Poland's post-election political scene

maybe some apples and potatoes but Poland imports most manufactured goods (for instance and not only tradingeconomics.com/poland/imports).
I just went shopping at Carrefour (but other stores are the same) and have realized that more than 90% of what I have bought comes from abroad (or from foreign companies). International trade is done in strong currencies, not in ZL and therefore not in favor of Polish consumers.

Precisely! Maybe this will finally will provide an incentive to spur more Polish initiaitve. Being an exporter of raw, unprocessed goods (fruit, veggies, minerals, etc.) is great for 3rd worldl countries if that's all they can do, but not for a developing economy. Perhaps it's time for some of the mercenaries employed by General Foods, Kraft, Nestlé, etc. and their Polish-based subsidiaries should take things into their own hands, set up companies and start manufacturing their own goods. That was the major error of Balzerman and all the govts of III RP since 1989 -- no promotion of Polish entrepreneurship and Polish brands, instead selling off the few brands Poland did have to foreign concerns.

At this point one expects the expat faction tol chime in claiming that's impossible, one needs loads of cpaital and finding other resasons why Poles should stay uninnovative and non-entrepreneurial and remain mercenaries in the employ of foreign capital in their country or emigrate. Too bad the anti-Polish expats lack the optimistic American can-do approach in relation to things Polish.

Nonsense. No one is more in the hands of bankers than the Americans. They have taken trillions off the state and control every industry as those who hold the debt control the outcome.

The world is as it is, if you have no money you need someone to back you. If your idea is not deemed commercially viable then you are stuck. Idealism is nice but money makes the world go around.

A month ago PiS was apparentlty pro-American. Now it turns out they are, basically, anti-American. Or in fact - anti-everyone, but moving towards typically Russian way of ruling the country (although they used to be anti-Russian). They say that others are hypocritical, but they are most hypocritical on their own...

Quite untrue. Poland mainly manufactures goods, few exports are raw materials.

atlas.media.mit.edu/en/visualize/tree_map/hs92/export/pol/all/show/2013/

Compare with Russia, top 10 exports are raw materials. (one is wooden planks, rather than trees because thats what woodmills produce)

atlas.media.mit.edu/en/visualize/tree_map/hs92/export/rus/all/show/2012/


Have you visited a shop in Poland? majority of goods are produced in Poland. My local Walmart (Asda) imports and sells Polish brand foods.

So what is your prescription to make Poland innovative, entrepreneurial and commercially viable ASAP? That is something that should occupy the imagination and intellect of every true patriot. A finally free and sovereign Poland has to make up for lost time. Any suggestions?

The Polish saying "jak ktos cos daje to trzeba brac" makes sense here. While EU money is avaliable it should be taken with open arms. The EU provides many grants for Poland to help the unemployed and young businesses, but this money is often squandered by those people as its not an area oroperly policed by the relevant authorities. Money is also on offer to redevelopment underpriveleged regions and countryside. This has to be used effectively but unforunately a portion of this is funneled off into pockets of people with hands on the money.

There is no quick solution. When you start off with a economy of $60billion and a century of nil investment in infrastructure it is going to take a very long time to recover. I think it will be a decade of more (probably two) of attracting foreign investment, building infrastructure and developing industry and people.

The attitude will have to change, by the communist era people dying off. I',m pretty sure the attitude to corruption is changing, but not enough. Poland is also a difficult place to do business, economic growth will eventually help if the tax burden on the poor can be relived.

Polishinvestor, have you considered Brussels may be at fault, it's not a place of morality or a bedrock of honesty. Those EU funds are not electronic money created out of thin air, it's the paid in taxes of honest hard working people in the UK and other countries. Maybe Brussels has a responsibility to Police the funds responsibility from the get go, the EU in is current form is a house of cards full of centrists.

EU in its current shape is nothing but an economic dictatorship set around the 4th Reich.

The American approach right now is the best one. No early retirement, no large pensions (there should be a cap to make sure that no retired person gets more than the net average wage from ZUS), abolish all retirement privileges that have already been granted. Scrap the huge and crippling ZUS contributions on new businesses, throw money at training and set up further and larger special economic zones to encourage them further. Remove any and all restrictions on farmland to encourage the land to be used as productively as possible, and provide further economic incentives for economically deprived towns and villages to develop.

