can ever hope to repay a trillion Dollar debt.

I was a professional in the area for over a decade in Ireland, and I would say the same about Irealnd, in relation to parental neglect rather than income, I would share the view of the American anthropologist, Oscar Lewis, who claimed that there is a culture of poverty among poor people. HOWEVER,

working couples (really) struggling to pay mortgages for sh1tty little apartment for 30 years and trying to make ends meet, when they don't even have children ;this is when a country is poor.

It says something different - FDI inflow to Poland in the 1st quarter 2011 reached EUR 4.5 bn (EUR 4 457 mln) i.e. 16% more that in the 1st quarter of 2010. The figure accounts for 61% of the whole 2010 FDI inflow to the country. This means that year to year investment increased by 61% comparing with figures from 2010 ( not sure if this is only 16% , see reverse numbers !) nothing more .

But the overall investment standing of USA is quite insignificant . Take a look on a report in my previous post . Some 85 % of total investment in Poland comes out of EU countries .

USA is not any player in Poland`s economy . It is actually smaller than Hungary or Czech Republic .

it can be much different if the shale gas is going to be developed

Well, maybe yes, maybe not. PGNiG has a long-time experience with oil & gas exploration. They might chose a West European or a Canadian investor, for example, and have you thought about STATOIL?

No it will not , Germany will stay on its leadership position as their direct investments are 10 times higher than USA , for Poland`s export to Germany the situation is similar , Germany is the major market for exporting polish goods and the trade is almost balanced which is much more valuable factor in mutual trade .

as far as I know only Americans have the reqiured technology (or maybe Canadians too)

experience in typical gas exploration is of not so much value when it comes to shale gas - I know a bit about it (my education profile)

Americans the British and Australians were exploring gas in Poland Antek when you were still driving your Polonez or maluch (it was conventional gas and some testing for deep gas in Carpathians (I still think the Carpathians have good prospects of yielding substantial gas from deep rigs - but deep drilling is VEEERY expensive)

You may be right.
Estonians have been mining shale oil for many years; i understand shale gas might be different?

Deep drilling such as 3 km is rather a standard? I ask you because I have already simulated such technologies for Polish, Hungarian and Norwegian companies ;-)

very different - you don't have gas shale outcrops - i.e. you don't get gas in shales that are on or close to the surface - geostatic pressure is a necessary factor for gas to remain in shales in commercially significant amounts

as far as I know oil shales are exploited from their outcrops and not much if any deep mining is involved - there is some oil shales in the Carpathians too but not that productive as those in Estonia and not that geologically convenient for exploitation

what is your point? I'm considerably younger than you but it doesn't mean that you are offering some kind of wisdom here. Let put it other way, my father's views are closer to mine than yours - what does it say? - nothing! Why are looking for personal reasons? I'm telling you that there isn't any.

I wonder Iron if your Dad still can remember the coupons for meat, chocolate/cocoa, vodka, cigarettes etc. Because you still claim nothing has changed in Poland since commie times ;-)

OK! There are personal reasons - on your part. You concentrate on some secondary issues, there was no reason for those shortages, I mean nothing but the Party will, farms in Poland were capable of feeding peeps in Poland no bro!

Not much has changed since commie times, same people, same mentality, same BS!
There is only opportunity to make some monies and that all what peeps like you care about - yourself !
Thats fine - but do not tell me that your life philosophy is something of a wisdom or hard earned experience, it is a common enough attitude.

You apparently are unable to learn anything from the history.
I wonder where the party could hide all that food to only keep the vinegar on store shelves, for so many years...

Have you ever heard about "centrally planned economy"? About PGR?

Keep wondering, I'm sure such a intelligent and knowledgeable person like yourself already have an answer to that.


And your conclusion ?

fck off Harry you miserable pest

Oh come on, it was all stolen by the Jews! Everybody knows that!

