Life / What income/assets and worth, will give you a "rich" status in Poland? [22]

Merged:

What does it mean to be "rich" in Poland?

Hey guys! I think this thread has some potential for fun. The thread on "what's enough to live in Poland" has given me an idea...

Just read an article online: cnn.com/2019/05/31/success/feel-wealthy/index.html

It says that a recent survey suggests that a number in the vicinity of $2.27 million is enough for the average American to feel himself "wealthy". What would you give as the number that would allow oneself to feel truly rich in Poland?

What goes into your definition of rich? If you were rich, would you move to a different tax jurisdiction (a lá Monaco), or would you stay in Poland? What would you buy with your wealth? And so on, and so forth.

Edit: My thinking is that the number is the same, if not higher.

News / Poland A and Ukraine B. Compare how far Poland has advanced. [282]

How does admitting that EU funds played a huge role in speeding up Polish economic development in any way a furtherance of an inferiority complex? I think it is an inferiority complex to insist on the opposite in defiance of all empiric evidence.

News / Poland A and Ukraine B. Compare how far Poland has advanced. [282]

@pawian

Lithuania, and the Baltics at large, are the exceptions that prove the rule, and arguably a poor example. Nonetheless, their tiny size allowed them to perform system-wide reforms in a much smoother and faster fashion than any larger state, that has to contend with various regional factions and powerful oligarchic clans, would be able to. This why what was possible in Georgia under Saakashvili, is not necessarily possible in Ukraine under Poroshenko, however pure his intentions and however many Georgians and Latvians he stuffs his cabinet with.

Was it not you, just a few weeks ago, that created a thread discussing electoral and economic development statistics in relation to what empire that part of Poland used to belong to? What was clear from those charts was that any part of Poland that was closer to Germany did better than its eastern counterpart.

Finally, you can agree that Ukraine had to contend with all those things you list (collectivization, shuttering of cooperatives, etc), because it was a constituent part of the Soviet Union, to which it belonged because of its geographic proximity to Russia's heartland. Poland was able to break free, because it was far. I created another thread at some point about the interesting historic counter-factuals of what would have happened if Poland had not won the Polish Soviet war and became a republic of the USSR. I should find it.

News / Poland A and Ukraine B. Compare how far Poland has advanced. [282]

@pawian

oh yeah, definitely it was the enterprising individualism of Poles which led to their capitalist triumph, while it was their knavish ways, that brought Ukrainians to the present state of affairs. Spoken like a true szlachcic.

It certainly wasn't the good geographic fortune of neighboring Germany in the former case, and neighboring Russia in the latter.

Regarding economic numbers, and the 3 trillion euro projection you used. You do realize that GDP encompasses all economic activity, right? A government budget typically represents anywhere between 20% and 40% of GDP. That's all the money that will be spent in a year by the government on everything, from health to education, and defense. So 82.5 billion euros represents a huge sum of money that is injected on top of everything.

News / Poland A and Ukraine B. Compare how far Poland has advanced. [282]


I think any reasonable person, if given the choice, would choose to border Germany (most importantly), the Baltics, the Czech Republic, and Sweden (across the puddle)... than Russia, Belarus, Moldova, Hungary, and Poland - no? So I wouldn't chalk up sharing a border and a language with Russia as such a big advantage. In fact, I think these days very few Ukrainians see bordering Russia and sharing a language with it as a great advantage. I agree, however, that it was "location, location, location" that predetermined the present disparity between the two countries.

Ukraine of the 1991 vintage was f%#&ed before it started, because of the neighbors it had. Poland was dragged into modernity, because of the neighbors it had. Of course it also helped that everyone felt very guilty about their treatment of Poland in the recent past and felt they owed it one (ditto for the Romanians, Hungarians, Czechs, etc., while also recognizing that Poland benefited disproportionately from development funds in comparison to other 2004 inductees).

