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penchant 4 hours ago [-]
I don't get the hype around nominal GDP at all – looks great, but tells you little to none about the actual living conditions. Living in Poland, I don't feel richer than an average Belgian person (and I've had contact with many of them across the years).
aenis 4 hours ago [-]
Polish living standard in major metro areas are significantly above Belgian standards. I lived in Poland and Belgium, among a few other places, and I'd choose Poland over Belgium for a number of reasons. Its a great country, good infra, excellent engineers, high education standards, you can talk to anyone in English, the government usually does work, and if you want an appointment with a specialist doctor, it takes a few days tops (on a private insurance, which is cheap by most countries' standards).
ttoinou 2 hours ago [-]
Did your change of choice happenned right when the GDP of Poland went above the GDP Belgium ?
TMWNN 1 hours ago [-]
>Polish living standard in major metro areas are significantly above Belgian standards.
If you're in the bottom 70% of the working class anywhere in western Europe you'll live pretty much the same way: you will never be able to afford a new car, you'll never be able to retire early, you most likely will never own your own place. Nobody feels rich because the entire system is built by parasites exploiting the bottom 2/3rd. The only meaningful difference is how often and how far you can go in vacation and how much a good little consumer bitch you can be, and if that's how you measure your quality of life you already lost the game
KeplerBoy 4 hours ago [-]
You are not European, are you? I know plenty of working class people working ordinary skilled labor jobs who own their homes and drive decent cars. Some people choose to keep renting because we have strong laws guaranteeing renter's rights. Contracts are often unlimited duration with reasonable prices.
Also retiring early is not about the money in your bank account around here. You retire early by using certain government schemes where you might qualify for early retirement by working a physical job, or by reducing your hours to 10 hours are week while getting a full subsidized salary.
toasty228 4 hours ago [-]
I'm a software engineer in the capital of the supposed #1 EU economy and at best I'd be able to afford a 50sqm flat in a ghetto tier neighborhood. I'm actually moving to Eastern Europe because of this bs
pndy 3 hours ago [-]
Poland isn't any better in that matter; we're still facing huge property development and housing "abnormalities", or as is being said here - pathologies.
surgical_fire 3 hours ago [-]
Germany?
I happen to know a few software Engineers living there.
Berlin is pretty expensive, and some had to live in more outskirt areas (Potsdam for example). But none were living in gettho tier neighborhoods.
oytis 4 hours ago [-]
Nobody buys new though, these are for companies and posh people
KeplerBoy 4 hours ago [-]
That's shifting a bit with electric cars I feel, because people are worried about used batteries. But yes, generally new cars are often just a bad deal.
ajuc 4 hours ago [-]
87% of Poles own a house in comparison to 67% in US.
WhrRTheBaboons 3 hours ago [-]
you got a source for that?
cherryteastain 4 hours ago [-]
This is about country's total GDP. Per capita graph in TFA shows Poland is still behind Belgium [1].
It tells you little about living conditions but it tells you a lot about importance of a country as a whole. GDP per capita of China might be far from US but due to its size it still makes China very important actor.
4 hours ago [-]
ttoinou 2 hours ago [-]
Its absolutely meaningless. Wealth cannot be measured. But nails and hammer blabla
garbawarb 4 hours ago [-]
Can you share more? What makes you feel less rich in comparison?
dismalaf 3 hours ago [-]
It doesn't matter for quality of life but it matters politically. Larger GDP in nominal terms = more influence in the world.
ajuc 4 hours ago [-]
Doesn't matter which kind of GDP you use - it won't tell you how wealthy a country or its people are.
That's because GDP measures how much you did in one year, and wealth is accumulated over centuries.
Using GDP to measure wealth is like using speedometer to measure distance. You can be the fastest on the road at the moment, but if you just started driving and people drove faster than you for 100 years it doesn't mean much.
You need to integrate it over time.
lanfeust6 4 hours ago [-]
Look at household income adjusted for PPP, that gives a more accurate global ranking in that respect (20s-30s). I expect this has improved as well.
dzonga 4 hours ago [-]
Poland has made a lot of good moves lately. for techies in the UK/US they might not care that much - but there's also an effect on you.
in the U.K - a polish skilled workers are choosing to remaining in Poland instead of moving to the uk.
for the US - a lot of firms are setting up polish offices - hence when you hear 'a.i' efficiency most of those jobs have moved to Poland or India. Whether it's big tech, big banks and small funded VC startups. What remains in the US are just senior+, staff software engineers.
elAhmo 4 hours ago [-]
This is not viable long term, but cool to ride the train while the outsourcing lasts.
lapkaaaa 4 hours ago [-]
How much money did they get from EU in last 5 years? Combine that with a lot of ukrainian migrants that actually work and open businesses you get this
tremon 4 hours ago [-]
Indeed, this is a great example of how the EU manages to grow its internal market.
gfrecvh 2 hours ago [-]
Good investment.
imdsm 4 hours ago [-]
They're probably focusing on people who work rather than trying to tax people who work and innovate to pay for people who don't work or innovate. Strangely, focusing on economics is good for economies
dinfinity 3 hours ago [-]
> How much money did they get from EU in last 5 years?