If you make Poland a low taxation, small government country, then investment will flood in. That investment will raise living standards considerably, and the money earnt by Poles can then be used to develop further. Look at how the UK transformed from a very socialist country in the 1970's to an economic powerhouse in the 1990's - it was only the utter failure to put in regulatory controls combined with Labour spending everything they could that caused so much trouble from 2008 onwards.

And foreign investment by big, rich well established Western concerns will create situations with which fledgdling Polish companies cannot compete. (IF the UE really was about helping poorer counrtesi along they would not have enacted laws prohibiting preferential treatment for domestic business.) The optimum arrangement would be one enabling Polish startup businesses to learn from foreign entrepreneurs. Not just how to sell foreign products but how to design original Polish ones under Polish brand names and how to manufacture and market them world-wide. Maybe requiring foreign investors to provide training facilties not only for their own Polish emplyoees but for Poles at large. What about requiring a Polish majority stake in any company operating in Poland?

That's why the important thing to do is to focus on what Poland can do as opposed to what Poland can't do. Poland can compete in agriculture, it can compete in IT, banking and so on. She can't compete when it comes to supermarkets or courier services - and nor should she try. It doesn't make sense to throw large amount of limited resources to try and dominate every industry, it doesn't work and it deprives Poland of needed foreign capital.

Strong antitrust laws are needed, but the trick is for the important infrastructure to stay in Polish hands while allowing everyone to use it on equal terms. That drives innovation and competition while ensuring that no foreign company abuses it for their own purposes.


Absolutely. There are a lot of small things that can be done - for instance, are you familiar with TEDx talks? These kind of things should be supported and funded locally to encourage people to share their knowledge and experiences - but unfortunately, Poland is fixated on 'big ticket' items and the small things are often ignored. But it all goes back to a very unfriendly climate for new businesses and governments since 1989 (well, 1945) being obsessed with protecting the big industry at the expense of small, flexible companies. But it's not just central government to blame - even towns and cities with independent mayors are prone to throwing large amounts of cash at pointless vanity projects. Look at all those stupid Aquaparks that have been built in Poland - the example from Slupsk shows that a huge amount of small entrepreneurs could have been funded for the cost of one vanity project. Which will bring in more money and build Poland more?


The problem with that approach is that the Poles don't really have the cash to invest, and no foreign company is going to put up 70% of the capital in exchange for 49.9% of the votes.

I don't disagree with you Polonius - I think Poland really should focus on small and medium sized businesses and should help them as much as possible. But there's only a finite pot of money - and unfortunately, miners need their high pensions and their unproductive jobs...

Thinking a bit out of the box - Polonius, don't you agree that it makes no sense whatsoever to spend $75/tonne mining Polish coal when it costs $50 in Antwerp to buy? We should be looking for innovative solutions here - and one idea would be to build up industries around the coal mine dealing with innovative solutions with coal. Fund smallish companies to work there, let them use the mine to supply coal to experiment with, and see where it takes you. The workers that want to work will take the funding, and those that don't want to can be unemployed. If nothing comes of it, at least the work experience will help them find jobs elsewhere in mining - and Poland might just produce something that changes the world as a result.

Likewise, it was the same story with the shipyards. We threw so much money at them, when in reality, the trick was to move to building smaller boats that were in demand. Look at these guys en.delphiayachts.eu/ - we should be helping them as much as possible.

I agree, maintining collieries at present is a social measure so as not to throw people out of work. I heard talk soem time ago about gasifying coal to create a cleaner-burning fuel. I wonder if work on that is still under way? Or maybe it's not economical.

Another day, another poll.

The trend is maintaining itself. A few Kukiz voters have switched to PiS, but the opposition maintains the advantage.

ewybory.eu/sondaz-ibris-dla-rzeczpospolitej-18-01-2016/

PiS - 32%
Nowoczesna - 28%
PO - 14%
SLD - 5%
Kukiz - 5%
PSL - 5%
Korwin and Razem were nowhere

Kukiz is fading away, voters see that most of his grouping is incompetent (except, interestingly, Liroy - he could have a future because he understands how to get stuff done) and that his "anti-system" message is actually "pro-PiS".