@Ironside

Some people don't feel that admittance into the EU was much of a gift, and certainly not enough compensation for past betrayals. Here I can only say, that whatever happens to be the truth: nobody likes the guy that looks a gift horse in the mouth. The transformative effect of EU funds is an established fact, and Poland has now been a member of the EU for 15 years. Aristocratically sneering at money, after 15 years of taking it, only makes you look like a hypocrite. Under the current 2014-2020 financial framework of the EU budget, Poland is slated to receive 82.5 billion euros intended for furthering the union's cohesion policy. Last year, the GDP of Poland was ~520 billion euro. So just those funds, represent more than 1/6th of the entire annual economic output of Poland. Do you still think it's just peanuts, and that only ignoramus morons speak of such things? Can you point me out a single "ore rich and oil rich" bantustan that received even 1/10th this amount of funds? The amount of EU funds transferred to Poland over the last decade-and-a-half represents a singular, and historic altruistic transfer of wealth between nation states, overshadowed only by the transfer of money from West to East Germany (can be argued it is one state and thus does not apply).

News / Poland A and Ukraine B. Compare how far Poland has advanced. [282]

None of you smarties chose to say anything about the hundreds of billions of EU development funds that Poland received and Ukraine did not. I think a majority of Ukrainians would indicate that as the proximate reason behind the current disparity.

Study / Studies in Opole University; lack of money, cheap renting, any job available? [8]

@rozumiemnic

I know that you're coming from a good place, so forgive me if I'm being too nitpicky.

Both you and Pawian immediately went after this kid's lack of initiative. Is trying to get into a foreign college, even if a little worried about how you would afford life while a student - not a sign of initiative?

IMHO, his worrying about what he will do, after he is admitted, actually shows some maturity on his part. The only unfortunate thing, but completely human, is that he seems a little bitter at the fact that he needs to factor in these considerations while local young people can be more carefree in this regard.

The hard knocks of life, and bitter truths, like "poor people have to work twice as hard", "compensate for your present lack of funds with more initiative", "drill down on your studies while others party, because you can't afford to" - I'm sure he knows himself.

Study / Studies in Opole University; lack of money, cheap renting, any job available? [8]


Seems to me, that the logical connection between the first part of the sentence and the last is tenuous, at best. Do you suppose that he will arrive and learn that his Western European cousins, on average, actually have less funds available for accommodation and food than him? He's stated something more or less objective, if not very elegantly.

Give the kid a break.

Life / WHY DO POLES USE ENGLISH WORDS IN CONVERSATION? [396]


Well, that's why I used the example of movies. Russians have a good enough vocabulary to talk about movies without having to resort to anglicisms.

If we talk IT, anything from the world of shopping (сэйл, промоушен, 50% офф, etc), or car repair then there is probably more borrowed words than Russian words left, but that hardly seems to be worth mentioning.

Life / WHY DO POLES USE ENGLISH WORDS IN CONVERSATION? [396]

Reading the thread, it seems Poland is doing just fine with Anglicisms.If "upgrade'owałem" is the biggest complaint... Russian has crossed into ridiculous territory in this regard.

I recently went to see a movie with friends while in Moscow. In their discussion of the film there were so many damn anglicisms that were completely unnecessary, because they had perfectly good Russian counterparts. Stuff like релиз (release), флешбэк (flashback), трейлер (trailer), сторилайн (storyline), римейк (remake), and so on and so forth.

History / Heritage of partitions still present in Poland [107]

I don't know.

Pavian wrote: "...next one was Russian with medium level of advancement and the poorest Austrian where people actually starved to death." I understood he means that Russian lands were more developed, and thus people that vote there have more progressive views (albeit, still PiS voters), than those in Austro-Hungarian lands, where people literally starved.

You're probably right. It did seem strange to me too. Not only because of an anti-Russian bias, but because of demographics too. The population density in the west, and rate of urbanization had always been higher. Historically, and at present, urban dwellers are more liberal in their views than their rural cousins.

History / Heritage of partitions still present in Poland [107]


From Mr. Pawian above.

History / Polish attitudes towards ex-Soviet republics joining NATO [116]

Guys, let's not have the mod shut down our thread.

How do you feel about Ukraine's direction at present? Georgia? Moldova? As Poles, do you feel any commonality with these peoples - as Christians, as Europeans, as Democrats?