A lot. About 1 percentage point of Polish GDP in 2025.
They also had a lot of government spending, with the 2025 budget deficit being 7% of GDP.
Minimum wage was raised with ~10% in January 2025.
There is an irony in people attributing it to conservatism/rightwing politics rather than pretty much the exact opposite. Spain is another example of economic growth in the EU.
greenavocado 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
nozzlegear 4 hours ago [-]
Is this a weird European version of the "lazy Mexicans" stereotype?
s1artibartfast 3 hours ago [-]
Every economic study shows that the background of immigrants matter.
Least controversial is considerations for their education and human development.
Dig1t 3 hours ago [-]
[dead]
comrade1234 2 hours ago [-]
I live in Switzerland and have worked in projects in Poland. It's obvious which country is wealthier.
petcat 4 hours ago [-]
I saw an interesting stat recently that the poorest USA state, Mississippi, has a larger economy and GDP than 1/3rd of all EU members.
It just seems like the EU is too top-heavy and I wonder if that's where a lot of the discontent comes from. It seems like there a lot of micro-nations in eastern Europe that have outsized influence over the union as a whole.
Epa095 4 hours ago [-]
15-20% of Mississippis GDP is healthcare cost.
Gdp is not really a great measure of how well an economy works for it's inhabitants, if it was we should all spend our time breaking each others windows.
toasty228 4 hours ago [-]
I don't think you realize how absurdly overpriced everything is in the US, which inflate GDP quite a lot... I paid less to build my entire top of the line house in eastern Europe than some American spend on a garage extension and a concrete driveway
nozzlegear 4 hours ago [-]
What constitutes a top of the line house in Eastern Europe? It's unlikely to be what Mississippians consider top of the line.
toasty228 3 hours ago [-]
250sqm, 30cm thick brick for load bearing + perimeter walls, 30cm rockwool continuous external insulation, aluminium frame triple pane windows, glazured roof tiles, floor heating + wood stove backup, 15kwp solar panels installation, deep well backup, etc.
Keep being smug, it just proves my point, Americans still think Arabs live in tents in the desert, Chinese live in the jungle and eastern European build houses out of cow dung and straw. Enjoy your 1m+ stick and cardboard mcmansion that won't last two generations
barbacoa 3 hours ago [-]
>250sqm, 30cm thick brick for load bearing + perimeter walls, 30cm rockwool continuous external insulation, aluminium frame triple pane windows, glazured roof tiles, floor heating + wood stove backup, 15kwp solar panels installation, deep well backup, etc.
Even in Mississippi what you describe would not qualify as a "top of the line house". In fact that would be pretty average working class home.
The kind of homes a lawyer or doctor could afford to buy in low cost area like mississippi can easily be 2 or 3x that size and resemble small castles. Think elevators and wrap around double staircases.
hdgvhicv 2 hours ago [-]
American houses are made of paper. They need reroofing so often the cost always comes up in discussion of house ownership.
stufffer 58 minutes ago [-]
Europeans think they have it hard worrying if their elderly family will die from the summer heat, but they will never know the pain of maintaining a 10 ton, 4 zone HVAC system for your mcmansion.
toasty228 3 hours ago [-]
Sure buddy, last time I was in the states I witness your glorious single pane sliding windows that weren't even air tight and shitty vinyl flooring that we don't even install in social housing here, that was in a multi million dollar house in Berkley btw.
Oh and I forgot, it passes passivhaus requirements
barbacoa 2 hours ago [-]
Berkley is defiantly not representative to most of the USA. They have strange regional politics that restricts most residential construction.
nozzlegear 1 hours ago [-]
> Keep being smug, it just proves my point,
I wasn't trying to be smug, sorry it came across that way.
3 hours ago [-]
talideon 3 hours ago [-]
We're not talking commie blocks here, nor macmansions, which is what passes for top-of-the-line in a disappointingly large segment of the US.
Some of these models are pretty modestly priced (~$500k USD) but more modern than any house you'll find in North America until you reach a price point in the several million range. Certainly higher quality, nicer and more modern than any McMansion.
nozzlegear 56 minutes ago [-]
Interesting, thanks for the link. For comparison, here are the "top of the line" houses in my area (Iowa, not Mississippi):
This is largely lakefront property in a somewhat touristy area of my state, so that influences the prices a lot.
notfromhere 4 hours ago [-]
That example is a good reason nominal GDP has limits on what it can measure, as a drive thru Mississippi would show a poor state with small pockets of wealth
hackernud3s 4 hours ago [-]
Poorest is a function of per-capita income and larger economy is a function of population. You're comparing different things.
wat10000 4 hours ago [-]
Per capita GDP of Mississippi still puts it in about the middle of the pack of EU countries, despite being the lowest among US states by some margin.
hackernud3s 3 hours ago [-]
I'm sure that's true but GDP is also not a good metric because for example it includes health care spend.
If MS spends more on insulin than an EU state it improves that metric which is the opposite of what we're trying to measure I imagine.
mmooss 4 hours ago [-]
> there a lot of micro-nations in eastern Europe that have outsized influence over the union as a whole
Would you give an example of when that has happened?
