Warsaw? We’re becoming the Texas of Europe, more than a little unpalatable.
This is a bad comparison.
Texas is a rich, stable state with access to the U.S. federal court system and unambiguously subservient to the U.S. Poland is unchecked, unbalanced, and much, much poorer. Its lawless regime is legitimately popular, evoking comparisons to pre-collapse Russia and Venezuela.
In an alternate timeline, Warsaw could have rivalled Berlin or Amsterdam. Not in ours.
In terms of GDP, the ranking goes California, Texas, New York, Florida, and then Illinois.
As much as Florida gets dunked on in the US, it's still an economic powerhouse of the region. Orlando is a major financial centre, there's a number of major ports, there's a strong agricultural base, and the state has a considerable amount of high tolerance manufacturing industry (primarily electronics, biomed, naval, and aerospace).
The state gets ragged on a lot (justifiably so for some of our political leadership) but it's still one of the strongest states in the US by a pretty healthy margin.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories...
Edit: forgot to mention that the state is surprisingly progressive once you get through all the election suppression. There's quite a bit of gerrymandering (not quite as bad as Texas), the state makes every effort to strip poor or predisposed people of their voting rights, and we have a lot of other issues but the state by and large despite that has been considered a split/swing state. And despite the voter suppression, the state continues to grow a strong/dedicated voting populace particularly with focuses on environmental protection.
Edit 2: Sorry if this seems a bit defensive.
Just looked at the linked list and when sorting by GDP per capita, Florida is rank 38. Not exactly what I'd call an economic powerhouse, just a state with lots of people?
In what way? A ton of businesses are moving to Texas for more favorable tax treatment, fewer regulations, and lower cost of living. Is that a happening with Poland, too?
Oh, EU has got ways to screw Poland all right, don’t you worry.
Like right now lots of local governments there are reverting certain anti-LGBT laws to get to EU grants or whatever it’s called.
What I'm saying is that EU has means of causing negative consequence for Poland (and any other member) should they decide to engage into activities that are incompatible with EU values (like violating human rights, breaking trade agreements made by EU, etc).
That's very weird? Wouldn't the state legislature, being elected by local people be more likely to be popular with local people than the federal government with is largely elected by people outside of Texas?
(Or do you mean 'unpopular' with people outside of Texas?)
Gerrymandering is a problem, yes. But even a gerrymandered state would arguably have more democratic legitimation within the state, than the federal government, which is still largely voted for by non-Texans and also with somewhat idiosyncratic election rules.
Conservative policies including strong stance against any abortion.
Anti abortion laws.
— Davy Crockett…and also me
"But, Mr. Crockett Texas is hell."
In a similar vein, this also from the 19th Century: A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.
"But, Mr. Kipling a good woman is a ... oh wait."