Where does Russia fit into this picture? Will we ever see a Europe stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok, as Putin sometimes says? Is Russia destined to always play the role of the spoiler and the playground bully? Can it be brought into the fold through something like German Ost-Politik.

So many more questions. Let's not get derailed with discussions of Nationalism and interventions in the Middle East.

History / Heritage of partitions still present in Poland [107]

The fact that Russian lands are better developed than Austro-Hungarian ones is certainly puzzling.

Completely off-topic, but the part of China that experienced the greatest growth '79 to roughly '00 was the former Russian, and then Japanese-occupied Manchuria. Similarly, Korea turned into the Tiger it is today, in large part due to 40 years of Japanese occupation, however unpleasant it is to admit to modern day Koreans.

History / Heritage of partitions still present in Poland [107]

Fascinating. Thanks very much for this.

History / Polish attitudes towards ex-Soviet republics joining NATO [116]


Damn, that sentence is straight from Putin's speechwriter, if you just substitute the word "Ukraine" for "Poland and the Baltics", and "missed" for "used". Props for calling it like it is.

Russian officials always reference informal agreements between Gorbachev and Bush Sr. regarding no further enlargement of NATO to the East following the fall of the Wall. The admittance of former Eastern Bloc countries is thus interpreted as the West exploiting Russia's temporary weakness.

This Russian line of thinking is usually dismissed out of hand by Washington and Brussels as nothing other than Moscow's paranoia. Thus, the official Western line for why NATO didn't just close shop following German reunification (like the Warsaw Pact did), is not because it is inherently an anti-Russian alliance, but because the organization's mandate had transformed with the times to be able to answer to new challenges. This is probably how... even though NATO did not take part in a single military operation throughout the entire duration of the Cold War, it has since 1991 intervened in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Libya. New mandate. New realities.

History / Polish attitudes towards ex-Soviet republics joining NATO [116]


Sorry, no, but I see how what I wrote is confusing (mind you, a lot of Ukrainians do think Russia will fall apart any day now). I just wanted to use the collapse of the Iron Curtain, and the disintegration of the USSR as spectacular illustrations from recent history of how it's dangerous to dismiss certain hypotheticals as totally unlikely. Ukraine and Georgia joining NATO is just such a hypothetical - seemingly impossible, but given past volatility not improbable.

To Ukrainian minds it's pretty preposterous to say that they have to wait decades more before being allowed into the club. Poland joined NATO in 1999, and the EU in 2004. Being 20 years behind Poland is a fair enough number to Ukrainians, I think, though they would have liked things to happen even faster of course. If they were told they were going to be 50 years behind Poland, that would certainly be very hard for them to swallow. One of the tropes you hear most often from politicians and laymen that lament the current state of affairs on UKR tv is - "in 1991 Ukraine had 50 million people, a territory larger than France, and an economy larger than Poland's". That is, it's immensely embarrassing to Ukrainians how Poland has leapfrogged them in development and now plays a much weightier role in Europe. If they need to wait 50 years, they just might do an Erdogan and go back to Russia/China.

Ukrainian politicians talk every single day about how they are the "Shield on Europe's Eastern Frontier", "the only thing between Europe and the Horde", and all sorts of other points about how the Euro-Atlantic community basically owes Ukraine a big one for doing all the heavy lifting in combating Russian malign influence. They definitely expect to be let into NATO soon, not decades from now. When and if the realization that that is not happening sinks in, there'll be a nasty, nasty backlash.

History / Polish attitudes towards ex-Soviet republics joining NATO [116]


Ouch! Don't tell any Ukrainians this. The outgoing president, Petro Poroshenko, had been promising NATO and EU membership by 2024. (pravda.com.ua/news/2019/02/3/7205633/)

I agree with you, Pawian, that membership is a very distant prospect. First and foremost, because of the unresolved territorial conflicts in both countries (Donbas, Crimea; Abkhazia, South Ossetia). Admitting these countries while the conflicts remain unresolved means putting NATO on a collision course with Russia. This is totally unpalatable for the French and Germans. However, there may be some appetite for this in the States, the Baltics, and Poland.