Looks like the centrist vote has abandoned PiS, and it will be interesting to see if they can do anything to win it back.

Not really, not least because even the PISed-up now know that they haven't got a prayer of doing that. What is going to be interesting is watching to see when the first centrist elements of PIS break away from the grip of the Dear Leader Chairman Kaczynski and form a new party that does have a prayer of winning centrist votes.

Gowin is almost certainly going to fall out with PiS at some point. He's already made it clear that he intends a model of higher education that focuses on the elite that can generate profits for Poland while also making it clear that he supports the introduction of tuition fees. It's not going to win any support from the rank and file, and he's notorious for throwing a sulk and walking away when people don't back him up.

And all the time the Polish coal trains roll into Gdynia from Silesia............
And even more trains (with higher BTU yielding graded coking coal) roll out from Gdynia..........

My old drinking pals in Katowice are in their forties and get 3400 zl a month net as a face-work pension for the rest of their natural. Not too bad, as it takes a lot of people a lot of effort to earn that much in their pockets for a solid weeks' graft.

And all the while PIS bribed away by promising the miners "full consultation" - whatever that means, when they should be doing a Thatcher on Polish coal mining.

Bloody mad, and guess who picks up the tab.


That is vital, and that the institutions be coerced into lending to undergraduates. At the moment a brilliant student from a poor family cant go to university, because they can't feed themselves. So their ambition is lost to the nation.

What a crazy situation, like pre-war in Britain.

One step forward, two steps back.

Quite.

The latest news...

bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-18/poland-feels-sting-from-downgrade-as-long-term-debt-costs-soar


Pretty clear that PiS are now costing the "ordinary Pole" a significant amount of money.

Well done "democrats".

Sadly they just do not care; as long as they get to extract revenge on everybody who wronged them (i.e. everybody other than their fellow regime members), they think that they'll be happy. Of course in reality they won't be, as the PISed-up are simply too eaten up with bitterness and hatred to ever actually be happy.

Well, some "democrats" would apparently even launch off Russian missiles at Poland just to blame it on PiS next.

Don't blame the people for the actions of a useless government. S&P made it crystal clear that it's the government and not the demonstrations to blame.

So why didn't they do it when PO was breaking the constitution to have 100% of members of the constitutional court ? Perhaps because responsible then opposition wasn't ******** all over the world how "democracy in Poland is in danger" ? Dude, If Islamists start waves of terror attacks on some country, let's say Israel, the "markets" won't give a flying **** that they are a victim here, they will see "instability" just like they (next to helping banksters) see it now.

...But they stopped short of making it crystal clear who was bankrolling them.

While readers of Polonia publications might just believe that, we here learned long ago to go to source material and not believe what certain writers dream up. S&P made it very clear why they cut Poland's rating:


washpost.bloomberg.com/Story?docId=1376-O0ZOGJSYF01S01-3TM8VIS4SFHIIO2TJNO8DQAB95


Good to see you again reminding the mods that you think you're above both the rules and their express instructions.


Most probably because S&P restrict themselves to reporting on and assessing what actually happened, and that simply never happened and never will have happened, no matter how many times you and your fellow PISed-up expats claim it did.

Plus the effect on jobs. Not that the usual suspects on here who defend PiS are bothered about that - none of them work here.

In May 2015 PO violated the constitution and appointed new members of the Constitutional Court before the term of old ones ended. These are facts.

That too is the result of the barrage of vicious attacks on the democratically elected government. If Goebbeslesque lies calling the government a totalitarian dictatorship, warning of coup d'états, even fascism, and discreditng its leaders are repeated week after week by ranting street rabble and propagandistic media, eventually some people and institutions will wonder if there isn't something to it. The disgrunteld losers will eagerly harm Poland if they think that will give them another crack at the feed trough from which they were so rudely ejected by Poland's voters. That's the nitty-gritty of it.