Right! And the cyclists stole a great deal of that! ;-))))))))))))))))

I don't know guys - maybe they have exported so much (to pay the installments after taking billions in credit) - as Polish manufacturing industry products were not readily accepted in the West (often because of not so high quality but also because little systematic supporst and logisitic issues) they relied on selling low-proceseed products including agricultural produce (coal was a very important export item) - then again Poland paid the price 'of being in a friendly relationship' with our Big Brother to the east - I have an anectode about it that my mum told me from her first hand experience - she worked for PKP and visited a foundry in Ozimek or Zawadzkie - what she saw there were freshly made steel girders that had 'Sdelano in SSSR' (made in the Soviet Union) inscripted on them - maybe this is also were some part of Polish agricultural produce went

Gumishu, it was very simple.
"Centrally planned economy", the essence of communism, meant nobody cared to really produce, because there was no personal interest of people in doing anything. If you just sat at the work, you were getting your worthless 3000 salary. Money was useless. It did not really matter how much money you had. You could not buy teh Maluch if you did not have a coupon from the Party. A flat? Joking?

You cannot plan the weather either, so you could have good crop (but not too good, or it was "klęska urodzaju", overproduction disaster, no jokes!) every year. If the Central Planning Committee had to plan production of everything, from a pin to a steel-works, don't be surprised.

The PGR, the state-run farms inherited another communist feature. Everything belonged to the People, meaning it belonged to no-one. Again, why to work? It was better to drink apple wine, steal whatever you could and take care of yourself.

The private farmers, and those survived as in the only country of the Warsaw pact, they indeed fed the nation. They were not willing to sell their produce to the State, as the prices were very low. So we had a phenomenon of "baba z mięsem", a countrywoman visiting their regular clients in cities, selling meat. Again, money meant nothing. If you had toilet paper, you had the real money in your hands. Etc. etc.

Now, take three years of bad crops in a row, panic in the market, people storing all they could buy, sugar, toilet paper, whatever they could buy, in absurd quantities, then the Centrally Planned Economy fell in such deep sh1t they could never come out of it.

Watch the films of Bareja. Those are NOT comedies. They are reality.

And what stopped them from changing that ?

Are you so naive or lack of historical knowledge ? I am sure you know the answer ! We all wanted changes and were fighting for them few times in 1956 , 1970 , 1976 , 1980 , 1989 and finally we succeeded .

Well, I'm waiting for an answer - what stopped peeps in charge in 1984 or in 1987 to implement such changes as were implemented only few years later ? And I'm talking economy ? What stopped them?

The Communist system and of course, Soviet Union.

Forgive me Iron, this is NOT PERSONAL this time but I sometimes have an impression I'm talking to a child when I read your comments. Do you have any grasp of what the Communist system was and how it worked?

Let me give you a crash-course:

1. Some guy Lenin read some books by some guys called Marx and Engels and got idea he could save the world.

2. Since people in Russia were fed up with the World War I, Lenin and his pals made a bloody revolution. They had been trying to extend the revolution to the whole world, luckily Marshall Pilsudski stopped them near Warsaw in 1920. Something called "Cud nad Wisłą" or something like that, we seem to have some national holiday because of that in August, probably on the 15th.

3. Lenin and his comrade Stalin (say: S.T.A.L.I.N. not Stalich) succeeded in spreading the hate & anger between Russian workers and soldiers, finally establishing the Communist rule over Russia, making Soviet Union.

4. General idea behind the Communism was: No private property, no owners, everything belongs to the People, and You Will Get What You Need And What You Are Deserving For. Nice, yea?

5. Lenin soon spotted this could not work out and tried to make some capitalism (N.E.P. reform) but he died soon, possibly not without help of Dear Comrade Stalin, the latter becoming dictator, pardon me, Secretary General of The Communist Party of Soviet Union.

6. Stalin did not manage to make the ideals of Communism real, so he introduced:
a. No private property
b. All property is owned by the State
c. Money is symbolic
d. No religion, Communism the only religion, send priest to death labour camps.
e. Kill all landowners including farmers, make state-run agriculture, kill all industrial owners, kill them all, because "give me a man, and I will tell you for what he's guilty" as USSR Prosecutor Andrey Vyshynskiy said.

f. Establish Centrally Planned Economy.