> It just seems like the EU is too top-heavy
The EU intentionally admitted many poorer countries, to promote freedom, security and stability in Europe in the long term. Without EU membership, they would be under pressure from Russia and others.
> discontent
What discontent do you mean? There's always something, of course.
petcat 4 hours ago [-]
> What discontent do you mean?
I mean, Brexit was the ultimate discontent and it didn't just come out of nowhere. It's still very recent history and, as far as I know, the circumstances that caused it haven't really changed.
spockz 4 hours ago [-]
IMHO, Brexit was mostly an exercise in placing the blame in a single “entity” instead of circumstances. Fishing gets harder due to over fishing. Technical advantages and industries moving have made certain classes of work such as mining and steel factories redundant or moved to other (cheaper) locations. This left a lot of the lower income classes and many middle income classes which jobs depends on servicing the lower income (restaurants, clothing, automotive industry, etc.) hanging in the wind.
Then instead of accepting the changing circumstances of the world, it is blamed on a single entity “EU” that is single handedly causing all their woes. Just leave and your lives will be better. Well, they learned.
This is how you get people to vote for someone like trump. They claim it is all the fault of some X, get people riled up, promise to fix X, get voted, and then you have to actually make their lives better.
hdgvhicv 2 hours ago [-]
They didn’t learn. Those
That voted to leave are either dead now, or still think it’s right, but the uk was “holding it wrong”.
The majority of taxpayers wanted to stay. The majority of under 65s wanted to stay.
rwmj 4 hours ago [-]
Brexit is widely regarded as both a failure (in the UK) and a cautionary lesson (in the rest of the EU).
riffraff 4 hours ago [-]
Brexit came out of a many years campaign to steer up hate against the EU. Boris Johnson famously said that was his job as a journalist.
And of course, out of the middle class crisis in the 21st century. You have the same discontent outside the EU, except it doesn't get blamed on Bruxelles. That's how Trump gets elected, for example.
inglor_cz 4 hours ago [-]
> The EU intentionally admitted many poorer countries, to promote freedom, security and stability in Europe in the long term. Without EU membership, they would be under pressure from Russia and others.
This is a bit of a non-sequitur, at least as far as Eurozone's anemic growth is concerned. France and Germany stagnating isn't caused by Poland or Romania growing. It is mostly their own internal systemic problems. There were times when German and Polish economies were both healthy, as little as 10 years ago.
Sweden, another rich EU member, should grow by healthy 2.2 per cent this year, but Sweden is a lot more willing to actually reform its way out of problems than Germany is. Smaller countries have less inertia in such situations, and more maneuvering space.
andrepd 4 hours ago [-]
The conclusion you should draw from this is therefore "GDP is a shit metric for measuring anything and even worse as a target".
troupo 4 hours ago [-]
The US is a great example of why GDP is a largely meaningless metric.
Yes, the States' GDP is ginormous, and yet it's basically a third-world country masquerading as a first-world one on most metrics that actually matter to people.
wat10000 4 hours ago [-]
Which metrics are those?
Things don’t look great for the poorest Americans, but the average American isn’t living a life that’s even remotely third world.
cherryteastain 4 hours ago [-]
Looking at more holistic metrics, the lowest HDI US state (Mississippi) has a HDI of 0.868 [1], around the level of Argentina/Uruguay/Oman [2].
This somewhat counters the idea that Mississippi is comparable to the middle of the EU pack based on per-capita GDP. But the comment I replied to said that the entire US is "basically a third-world country masquerading as a first-world one." The HDI of the US according to your links is #17 in the world, tied with New Zealand, and just above notable third-world hellholes like South Korea, Austria, and Japan.
toasty228 4 hours ago [-]
Childbirth mortality, lifespan-healthspan, murder rate, paid vacation, worked hours per year, job security, etc.
wat10000 26 minutes ago [-]
Maternal/infant mortality, lifespan, and murder rate are all in a realm I'd call not-great-not-terrible, where we're toward the tail of wealthy countries, but not close to the average of the third world. Those also tend to correlate poorly with what we'd generally consider "first/third world." For example, #1 in maternal mortality is Belarus, not generally a country to be envied or emulated. Indonesia has one of the lowest murder rates in the world. Jordan is ahead of many first-world countries.
I can't find any info about paid vacation by country. Everyone wants to talk about legislated minimums, which doesn't tell the whole story. The US legal minimum is zero, but the average is definitely not zero. The top country by that metric is Iran, and some other countries near the top of the list include Cambodia, Burkina Faso, and Niger. Overall it appears to correlate very poorly with first-worldness.
Worked hours per year, the US is at around the same level as countries such as Italy, Australia, and Ireland, and substantially lower than places like Greece, Poland, and Taiwan.
The average American has decent health insurance. Our system can be painful and I'm not advocate for it, but the average American is not going bankrupt due to medical issues.
spockz 4 hours ago [-]
I know this is anecdotal from what I read here and the few engineers I’ve spoken personally. Having a good job is the only way to get good/decent health care.