I didn't want to premeditate the result of the thread by opening with the above, disqualifying facts. This is because, you and I could be completely wrong. In 1985, very few would have predicted the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the disintegration of the USSR into 15 countries just 5 years into the future. Similar things can happen in the not so distant future. We live in an interesting world.

History / Polish attitudes towards ex-Soviet republics joining NATO [116]

Obviously, Ukraine is not in NATO at the moment, and thus Poland is under no legal obligation to defend it. That would not be the case if Ukraine were to be admitted.

History / Why is Poland weaker than Russia? [390]


Truly so. Paranoia must be added to this.

As regards your earlier post, Lyzko, where you questioned if Hitler ever studied the lessons of Napoleon's campaign in Russia - yes he did, and he took its lessons perhaps too close to heart. When Manstein, Guderian, and Von Reichenau advised Hitler, after a fantastically successful summer campaign, to push on to Moscow and behead the Soviet government, he overruled them. Instead, he ordered the capture of Kiev, and the opening of a supply corridor to the oil fields of the Caucasus. He ridiculed his generals exactly by citing Napoleon. He told them they were military dummies, who understood nothing about the bigger picture, and that the only way to defeat the Soviet Union was by starving it through cutting off its industrial base in the Ukraine and its hydrocarbon resource base in the Caucasus.

History / Why is Poland weaker than Russia? [390]


I agree. Miloslaw's comments about Russia's impotence, as supposedly demonstrated in Afghanistan and Chechnya, are laughable.

As an illustration of the many levels of "wrong" in Miloslaw's comment - the Russians were not fighting "drunk Chechens", but rather radical Salafists that were trained in specialist camps in the Middle East, and who would never touch a glass of alcohol. Many of the Chechen insurgents had experience serving in the Soviet Army, while their leadership consisted of former Special Forces operators and an actual soviet general. Regardless, once Russia got serious about the insurgency it handled it within 6 months, at the end of which the UN declared Grozny the most destroyed city in Europe since the fire bombing of Dresden during WW2.

As regards Afghanistan, the ISAF currently relies primarily on military infrastructure erected during the soviet occupation - which by any measure was a more successful occupation than the current one lasting from Oct. 2001 (1 month after the twin tower attacks). When in 1988 the Soviets abanadoned the Afghan government they installed, it managed to defend itself against the Taliban until 1995. When Trump pulls out forces from Afghanistan this year, it's a question whether Ashraf Ghani's government can survive even 6 months without American help.

Long story short - using Afghanistan and Chechnya as examples of Russia's conventional military impotence is foolish.

History / Aurochs, the primitive prehistoric cattle of Europe, had lived in Poland? [48]

Ho-ho-ho!

History / Why is Poland weaker than Russia? [390]

Cool video!

History / Why is Poland weaker than Russia? [390]


Italy has a population of 60 million people, while Russia has 142 million. Given how Russia was plunged into absolute poverty during the transition to a market economy in the '90s, I see nothing pathetic in Russians achieving a standard of living just 2.3 times worse than the Italian one (without 100s of billions of EU infusions, a là Poland). Italy is a export powerhouse second only to Germany, with world-leading competencies in many crucial sectors.

Furthermore, as I explained in my post, these are nominal figures. When the ruble/usd exchange rate plunged from 30 rubles to the dollar to 68, following the annexation of Crimea, it wiped out nearly 50% of Russia's nominal GDP as expressed in US dollars. However, it would be economically illiterate to argue that because of this the Russian economy was halved. Yes, Russia relies on imports for many important types of industrial machinery, and these need to be paid for in USD or EUR. Now it's 50% more expensive to pay for these imports. However, Russia also sells its oil and metals for USD (Russia sells a lot more than it imports, about $200 billion more), and then changes it back to rubles inside the country. This is why despite sanctions and a recession Russian state finances remain robust (lowest debt to GDP ratio in the developed world, and fourth largest fx reserves, with a healthy budget proficit this year).

