Poland - Third World Country??

Do you think the government is a cash cow??? ;)

There are the handlers only...not the owners or the doers or the makers...if there isn't much to spend, shouldn't they better feed the cow before starving her and taking her milk till she is dead?

What then? Onto the next cow?

BB, do an inventory of the world. Governments who spend the most money on their people and are supportive of them are in the countries with the highest standards of living. Government spending is not bad.

The answer is, you keep growing and growing and the cow will always have enough to eat!!

Not when you are more concerned with spending her milk than with feeding her...


Why do you think they got the highest standards of living? Because of financing it with welfare???

God PP!!! ;)

Of course is bad. It's just one party, Liberal party, buying votes in every election. Has nothing to do with economy whatsoever.

It's because government has done it's best to support a high standard of living. Government is committed to it. That is the fundamental difference, BB. How can it be denied?

Easily; it's just pure nonsense.

Do some research and you will realize what I have already acknowledged.

There is no other world, but one world. Such names are not appropriate.

Yes our economy needs more strengthening, specially when it comes to jobs and infrastructure. We need more FDIs, and that is possible if our government pays more attention.

No, you do some reading other than Huffington Post and you will be fine.

Never heard of Huffy until now :)

Living on your own, paying your own bills and paying taxes helps too in getting some real world perspective. Uni courses are only helpful to the certain point.

How do you know I don't do all that? Anyway, the topic is about Poland being perceived as a third world country and I offered a suggestion why that is. You disagree, and that's fine, but you are not going to change my opinion.

If you think that any country is rich because of generous welfare system - G-d bless your naivete.

The truth, as ever, lies between.

Generous welfare systems tend to get gamed. That's what's hurting many counties in Europe right now - God only knows about a few years time when those pension/health deficits become unsurmountable. You can't do that and not tax. Scandinavian countries do both - pretty well, but they have a population for whom the notion of high taxation isn't seen as punitive. Third-world they are categorically not.

The appetite for that kind of thing across the Atlantic is limited. But wait. Not all Government spending is welfare, and those who would advocate for example unregulated business, minimal legislation etc don't seem to understand the wider consequences of what would happen if that were implemented. Governments spend money on legislation, infrastructure, social contracts to ensure that even private firms hired to get those basic, unnoticeable things right, get them right.

The example to hold up of an unlegislated business environment is not an idealised, small-government US; it is Yeltsin's Russia - and to some extent, the smash-and-grab Poland of the early 90s. No-one in their right mind wants that. It's easy to forget that Governments can and do provide a framework where you can trust the other guy enough to sign a meaningful contract with them. That framework costs, and it counts as spending on people.

The dole scroungers who could get off their arses and find work, not much sympathy there. Those incapacitated by health problems or temporarily removed from the job market because the closure of the local factory has ripped the heart out of the local community? Different matter, and those people deserve, at the least, our help.

I agree with above, however I think that current practise is wrong and prone to abuse.
I think that welfare system shouldn't be tampered by the state, but as you said, government should provide framework for private and voluntary insurance.

Lower tax would leave in hands of employee more money, at the same time any company worthy its name should calculate pay not only according to position of said employee within the firm but also into account should be taken such information about employee like - his/her martial status, number of offspring's, whatever his/her partner is employed - pay should be deducted based on such informations as well as usefulness of the worker for the company.

Such firm wouldn't be taxed as much as otherwise.

Current system is prone to abuse, because government play a role of the middleman, collecting taxes and designate where to spent them, practically politicians in the present system are not accountable, firms are able to defend themselves by legal or not so legal means, nowadays often it is corporation which money play a large part in elections.

Working man is often defenceless against such practises, firm can negotiation tax cuts, move its firm to a different country to lower cost of workforce and so on.

That was an unregulated business environment with close cooperation of the state and a lack of a functioning court system. Hong Kong would be a better example in my opinion.


And we should give it to them. More money in my pocket means that I can help my community better. One has to ask of course, why did the factory close down? Products no longer needed? No longer competitive...and if so, why? There are plenty of people with capital and good ideas who would invest if they even caught the scent of profit.


Poland needs real FDI, not just attracting companies based on handouts. The successful companies are the ones that are homegrown and provide an excellent product, not those that come to Poland because of cheap labor and tax payer handouts. Why in gods name should we pay to work?

Nobody in his right mind is advocating letting all business and financial sector go wild.


Welfare and unemployment benefits are two different stories. And, as it is in Canada, should be separated. There is no benefit to society as a whole to have third generation of healthy people receiving it. It's demoralizing. Unemployment program is something you contributed to while you were working so it's not charity. If you can't find the job after your benefits expire, mover to another city or go back to school and get a new skills. Liberal governments like to keep people depended because they are going to vote for them at every election.