Even then, there are many surprises in terms of what you have to pay yourself and how expensive certain things are. Basically any chronic disease will be very expensive. And don’t lose your job either because then you can kiss the insurance goodbye as well, kicking you even further down. Potentially deep into debt.
wat10000 50 minutes ago [-]
Being poor enough to qualify for Medicaid is another way to get decent care, but it's mostly true if we take "having a good job" to include being part of a family with someone who has one.
The thing is, most Americans do have good jobs (or are in families with one), and do have decent health care. Should people with shit jobs have shit health care? No, and it's very unfortunate that this is how things work. But that doesn't mean we all face bankruptcy for major medical issues. The number of people who do face that should be zero and it isn't, but it's also not the norm.
anon291 4 hours ago [-]
Not really. I was laid off and my daughter literally cut her finger off requiring expensive surgery and orthopedic stuff and my state covered all of it (over 100k in nominal cost) and our overall tax burden is less than most European countries.
To be totally honest a lot of people in America don't apply for public benefits for whatever reason. Plenty of my colleagues decided to pay for cobra instead of using free Medicaid which has a zero copay in my state.
In another situation, my brother's high school friends dad was preparing to die from prostate cancer because he could afford treatment. My mom made him sign up for public benefits and they covered everything
sscaryterry 4 hours ago [-]
Dying in the third-world from cancer means you die. Dying in the US from cancer means you probably will bankrupt your family first, and ultimately die faster due to the financial burden/stress.
nozzlegear 4 hours ago [-]
This is some Reddit ass "America bad" diatribe that doesn't mesh with reality
Levitz 3 hours ago [-]
It's actually worrying that people seriously believe stuff like this.
anon291 4 hours ago [-]
Simply wrong in most states.
sscaryterry 3 hours ago [-]
Most? This kinda affirms my point. Where healthcare is free at point of use, the problem is non-existent.
wat10000 11 minutes ago [-]
No it doesn't. You said "probably will bankrupt your family." This is not true.
nradov 3 hours ago [-]
Where healthcare is free at point of use, many of the advanced cancer treatments aren't available at all. This is one of the reasons why the USA is at or near the top in survival rates for most types of cancer.
sscaryterry 2 hours ago [-]
See my original comment. These advanced cancer treatments are often not paid for by insurers.
wat10000 4 hours ago [-]
Apparently HN commenters have difficulty with the concept of "metrics." What are the numbers?
The US system sucks in a lot of ways, but it works OK for most Americans. If you're very poor, you'll have Medicaid and it'll cost you nothing. If you're an average middle class person, you'll have decent health insurance and your costs will be affordable. There's a slice of people in the middle who don't qualify for medicaid but don't have decent health insurance, and they're going to have serious financial trouble. But most Americans aren't in that situation.
There's a tendency to look at the worst situations and assume it applies to everyone. How we treat the least fortunate is extremely important and I won't defend the US here, but there's a pretty big gulf between a significant minority who can face massive financial burdens from medical care, and "it's basically a third-world country...."
toasty228 4 hours ago [-]
It doesn't work OK at all, you spend twice as much per capita for worse services on average
fridek 3 hours ago [-]
The health care system is the most expensive in the world, while not producing the best life expectancy. It is in fact very much in line with Poland, except if you have $20k/yr in Poland for medical expenses you can expect concierge level treatment.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health...
nradov 3 hours ago [-]
That's a non sequitur. The healthcare system has very little impact on life expectancy.
ajuc 3 hours ago [-]
US life expectancy is 79.76 years. That's 62nd in the world, lover than EU average, lower than many less wealthy countries.
It's objectively not "working OK" for most Americans, especially when you consider how much you spend for subpar results.
Now you can blame it on bad lifestyle, addictions, car culture, crime rate, etc. All true, and idiotic healthcare system is indirectly influencing all of that.
nradov 3 hours ago [-]
How exactly does the healthcare system cause people to crash their cars, abuse recreational drugs, overeat, and commit violent crimes?
wat10000 13 minutes ago [-]
Please don't abuse "objectively." There's no objective measure of what "working OK" even means in the first place, let alone objective information that says whether or not we meet that bar.
EU life expectancy was 81.7 in 2024. Two years makes one of them OK and the other not? What do we call a place like Hungary which is quite a bit below the US here? Or maybe it's OK because they don't spend as much?
I also said for most Americans. Bad life expectancy is concentrated in the poorest Americans. Which is not a good thing to say about this country, but it does mean that most Americans live longer.
Again, I'm not a defender of our system. But the average American gets decent care and is not bankrupted by major illness.
cbeach 4 hours ago [-]
They deserve it.
I'm in the UK. The smartest developers I worked with in my ~20 year career were all Polish.
The hardest-working and most skilled tradespeople that worked on my houses were Polish.
rmason 4 hours ago [-]
I spent some time in Poland three years ago and have not stopped talking about it ever since. It stood out from the other Eastern European countries that I visited on that trip.
Had a lunch in Warsaw with a German friend who had relocated there. He said it was more Conservative than Germany and there was more freedom of expression.
Over forty years of Communist rule and they were never able to pull them away from their commitment to the Catholic church. Also lots of excellent museums and large parks.
ManuelKiessling 4 hours ago [-]
Wouldn’t „more freedom of expression“ imply less conservative?
