The problem is that people like "szczecinianin" directly contribute to the problems that we're talking about.
I'm not going to discuss personal life of members. I think you both should stop making it so personal.
You see? I think it's the communist system and mentality that created this inability in many people. Of course not in all of them. For some people it's just their nature, character, upbringing, the conditions they grew up in or whatever. But still...
Many people in Poland earn little, probably peanuts in comparison to Western countries (there wouldn't be so many Poles emigrating to the West if it wasn't the case and I've read and heard so many times about higher wages in the West).
Also they don't lie about their income, they don't get any illegal income or whatever either.
I remember going to work in -15c in my first winter here and really suffering because of it - I had never experienced such temperatures and it would've made much more sense to stay at home in my view. Or I remember last year, going to two very important meetings despite being really sick - I had no choice, if I didn't go, then I would've been worse off today because of it.
That's nothing unusual, it's a norm. People are afraid of getting sick and if they do get sick they go to work anyway and make others sick. Because noone wants to loose their jobs. My mum told me about a woman she knows who has osteoporosis and she broke her both legs. Her boss called her and told her that if she doesn't come back right now she'll get fired. How is she supposed to do that? I think she's over 50, how is she supposed to find work if she gets fired?
But I'm explicitly talking about those who were in fine health and had no real commitments of their own - these people now in their early/mid 50's had a great position in life, not least because they lived in a time when careers were made.
The 90's in Poland were a bit like Wild Wild West, people who had the right mindset for those times made it (and yes, people who were sleazy scumballs in the times of PRL could have easily made it in the 90's too). But I don't think those were great numbers of people. I think many got screwed in a way, because all those workers who fought in the ranks of Solidarity, for example from the Gdańsk shipyard, lost their jobs. Plenty of state owned firms, factories either collapsed entirely or had to fire a lot of people. I remember those times, delph. Those were hard times. $hitty times for many people.
Sometimes life is simply hard. People get born where they get born, in the times they didn't choose and they work their asses off and often they don't have really that much influence on what will happen to them. The 90's in Russia were worse than in Poland. Yes, some oligarchs got insanely rich then, but majority of people got very poor. Humiliatingly so, from what I've been told by Russians who lived through those times. So I can't really blame people who are bitter.
That's not their fault they grew up in a system that didn't prepare them in any way for what was coming.
Sometimes life is simply a b*tch. And then you die ;)
And about careers to be made. Not everybody can make a "career". Someone has to do those mundane jobs, work in factories, etc. so others could make ridiculously big money for "managing" them ;) That's how it is all around the world. And the poorer the country the more the lives of those who do those mundane jobs suck. That's a fact of life. I wouldn't tell off someone who complains about life if he's/she's a factory worker in Poland or a brick maker in India, etc. That would be arrogant, in my opinion. Some people have harder lives than you and me. And they have reasons to complain. That's a human thing.
No-one ever said that poor people were bad people, only that if they complain about the situation, then they should start by looking at themselves.
I disagree. It's not that simple, delph, imho.