Yes. This has happened in the UK, in the northern industrial towns.
No benefit and harmful even. To those who live on the money and to society as a whole.


Very much so.


The people who need to do that would benefit from a little help doing it. Better to concentrate welfare spending that way than just throw money at people watching daytime tv.


These are the people least likely to vote, and if they do, often favour minor right-wing parties.

No, it's not. Producing, and selling, products makes country rich. Welfare system should be only temporary solution for society to get them thorough some tough spot.


I don't believe that for a second.

That's how it's happened here. The people who vote labour or liberal tend to be hard working low-income people.

Bzibzioh


Sure but there is no benefit to society to have such harsh benefits that people turn to crime , or have so low disability benefits that people starve. Yes it is happening in Poland, Some people have disability benefits and have to live on 4 zl a day. Czech republic does not have these problems because they adobted the western social democratic model while poland being first to reform their economy, stupidly listened to the americans at the chicago school of economics.

The terms third world, second world and first world were probably coined by someone who was totally biased or quite ignorant.The USA is not an entirely developed country the states that are the most developed are the ones on the coasts and everything else in between i can say is not that developed at all. (Wyoming, Idaho, Kansas , Alabama, Mississippi don't even get me started.....)Development in the USA is quite disproportionate if we were all to take a trip from the east to the west most of you would be surprised with what you'll see.Unfortunately the kind of life that is portrayed by most news channels that broadcast out of the USA to the world is all about the Hype. If you want to see whether the country is developed or not take a trip there or at least try to watch American Local News Channels if you can get access to them from outside. What do i know about Poland having been here for quite sometime and criss-crossed the country on a number of occassions simple Poland could have been much better had it not been for the events of the past. Poland is a developing country i only need to look at the Public Transport System which doesn't seem to be going anywhere, Buildings that we live in some are crumbling, Infrastructure although there seem to be some work going on due to the Hosting of Euro 2012 with the help of EU funding the government still sings the same song they have been singing for ages "There is no Money", You want to talk of Education in Poland besides the way they want us to teach students foreign languages (which is a bummer in public schools believe me) you'll only have to feel sorry for the youngsters who are about to write their Matura and have never conducted a single experiment in Physics as everything is read out to them by their teacher simply coz there aren't enough Labs at the school. The list is endless we can go on and on and many of you might just think i'm a hypocrite or i'm just bitter no i'm neither i'm just a realist. I'm more optimistic than my Polish Family and Colleagues about the Future of Poland but i will never lie to say Poland is a developed country. Development is a work in progress as we speak right now in this country. On one of the episodes of Boso Przez Świat when Wojciech Cejrowski was in Thailand he first of all showed the viewers the other side of Thailand that many would not see on his Programmes then he posed this question to the Viewers "If Thailand is said to be a third world country, then what is Poland?" This coming from a Pole who has been around the world speaks volumes about his country, you be the Judge to that...

The USA has first and third world areas within its borders. Appalaccia, many Indian reservations and inner city areas would be third world. I've never been to Poland. I have family members who have. I visited the old USSR in spring of 1973 and was in Vietnam for a year 1969-70and in Mexico many times. USSR was not as well off as USA, Canada or western Europe, but seemed to be better off than Vietnam or Mexico.

These terms refer to both the level of industrialization and the form of government of a specific country. 1st world is industrialized with capitalist democracy. 2nd world is industrialized with communist dictatorship. 3rd world is lacking significant industrialization regardless of their forms of government. These terms are rather obsolete after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe because it disqualified all of the 2nd world countries.


This observation by El Polaco is an exact example of how these terms used to apply. USSR = 2nd world; USA, Canada, and Western Europe = 1st world; Mexico and Viet Nam = 3rd world.

They were first described by the Chinese in 1972.

Since there is no USSR anymore there seems to be no second world. Even so I would not Classify Poland as second world. It more of a first world country just a step behind others like France or Canada.

Whoever thinks that Poland is third world is just stupid or a stupid troll.

In August 1952, the French historian Alfred Sauvy in the magazine L'Observateur coined the term Third World. He was referring the term to countries that were unaligned with either the Soviet bloc or the Western bloc during the Cold War.

Ah so then even poor undeveloped countries like Vietnam and Cuba would have been 2nd world during the latter decades of the USSR.

Actually, the Soviet model was seen, for a period of time, as the model for fast industrialisation during one generation and of becoming independent in that way - this was one of the reasons why Cuba, Vietnam and some other countries entered the Soviet model path mostly on their own will. The second reason of embracing the Soviet model was the policy of the USA - the policy which some so-called third world contries strongly oposed.

? nonsense

for me and for other Serbians, Poland is West, true West, core of Slavija, sublimation, hope, center, fantasy, something beautiful and eternal, native European.