Or what aspects of conservatism, and what aspects of freedom of expression, are you referring to here?
lelanthran 3 hours ago [-]
> Wouldn’t „more freedom of expression“ imply less conservative?
Depends on the status quo, I suppose.
imdsm 4 hours ago [-]
Not if your tradition is to have freedom. Then to be a conservative means to conserve freedom. Think about the UK & US. The conservatives don't want to change what it means to be American/British, but the far left want to change it all. They want to change: ownership, innovation, free market, property, freedom of speech/expression, freedom of thought/opinion, employment, government, you name it.
and change goes both ways -/+ right? We know this.
In Poland, they want to have a place to call home that feels European, feels Western. In the UK if you say that, straight-to-jail.gif or less flippantly, threatened and shunned by either people who don't want you to have an opinion or people afraid of them.
It's a sorry state of affairs.
ManuelKiessling 4 hours ago [-]
But why the did Poland introduce a de-facto abortion ban in early 2021, with terminations only permitted in cases of rape, incest or if there is a threat to the mother's health or life?
And abortions due to fetal abnormalities are no longer permitted in Poland.
Isn’t that at odds with „conserve freedom“?
ImJamal 3 hours ago [-]
If you believe a fetus is a human then banning abortion is conserving freedom of the fetus. This is no different than saying banning murder of a person who is born is a way of conserving freedom. Obviously you disagree that a fetus is human or has human rights, but for somebody who does it makes perfect sense.
hdgvhicv 2 hours ago [-]
So they’re happy to remove the rights of the woman carrying the fetus
I assume that continues when the baby is born and people have to sacrifice their rights to feed the baby. Not in as extreme a way as bodily servitude, perhaps just taxation of the work they do to provide food, shelter, healthcare.
ImJamal 1 hours ago [-]
I am not really sure what you are getting at. I can't imagine you don't understand that some people think that a fetus, being a creature that is alive and has human DNA is considered a human. You may disagree with such an opinion but it is held by huge amounts of the population. Once you understand that you should be able to understand that some people would continue along the logical conclusion that all humans should have equal rights including the right to not be killed.
Protecting humans from being killed is protecting rights of individuals, not removing the rights of the would be murderer.
There is a clear way you can say banning abortion in about protecting rights. It is fine if you disagree, but I don't think there is any point in this conversation since you cannot even understand where people are coming from and just assume the worst in others.
newsclues 4 hours ago [-]
No, think of the US founders who were freedom of speech champions.
hackernud3s 3 hours ago [-]
Yet conservative in sense that they... declared independence? I'm trying to follow the second half of that logic train.
shimman 2 hours ago [-]
When first put to a vote, every single constitution delegate all originally voted against the bill of rights and John Adams didn't want to include a bill of rights at all (nor did he want to write one, Patrick Henry scared the hell out of him into including it). It wasn't until the threat of a commoner revolt (Shays' Rebellion aftermath (where private bankers hired a militia to kill American farmers, who were getting foreclosed on)).
Please remember that the US constitution is a slaver's document written to enable minority rule of slaver states at the expense of everyone else hence why it took nearly 80 years for the first republic to utterly fail and make way for the better second founding.
Dig1t 4 hours ago [-]
Many examples of “liberal” governments being extremely illiberal WRT freedom of expression. More people are locked up in the UK for speech than in many more conservative countries.
More conservative if you understand how the term is used. In my experience and observing Poland today, "freedom of expression" is the term favoured by the right wing, denoting that it is OK to spew racist / nationalist nonsense somewhere because a) "FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION" and b) a lot of the public is sadly quite accepting of it. This is what I typically see when people mention Poland and freedom of expression. Because if people call out hatred for what it is, it's censorship.
pjc50 4 hours ago [-]
It would be good to have real insights into how Poland is doing well just now, but (gestures at thread) it seems to be a lot of people bringing out their pet solutions.
Is the boom related to the removal of PiS in 2023? Is it linked to Ukraine (businesses and people relocating across the border? Arms sales?)
nxm 3 hours ago [-]
No it’s not related to removal of PiS at all. Poland’s economy was booming under PiS
simmerup 4 hours ago [-]
There’s a reason the solidarity movement arose in Poland
Remarkable culture
gfrecvh 1 hours ago [-]
While you were in Poland, did you call it "Eastern Europe" to people's faces? How did they react?
pndy 4 hours ago [-]
That commitment probably won't change anytime soon but more and more people are dissatisfied of the church here - how it interferes with politics, tries to dictate what is morally right and of course covers up pedophilia cases.
During pandemic (which also happen during the right-wing coalition govt) public TVP2 channel ran breakfast TV segment where one of questions was if audience should kneel at homes during the broadcast of the Mass if they decided to "participate".
Still, this isn't as easy to digest as it may seem - you'd of course have to study our history to understand that connection to faith.
snowpid 3 hours ago [-]
I am really happy for Poland getting rich (they deserved it!), but with little knowledge about Polish politics you just have to shack your head.
" Warsaw with a German friend who had relocated there. He said it was more Conservative than Germany and there was more freedom of expression." In Poland the constitutional court isnt working very good because of the former authoritarian Orban like PiS government. In case of a next Pis government only the European courts might help in case of a freedom of speech matter.
