Why is Poland developing so slowly or in the wrong direction? Who is responsible ?

Is not a question of affordability but ability of the PO government to take away entrenched privileges!


thats a very shallow diagnosis, rather picture of consumerist attitude around the glob!
and whats more explains nothing !


dream on! crazy - whoever you are !not British though !


real expenses or, those for publication ?

Please, you know what I want to see..

To excuse Poles, maybe they're just fed up with never fulfilled promises? When you wait and wait and nothing ever happens, you start being very impatient. I'm not talking only about the current situation, as far as I'm informed, Poles had to wait many times on something in their past but it almost never came so I kinda understand them now even though, of course I know that you're right about what you're saying.

You are ignorant, Polish people are making great progress. They do not want to be abused they want the same living standards as other members of EU

Look at all the strikes and riots in EU as governments are imposing austerity measures.

Then they have to work harder and longer for it - instead of retiring early and enjoying unproductive employment in State-subsidised enterprises. Why the hell should I, as a business owner, subsidise a bunch of lazy men with moustaches? Why should convex and I subsidise miners when their mines are unprofitable? Why should we subsidise shipyards?

The biggest mistake in Poland was to treat pre-1990 contributions to ZUS as being equal to post-1990 contributions. What a mistake...

Absolutely, it was a case of having your cake and gobbling it down at the same time.

The worst thing is that, for now - ballet dancers can quite legally retire at 40 and collect a pension from ZUS for doing so. If there ever was an example of waste and nonsense, there's one! I don't have an issue with providing them with sponsorship to go away, get an education and continue contributing to the pot, but they shouldn't be receiving a pension.

(for that matter, the State shouldn't be funding early retirement full stop, except for those involved with essential State services - and even then, it should be after much more service than it currently is!)

The only justification of early retirement is being shot at, and being too messed up in the head to ever get another job.

The rest of the state services should be a hell of a lot longer than they currently are.

Maybe cos a lot of them have already had to tolerate it a few years and can't see any good.

But is this trait the sole property of Poles. Can you imagine how the French (or british) would react being told they had to suffer?

Very valid Points Delph.

Anyone that has spent in time in PL, is very much aware that today the Polish electorate are very flaky, the brave Poles that fought in the solidarity movement, where after a better future for their families, they believed in the greater good and risked their lives, they had a common enemy, communism and the USSR. In the last 20 years Polish people have become so selfish, they care for nothing except their own personal needs, the quest for financial gains has no limits,they will tell you, that it is because they are the poor nation of Europe or because the country was under communism for a period of 45 years, but the real reason is they do not care for the greater good or the country, because their is no common enemy. The new enemy is within themselves or anyone that takes away from them, what they believe is rightfully theirs.

A few years ago I was interviewing a farmer's wife in Suwałki. She commented that the kids turn on TV and see films where everyone has a car, nice clothes etc and they seem to think moving to the city will automatically qualify them for these things, "They don't realise that you have to work for them and that you don't just get them. They don't care about their country... but without my country, what am I?"

In 2005,our former nanny was in the market for a flat in Warsaw, we helped her fill out the papers and she received clearance from the bank for a loan. Her boyfriend was working in Scotland, so it was left to her to find a flat, She decided on the flat and asked us to view it with her for the second time. After viewing, I asked Anna, what do you like about this place and her retort was " The seller told me its a good price and he can move out immediatly" so I asked if she realized it was in an old building made of concrete and it may be difficult to sell in the future, here response was " It not my money its the banks and if they want to give it to me, I just need a place to live" after 20 mins and a coffee, she decided the place was not for her, two weeks later my wife found her a place in a new build, near the center of warsaw. Every year she visits us on boxing day with presents for the children and thanks us for stopping her making, what could have become the biggest mistake of her life.

The bizarre thing, she is now a financial advisor.

Re pensions in the public sector. A very difficult area to generalise on. For example, the Secret Service, on which I know more than a few things:

Some staff are 'mere' secretaries - a useful job, as I well know but not worth early retirement.

Some staff are field agents, waiting up nervously all night for a reported illegal arms shipment to arrive on the eastern border. Obviously armed and dangerous gun-runners make for sweaty palms ... and perhaps the right to an early retirement.

Then there are the work-shy agents, who pretend to work.

Who deserves early retirement? Or do they deserve a pay rise? Answer: they will get neither.

Very late retirements, is sounds good on paper. But who is going to employ these 70 y.o. grandpas? Would you, Delphiandomine? If some granfather with a walking stick comes to your office, looking for a job, what your reaction would be?