7. Stalin and his people killed many people by creating hunger in Ukraine, by centrally planned economy, because there were too many farmers in Ukraine to just shoot them down

8. Stalin and his people killed many million people physically and by sending them to the death labour camps. Ever heard of Katyń?
9. After the WWII, Stalin introduced Communism to all countries of Warsaw Pact, including Poland. The communist rule lasted from 1945 until 1989. 44 fcuking years....
10. Our brethren Hungarians tried to ask for some freedom in 1956 and got bloody war instead. Our brethren Czechoslovak asked for "Socialism with Human Face" in 1968 and got bloody invasion. We in Poland... don't you know?

11. In 1989, Poland became a free country. Because Soviet Union bankrupted due to Cold War expenses and their weird economy, Poland and movements such as Solidarity convincing Gorbachev in 1980's that it could not go any further or HE would have next bloody revolution.

And you are asking why the Polish Commies did not resign from the "Centrally Planned Economy"?! What the hell do you know about the history?

It was Gen. Jaruzelski who said: 'Sprawy socjalizmu będziemy bronić jak niepodległości!" Don't you know we had regular Soviet Army units all over Poland until 1989? Jarek forgot to tell you, didn't he.


Monia, czy my musimy rozmawiać z tym...

I think there is no point of trying to change his point of view as he is " niereformowalny " ( die-hard commie).

Equally true of the PZPR apparatus in the 50s/60s/70s/80s - and there's your answer, @Iron. A hegemony rarely, if ever, changes itself from the inside.

There are 27 countries in the EU. Poland is ranked as one of the poorest with Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, and Lithuania. Well, at least you guys are doing slightly better than Romania.

Is Romania a poor country?

You know that being slightly richer from dirt poor doesn’t make you well off, right?

What was the communist system ? What was the most important element of communist system?

Soviet Union ?
Forgive me but wasn't the case that Soviet Union existed till 1991? So why 1989 not 1987 or 1990?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union


What do you know ?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wojciech_Jaruzelski
Now pay attention :
Jaruzelski won the presidential ballot by one vote! Meaning he was president of Poland!


no, you don't have to to talk to me...... I see you have no idea about free debate or discussion .


Nothing to be forgiven for, you are entitle to your impressions and opinions

Romania is a poor country because they made actually no reforms for past 15 years, moreover, the Government managed to kill many thousand of private enterprises over last two years due to silly tax policy. None applicable to Poland.

I wonder where you dig your wisdom from, Havok.

I’ll try to explain this to you again, like to a kid.
We all can agree that the socioeconomic status gap between Germany and Poland is significant, on the same scale the gap between Romania and Poland is tiny. So let me repeat myself again:

You know that being slightly richer from dirt poor doesn’t make you well off, right?

Btw, Job well done on your reforms!

Ironside, it should be your school to teach you history. I will answer you, though. And I think I give up after.

1. Soviet Union started collapsing in early 1980's due to "arms race" with US, the race a communist country could not win. There was martial law in Poland instead of Soviet invasion, because the Soviet Union was already weak and preferred Polish commies clean their own country. Not meaning USSR was not strong enough to crush small Poland in case of need.

2. In mid-1990's, Mikhail Gorbachev introduced reforms in USSR, some kind of liberalization, because he understood USSR would collapse soon and he tried to find the way to avoid the collapse. Hence "perestroyka".

3. Meanwhile, there was a lot of unrest in Poland since 1988, especially numerous strikes. The commie govt tried to pacify the society (and the Govt already knew the Soviets will not help anymore), so the Govt started printing money, creating hyperinflation.

4. The situation was so serious -- the commies knew they had bankrupted and could not count on Soviets -- that Commies had to negotiate. Meanwhile East Germans started escaping massively to West Germany via Poland, and Czechoslovak had enough too. Whole communist system started collapsing.

5. So the Polish commie found the way: They agreed to yield power to Solidarity on the condition Gen Jaruzelski would be the President, and the commies wouldn't be basically prosecuted. At that time, Soviet Army was still occupying Poland, mind you.

6. Commies lost the elections to free senate totally. Very soon, Poland became a free country.

7. The USSR ceased to exist in 1991, due to small coup d'etat by Boris Yeltsin. Meanwhile, all Soviet troops had been already withdrawn from Poland.

That was the last lesson, Ironside.
If you still learned nothing, see you some day in the quarter of Pruszków called Tworki. Me being the visitor, you the patient.