In Germany the constitutional court does work.
"they were never able to pull them away from their commitment to the Catholic church. " They do. Poland and especially the younger generation is securalising and also becomes more open to queer people. Also you can ask catholic officials how much they are willing to do for freedom of expression of atheism ("crazy") and gay men ("perverts").
moritzwarhier 4 hours ago [-]
Poland has earned this. Reputation of Poland is amazing.
And the people I've had the luck of meeting at a very early age during a student exchange lived up to that.
Poland is an indispensable pillar of the EU, and integrates countries such as UK, Italy, Germany, Greece, Austria, Romania, and many more countries in the east (I just don't want to list all of them here, because it's a slippery slope).
And Poland as a society has gone through a hard struggle to earn their very own power, stance and leverage.
Levitz 3 hours ago [-]
Not to remove any merit from Poland, but I think the EU deserves a bit of recognition here.
moritzwarhier 2 hours ago [-]
Definitely. I don't know what was the umbrella term, but I did participate in a student exchange program in the early 2000s, as a teeanger myself.
I doubt I'd have gotten to visit Poland without the EU so far (I'm not a frequent traveler...).
And Poland has, even when they had a government being at odds with the EU, never acted in some openly destructive way inside the EU. They always made clear what they want to be a part of, and what they don't want, and then, honestly followed through.
Not having the Euro or being more conservative is completely fine, as long as basic human rights aren't violated in a comparatively excessive way, and my impression of Poland and Polish people has always been a very friendly one.
I was in Łódź at the time, and there was a well thought-out program to connect the students, who were quite disconnected in the early 2000s, and had wildly different living situations + language barriers between each pair of students were also very diverse.
Credit to the EU for funding such a program is very much appropriate.
everfrustrated 2 hours ago [-]
Best thing Poland did was not join the Euro
moritzwarhier 2 hours ago [-]
I think you're onto something here.
cynicalsecurity 4 hours ago [-]
Great news, but could we have a higher GDP per capita, please? That's the most important part, isn't it?
cloudie78 3 hours ago [-]
GDP is a scam and a shit metric. Natural disasters increase GDP and so does pollution because of the money spent cleaning it up.
Poland also has 4x the population of Switzerland.
Normalise the GDP and then let’s start having a conversation. Look at the PPP.
dmitrygr 4 hours ago [-]
Not surprising at all. Sane government that’s been focusing on what Poland needs above what anyone else demands.
woodpanel 3 hours ago [-]
Heise.de, German IT and developer news portal, recently posted a story for German software devs about how to become an expat in Poland. What a shift in tonality for German media: From Polish handymen continuosly voting in right-wing "democracy-abandoning" parties to … somehow … doing better than Germany, economically (in terms of growth and outlook).
veridico 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ramino 4 hours ago [-]
Lol Switzerland isn’t in the EU.
1313ed01 4 hours ago [-]
I wonder if the title was meant to say Sweden, as the text mentions Sweden and Belgium?
The map at the bottom correctly excludes Switzerland. It does however include Norway and Iceland.
stephenhuey 4 hours ago [-]
Probably so, since the article text does not even mention Switzerland at all! And from what I can find, Poland is ahead of Sweden but not Switzerland (currently neck and neck with Switzerland).
andyjohnson0 4 hours ago [-]
It isn't an EU member but it is part of the EU single market.
troupo 4 hours ago [-]
Technically correct. However, it's so closely aligned with and integrated into the EU that it's quite convenient to include it in comparisons.
Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein (EEA), and Switzerland ("Special Relationship") are basically EU in all but final official membership. They even contribute to the EU financially.
But it does look that they probably meant Sweden (according to the text of the article)
I presume there is no Polish equivalent to Midi train station and its "corridor of evil". <https://newsinfrance.com/in-belgium-the-brussels-midi-statio...>
Also retiring early is not about the money in your bank account around here. You retire early by using certain government schemes where you might qualify for early retirement by working a physical job, or by reducing your hours to 10 hours are week while getting a full subsidized salary.
I happen to know a few software Engineers living there.
Berlin is pretty expensive, and some had to live in more outskirt areas (Potsdam for example). But none were living in gettho tier neighborhoods.
[1] https://images.euronews.com/articles/stories/09/86/71/11/108...
That's because GDP measures how much you did in one year, and wealth is accumulated over centuries.
Using GDP to measure wealth is like using speedometer to measure distance. You can be the fastest on the road at the moment, but if you just started driving and people drove faster than you for 100 years it doesn't mean much.
You need to integrate it over time.
in the U.K - a polish skilled workers are choosing to remaining in Poland instead of moving to the uk.
for the US - a lot of firms are setting up polish offices - hence when you hear 'a.i' efficiency most of those jobs have moved to Poland or India. Whether it's big tech, big banks and small funded VC startups. What remains in the US are just senior+, staff software engineers.
A lot. About 1 percentage point of Polish GDP in 2025.
They also had a lot of government spending, with the 2025 budget deficit being 7% of GDP.
Minimum wage was raised with ~10% in January 2025.