If a purchasing power parity metric is used instead of nominal USD, then Russia has a GDP of around 4 trillion USD, which puts it above Great Britain and France, and on par with Germany. By comparison, Poland has a PPP GDP of 1.2 trillion.

The swings in the exchange rate have meant that Russia has lost a share of GDP in the last 5 years that is larger than the entire Polish GDP (to those arguing that modern Poland is comparable to russia). If oil and metal prices rally tomorrow, and the ruble consequently strengthens to the 40s-50s, then Russia will add at least half a trillion to its GDP. This is why nominal GDP figures are not very useful.

History / Why is Poland weaker than Russia? [390]


I said that the framing of the question might seem silly, because I was concerned that people would treat this as a no-brainer (i.e. Russia is just so much bigger). However, here you are Ironside :)))

Economically the distance is still huge. Poland has a nominal GDP of around $520 billion, or approximately the size of Sweden. Russia has a nominal GDP of around $1.5 trillion, or about the size of Italy. Before the enormous currency devaluation that followed the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and imposition of sanctions, Russia had a GDP of around $2.3 trillion. So it's not just oil and nukes.

Also not mentioned, is the Security Council veto, G8 membership, and unilateral operations in Ukraine and Syria. Do you, for example, realistically envision Poland acting independently in any military conflict (one measure of Great Power status)?

Finally, how can you be serious saying that only 100 years ago Poland was stronger? In that decade Poland had just gotten its independence from Russia, miraculously, and only after Russia was wracked by a World War, then a revolution, which was immediately followed up by a civil war in which at least 9 million perished.

History / Why are Jews pestering Poland for "proper" WW2 monetary restitution/reparations? [750]

Clever, no doubt...

I try never to wade into these questions, b/c more often than not it's a fool's errand. However, it's necessary to point out that Jews are special in this sense, in that it's not just a religion, but also an ethnicity. The "blood" aspect is important here, and the Catholic analogy does not cover that.

That's it from me, I'm out :)

Classifieds / Fabricator sought for 1:1 scale mockup for MSPO Defence Exhibition. [14]


Thanks for your response!

Didn't know you speak Russian. Yes, asking if the terms were equivalent, but it seems it's not the case.

I kind of arrived at the answer myself (hassle with export licences, pain-in-the-ass logistical arrangements, etc), while waiting on your reply :)

As regards the "moralizing" - am I missing something? Were there messages in the thread that had been deleted? I hope it wasn't anything I said, because I completely agree with you on this point.

Sig,

Different type of modelling here... but what can you say about this? Why do manufacturers do this, and when is it going to stop?!

Photo is from MSPO 2017: pbs.twimg.com/media/DHdFna7XcAYQpGu.jpg

Classifieds / Fabricator sought for 1:1 scale mockup for MSPO Defence Exhibition. [14]

No problem, I understand. It's quite interesting to me how this works, and what use the manufacturer believes he extracts from it. I've brought my little nephew to some defense expos (last day, open to public), and he naturally would gravitate to the scaled down submarines and jet-fighters. For the 1:1 mock-ups of missile systems he would attempt to of course climb on top :)) Speaking for myself, the model didn't matter at all. The procurement contract usually specifies very exact specs demanded from the hardware, and so it was the little brochures which mattered most (and of course, price). But certainly, the models made for great photos)

I always thought the manufacturer's performed the work in-house. I'm not certain what it's called in English, but in Russian there is a term, «массо-габаритная модель», or "mass-dimensions model" which is used on the carrying platform during trials to evaluate how the hardware would affect aerodynamics, the security of the points of fixation, etc. I figured that something similar is what was brought to shows since presumably it would already be on hand.

I know that in your case you are looking for small local manufacturers (good on you!), but is this something that the companies that design and fabricate booths for trade shows usually would do?

Apologies for the double post. Is the English term for what I mentioned above, simply "Dummy"? Thanks!

Classifieds / Fabricator sought for 1:1 scale mockup for MSPO Defence Exhibition. [14]

Not able to help, but curious what is being modeled?