Delph`s questions in another thread inspired me to start this thread.
where are the 10,000 flats they promised? What about the 1m electric cars? Or why haven't they built a single kilometre of motorway this year?
PiS boast they have transfered 67 billion zlotys in 500+ social benefits within 3 years - 500 PLN for each second and more children in the family. Since October this year, also the first child. .
How could this money be spent by the government in another way?
Delph mentioned new flats, electric cars and motorways.
I may add the fight with droughts which have become a real problem in Poland for a few years. The construction of professional retention and detention system is needed. Polish farmers could use these basins for irrigation in hot months.
Free healthcare for children, instead of the service that passes for free healthcare at present. Free prescriptions for the over 65s. A lowering of the tax threshold for working parents with children.
It is obvious that as an expat, you don`t care about the Polish financial situation coz it doesn`t refer to you personally.
However, I do care because I live in this country and my kids will probably, too so wasting money on benefits is harmful for the overall development of Poland. Instead of steadily investing into branches where the investment will serve Poles for decades, they are squandering assets and increasing the national debt, instead of lowering it. My kids will have to repay that debt in the future.
Well, yes, one good thing from 500+ - customers` crazy demand for consumer goods which makes the industry and services go round. But how long? .
for once dougexpol has said something sensible, congratulations, however before u give people free healthcare you have to lift them out of extreme poverty and give them a sense of financial independence, and that is what 500+ does.
government handouts =/= financial independence... financially independent people vote thinking about the long term consequences for the country - not to keep the handout faucet running...
and build your own roads and trains, and pay for your own 2 million dollar cancer treatment, pay for your primary school education. what rubbish. as obama said you didin't build that bridge somebody else built that"
build your own roads and trains, and pay for your own 2 million dollar cancer treatment,
yeah, weal 500+ isn't doing that and neither is PiS since it's pouring all its resources into its innovative vote buying scheme so there's nothing left over except empty promises ad hot air...
How could this money be spent by the government in another way?
Free kindergartens and creches for all, a large school building/renovation scheme, more finance for hospitals and what's left over could be used to increase the tax free limit.
500+ doesn't even cover the cracks in society. For instance, there are still vaccinations that are paid for despite being subsidised in the West.
Let's not forget how PiS forced people to pay significantly more for medicine, such as those after transplant surgery. 500+ came at a huge cost to the weakest.
Invest it into education, and more specifically, invest it into education for gifted children from poor families. Few investments pay off as much as in education, and as in every society, there are likely many children who can not live up to their full potential because their background makes this impossible.
Moreover simply handing out money is not a good idea, because there is no guarantee that the money will be used for their children. Instead grant them free food in schools, scholarships, bus tickets et al.
More PiS propaganda from Ironside. In fact, Lech Kaczyński did nothing about sewage pouring into the Wisła daily, but you seem strangely silent about that.
So what exactly are you saying? There is no ecological catastrophe? PO mayor is not a mayor of Warsaw. Lech Kaczynski is the one to balme even he is dead. Has beenfor years. Are we talking about return of a zombie?
Not one million till 2025, but 600.000 till 2030 - these are the latest changes. Soon we will learn it is even fewer and later. Then we shall see one big zero. ):)
Not one million till 2025, but 600.000 till 2030 - these are the latest changes.
Not to mention bankrupting the healthcare system... PiS has had every opportunity to increase funding and what has it done? Promised more handouts to the easily fooled in exchange for votes....
And criminally underfunding education....
But the well educated (like teachers and healthcare professionals) aren't so easily manipulated so PiS has them in its dvpa (as the saying goes) while promising babcie and dziadki who long for the responsibility free days of the PRL more 'free' money...
That is a problem indeed coz the population is aging rapidly and such babcias and dziadkis will make the majority of voters in the future. They will vote for smart guys who promise more than others. PiS` today`s methods are only a prelude to what is going to happen.
Which means Poland won't be the next Japan, but the next Greece.... and maybe it's time to start thinking of exit plans. I don't want to leave but when the PiS sh1t hits the fan.... it's gonna be brutal.
You should be scared. PiS buying votes and destroying the budget (in the face of an oncombing recession) should scare you sh1tless and it should scare anyone who really cares about Poland (I exclude plastic Poles living abroad who only want to settle scores from the past or present).
PO is not really any better, they're completely unable to form any kind of positive vision for the country outside of the dominant neoliberal paradigm (that's headed for a cliff). I've given up on Tusk, okay for his time.... but that time is over.
Savini in Italy (for all his many faults. some of which are pretty bad) has articulated a citizenship based positive nationalism (which is why the establishment is devoted to keeping him from power despite his being the most popular politician in the country).
Kurz in Austria is similar, they deflated the far right by adopting the positions that most Austrians agree with (that the neoliberal left and right had been running away from).
Poland doesn't have that yet and there's no one on the horizon really, maybe Zandberg but he's only half-baked at present.....
ure mad maf. pis policies are the challenge to neoliberalism poland has been waiting for. but you deflect it by calling it buying votes , lol. is salvinis and five star past proposal for univeral basic income buying votes as well? the hypocrisy is astounding from the pompats. there are many similarities between salvini , kurz and Pis. much more than the che loving zandberg, though i do admire his style. as the deutche welle headline said, 'Poland where Keynes meets Jesus.." I see the conservatives in pom land have taken a leaf out of pioneering polands book and are masively increasing infrastructure and social spendng, even promising to boost the minimum wage! imitation is the sincerest form of flattery as they say.
pis policies are the challenge to neoliberalism poland has been waiting for
Poland is largely outside the mainstream of neoliberalism (since it was communist for the first ten years or so of that system).
UBI is pure neoliberalism - using the government to create consumers... and it's devastating to those who receive it, it's welfare and welfare dependent communities quickly turn into hellholes..
Anti-neoliberal would be investing in things like infrastructure and healthcare and education, exactly the things that benefit everybody and that PiS is shying away from in favor of targeted patronage handouts so that the have-nots can go buy themselves something to pick up their day and remember who made that new pair of shoes possible on election day.
I wasn't that bothered by the first round of 500+ - I travel often in small Polish towns and know that life was very hard there for young families, the stimulus mostly went on kids things and the cost to the budget was not huge and a lot came back in VAT and retailers profits.
Now I am getting very concerned with the constant handouts - more and more, combined with shrinking the tax base by exempting people under 26 (why ?) and an early pension age.
If you are a high taxpayer and generally a liberal caring sharing person then it is easy to understand the safety net for those who need it and the need for a health service and good schools. What is more difficult to stomach is no questions asked handouts that you get basically for breathing and eventually the taxpayers will get up fed up about that. PiS did some good work to squeeze tax evasion but that is not an exhausted way of funding these promises - the only alternatives are either higher taxes or more debt and neither will end well.
Yes but there are plenty of functioning welfare states in Europe that have high taxes but deliver good levels of health and education and relatively low work weeks - Sweden, Austria, Germany etc. Not socialist but rather social democracy - Poland seems to be going down a different path of handouts rather than a contract between the citizen and the state.
However Greece has a ace in the hole with their lucrative shipping economy that Poland does not have. Today, shipping is the country's most important industry worth $22 billion plus. If related businesses are added, the figure jumps to $24 billion, employs about 400,000 people, and shipping receipts are about 1/3 of the nation's trade deficit. Poland does not afford such a luxury. Besides back then the economy was thriving in the E.U. and today it is declining.
I wonder if the "we need them for the expanding economy" geniuses are now trying to deport those "oh, so badly needed" migrants. Or would that be a violation of their civil rights? I mean their rights to welfare checks.
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