There is an irony in people attributing it to conservatism/rightwing politics rather than pretty much the exact opposite. Spain is another example of economic growth in the EU.
Least controversial is considerations for their education and human development.
It just seems like the EU is too top-heavy and I wonder if that's where a lot of the discontent comes from. It seems like there a lot of micro-nations in eastern Europe that have outsized influence over the union as a whole.
Gdp is not really a great measure of how well an economy works for it's inhabitants, if it was we should all spend our time breaking each others windows.
Keep being smug, it just proves my point, Americans still think Arabs live in tents in the desert, Chinese live in the jungle and eastern European build houses out of cow dung and straw. Enjoy your 1m+ stick and cardboard mcmansion that won't last two generations
Even in Mississippi what you describe would not qualify as a "top of the line house". In fact that would be pretty average working class home.
The kind of homes a lawyer or doctor could afford to buy in low cost area like mississippi can easily be 2 or 3x that size and resemble small castles. Think elevators and wrap around double staircases.
Oh and I forgot, it passes passivhaus requirements
I wasn't trying to be smug, sorry it came across that way.
Some of these models are pretty modestly priced (~$500k USD) but more modern than any house you'll find in North America until you reach a price point in the several million range. Certainly higher quality, nicer and more modern than any McMansion.
https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Okoboji_IA...
This is largely lakefront property in a somewhat touristy area of my state, so that influences the prices a lot.
If MS spends more on insulin than an EU state it improves that metric which is the opposite of what we're trying to measure I imagine.
Would you give an example of when that has happened?
> It just seems like the EU is too top-heavy
The EU intentionally admitted many poorer countries, to promote freedom, security and stability in Europe in the long term. Without EU membership, they would be under pressure from Russia and others.
> discontent
What discontent do you mean? There's always something, of course.
I mean, Brexit was the ultimate discontent and it didn't just come out of nowhere. It's still very recent history and, as far as I know, the circumstances that caused it haven't really changed.
Then instead of accepting the changing circumstances of the world, it is blamed on a single entity “EU” that is single handedly causing all their woes. Just leave and your lives will be better. Well, they learned.
This is how you get people to vote for someone like trump. They claim it is all the fault of some X, get people riled up, promise to fix X, get voted, and then you have to actually make their lives better.
The majority of taxpayers wanted to stay. The majority of under 65s wanted to stay.
And of course, out of the middle class crisis in the 21st century. You have the same discontent outside the EU, except it doesn't get blamed on Bruxelles. That's how Trump gets elected, for example.
This is a bit of a non-sequitur, at least as far as Eurozone's anemic growth is concerned. France and Germany stagnating isn't caused by Poland or Romania growing. It is mostly their own internal systemic problems. There were times when German and Polish economies were both healthy, as little as 10 years ago.
Sweden, another rich EU member, should grow by healthy 2.2 per cent this year, but Sweden is a lot more willing to actually reform its way out of problems than Germany is. Smaller countries have less inertia in such situations, and more maneuvering space.
Yes, the States' GDP is ginormous, and yet it's basically a third-world country masquerading as a first-world one on most metrics that actually matter to people.
Things don’t look great for the poorest Americans, but the average American isn’t living a life that’s even remotely third world.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_French_regions_by_Huma... Guess France is a third world country too.
I can't find any info about paid vacation by country. Everyone wants to talk about legislated minimums, which doesn't tell the whole story. The US legal minimum is zero, but the average is definitely not zero. The top country by that metric is Iran, and some other countries near the top of the list include Cambodia, Burkina Faso, and Niger. Overall it appears to correlate very poorly with first-worldness.
Worked hours per year, the US is at around the same level as countries such as Italy, Australia, and Ireland, and substantially lower than places like Greece, Poland, and Taiwan.
Job security also appears to be on the same level as peers. According to https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/oecd-countries-by-job-se..., the US is a bit worse than Denmark and New Zealand, and a bit better than Ireland and Finland.
I'm not seeing it.
The average American has decent health insurance. Our system can be painful and I'm not advocate for it, but the average American is not going bankrupt due to medical issues.
Even then, there are many surprises in terms of what you have to pay yourself and how expensive certain things are. Basically any chronic disease will be very expensive. And don’t lose your job either because then you can kiss the insurance goodbye as well, kicking you even further down. Potentially deep into debt.
The thing is, most Americans do have good jobs (or are in families with one), and do have decent health care. Should people with shit jobs have shit health care? No, and it's very unfortunate that this is how things work. But that doesn't mean we all face bankruptcy for major medical issues. The number of people who do face that should be zero and it isn't, but it's also not the norm.
To be totally honest a lot of people in America don't apply for public benefits for whatever reason. Plenty of my colleagues decided to pay for cobra instead of using free Medicaid which has a zero copay in my state.
In another situation, my brother's high school friends dad was preparing to die from prostate cancer because he could afford treatment. My mom made him sign up for public benefits and they covered everything
The US system sucks in a lot of ways, but it works OK for most Americans. If you're very poor, you'll have Medicaid and it'll cost you nothing. If you're an average middle class person, you'll have decent health insurance and your costs will be affordable. There's a slice of people in the middle who don't qualify for medicaid but don't have decent health insurance, and they're going to have serious financial trouble. But most Americans aren't in that situation.