If I were able to fire them as easy as I could hire them, I'd definately give them a job. Anyway, I don't think anyone was supporting pushing back the general retirement age, but rather harmonizing it across all jobs.

Yep, bang on.

What's your beef? Ballet dancers getting a pension at 40? How many ballet dancers are there in Poland? Big deal, not enough to worry about. Poland can afford it and it can afford to offer a safety net to the poor and old. The wealthy have a responsibility to the less fortunate. Remember what Aristotle said"...the wealthy attribute to the gods what they got by luck." He was talking to you two birds.

Well, my dad's old boss had a daughter who was a ballet dancer. her legs gave out on her under the strain. Docs said if she gave up dancing (in her early 30's) she might still be able to walk in her 60's.

How many ballet dancers actually have a major career as a full-time professional dancer into their 40's? I'd suggest not that many.

But that's one of the problems, Poland can't afford it.

Construction is hard work too. Medicine is stressful.

Varsovian is right on the money. It's not that fair of a system, especially when you have people lobbying to drop the age in certain sectors.

The only reason that the pension system hasn't completely collapsed is because payments are not being increased at the rate of inflation. It's less money that has to be spread around, but a huge burden on workers and employers. Workers because it takes quite a bit of their earnings, and employers because it makes the cost of employing labor quite a bit higher, with all the negative side effects of that.

everyone relax Poland is doing fine it will take time to develop look how long Germany took to develop after ww2 and that was with marshal pan injecting billions of $ in to Germany

as they say they did not build Krakow in one day

The Marshall Plan didn't really inject billions into Germany, that's a common misconception (Germany was paying every year for the occupation than was received through the duration of the Marshall Plan). The most important aspects of the Marshall Plan for Germany was the introduction of sound monetary and general economic policy.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan

Nonetheless, the amount of monetary aid (which was in the form of loans) received by Germany through the Marshall Plan (about $1.4 billion in total) was far overshadowed by the amount the Germans had to pay back as war reparations and by the charges the Allies made on the Germans for the ongoing cost of occupation (about $2.4 billion per year).[8] In 1953 it was decided that Germany was to repay $1.1 billion of the aid it had received. The last repayment was made in June 1971.[9]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirtschaftswunder

So basically, Germany received $300m ($2.6b inflation adjusted, €1.8b) throughout the life of the plan.

DO YOU know the reason ?

Check the pension discussion. It's the same problem that the US has with social security and medicare!

Those are ponzi schemes which eventually fall in on themselves. Poland would do well to fix it before if gets any worse.

well too late for that, EU will import immigrants to Poland, to keep it going !

You're right of course, the ponzi social schemes are one of the major drivers of immigration in other countries. Hopefully Poland will fix the problem and not exacerbate by importing chumps to support the bottom of the pyramid.

Poland can't afford it, this is the thing. Constitutionally, Poland is riding extremely close to the edge - and if it reaches the edge, we'll see massive cuts made. Why should there be exceptions for people just because they choose to do a career that is physically demanding? Professional sports people don't get to retire early, so why should dancers?

As for the safety net for the poor and old - no-one wants to cut their net, but we want them to work for it. And we're exposing the sheer stupidity of using today's money to pay for pensions earnt in worthless Communist Zloty.


Well, if they are around until they're 40, I'd be all for giving them money to retrain. Many of them missed out on an education, so they should get funded to go to university/etc. They'll have a good 25 years of productivity left - why the hell should they get to retire at that age, only to end up (in most cases) working illegally anyway?


It's a huge burden and is almost certainly the reason why many Poles don't have ZUS paid as part of their employment.

Would you say the same about members of the military?

I agree with you about the 25 years working life but sadly a lot of employers wouldn't. Recently I applied for a job at the local uni. They asked if I'd be prepared to do a PhD and I agreed. then they asked my age (44). Oh, that might be a problemm because it meant I wouldn't be a professor before I retired.

So, my depth of experience and knowledge isn't important to the students, the fact I am young enough to ever be a professor is.

Oh jesus. Don't even get me started on the professor thing - it is one of the worst aspects of Polish education that they expect a certain number of professors in universities. It's nonsense - there wasn't one person in my department at uni who was a professor, yet the quality of education was far higher than any "business" course in Poland.


Utter nonsense :( The same system is the reason why you get all these useless old gits with no modern knowledge whatsoever, just because they must have a certain amount of professors :(