There's a tendency to look at the worst situations and assume it applies to everyone. How we treat the least fortunate is extremely important and I won't defend the US here, but there's a pretty big gulf between a significant minority who can face massive financial burdens from medical care, and "it's basically a third-world country...."
It's objectively not "working OK" for most Americans, especially when you consider how much you spend for subpar results.
Source: https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/
Now you can blame it on bad lifestyle, addictions, car culture, crime rate, etc. All true, and idiotic healthcare system is indirectly influencing all of that.
EU life expectancy was 81.7 in 2024. Two years makes one of them OK and the other not? What do we call a place like Hungary which is quite a bit below the US here? Or maybe it's OK because they don't spend as much?
I also said for most Americans. Bad life expectancy is concentrated in the poorest Americans. Which is not a good thing to say about this country, but it does mean that most Americans live longer.
Again, I'm not a defender of our system. But the average American gets decent care and is not bankrupted by major illness.
I'm in the UK. The smartest developers I worked with in my ~20 year career were all Polish.
The hardest-working and most skilled tradespeople that worked on my houses were Polish.
Had a lunch in Warsaw with a German friend who had relocated there. He said it was more Conservative than Germany and there was more freedom of expression.
Over forty years of Communist rule and they were never able to pull them away from their commitment to the Catholic church. Also lots of excellent museums and large parks.
Or what aspects of conservatism, and what aspects of freedom of expression, are you referring to here?
Depends on the status quo, I suppose.
Conservatives = resist change Progressive = encourage change
and change goes both ways -/+ right? We know this.
In Poland, they want to have a place to call home that feels European, feels Western. In the UK if you say that, straight-to-jail.gif or less flippantly, threatened and shunned by either people who don't want you to have an opinion or people afraid of them.
It's a sorry state of affairs.
And abortions due to fetal abnormalities are no longer permitted in Poland.
Isn’t that at odds with „conserve freedom“?
I assume that continues when the baby is born and people have to sacrifice their rights to feed the baby. Not in as extreme a way as bodily servitude, perhaps just taxation of the work they do to provide food, shelter, healthcare.
Protecting humans from being killed is protecting rights of individuals, not removing the rights of the would be murderer.
There is a clear way you can say banning abortion in about protecting rights. It is fine if you disagree, but I don't think there is any point in this conversation since you cannot even understand where people are coming from and just assume the worst in others.
Please remember that the US constitution is a slaver's document written to enable minority rule of slaver states at the expense of everyone else hence why it took nearly 80 years for the first republic to utterly fail and make way for the better second founding.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr...
Is the boom related to the removal of PiS in 2023? Is it linked to Ukraine (businesses and people relocating across the border? Arms sales?)
Remarkable culture
During pandemic (which also happen during the right-wing coalition govt) public TVP2 channel ran breakfast TV segment where one of questions was if audience should kneel at homes during the broadcast of the Mass if they decided to "participate".
https://natemat.pl/303229,czy-klekac-przed-telewizorem-w-cza... (in Polish obv)
Still, this isn't as easy to digest as it may seem - you'd of course have to study our history to understand that connection to faith.
" Warsaw with a German friend who had relocated there. He said it was more Conservative than Germany and there was more freedom of expression." In Poland the constitutional court isnt working very good because of the former authoritarian Orban like PiS government. In case of a next Pis government only the European courts might help in case of a freedom of speech matter.
In Germany the constitutional court does work.
"they were never able to pull them away from their commitment to the Catholic church. " They do. Poland and especially the younger generation is securalising and also becomes more open to queer people. Also you can ask catholic officials how much they are willing to do for freedom of expression of atheism ("crazy") and gay men ("perverts").
And the people I've had the luck of meeting at a very early age during a student exchange lived up to that.
Poland is an indispensable pillar of the EU, and integrates countries such as UK, Italy, Germany, Greece, Austria, Romania, and many more countries in the east (I just don't want to list all of them here, because it's a slippery slope).
And Poland as a society has gone through a hard struggle to earn their very own power, stance and leverage.
I doubt I'd have gotten to visit Poland without the EU so far (I'm not a frequent traveler...).
And Poland has, even when they had a government being at odds with the EU, never acted in some openly destructive way inside the EU. They always made clear what they want to be a part of, and what they don't want, and then, honestly followed through.
Not having the Euro or being more conservative is completely fine, as long as basic human rights aren't violated in a comparatively excessive way, and my impression of Poland and Polish people has always been a very friendly one.
I was in Łódź at the time, and there was a well thought-out program to connect the students, who were quite disconnected in the early 2000s, and had wildly different living situations + language barriers between each pair of students were also very diverse.
Credit to the EU for funding such a program is very much appropriate.
Poland also has 4x the population of Switzerland.
Normalise the GDP and then let’s start having a conversation. Look at the PPP.
The map at the bottom correctly excludes Switzerland. It does however include Norway and Iceland.
Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein (EEA), and Switzerland ("Special Relationship") are basically EU in all but final official membership. They even contribute to the EU financially.
But it does look that they probably meant Sweden (according to the text of the article)