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Comment by Claude_Shannon | Hacker News Reader

We have a meme - "when there is a pandemic and you don't know whether to close schools or cementaries, so you close Giertych".

It is almost a tradition at this moment - cases are rising? Quick, arrest him!

Okay, on a serious note - this won't change anything. Poland is very polarised right now politically. PiS voters won't care as long as the state gives them money, and the rest already won't vote for them no matter what.

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As a Pole, it frustrates me to no end as the 90s and 2000s were the time of incredible optimism and opportunity, then the country joined the EU in 2004 you could see *everything" improving very very quickly, huge level of growth and opportunities for everyone, country slowly becoming more and more progressive too, and then PiS got elected and everything went to shit, 6 years down and I don't recognize this country or its values anymore.

I have no hope anymore. It won't get better.

If people want 500 zł monthly and are willing to sell themselves and the country for that - let them...

That's nice in theory but when you are personally dragged down right along with them then that it becomes a very practical problem.

Many Poles already left, many still will. It's a never ending brain drain since 2004.

where do you go to? Brexit Britain or MAGA Murica? Running away is not a good, long term solution.

It's not so much running away as much as it is wanting to create a better life for yourself and your family. There are many more options than the UK or the USA, Polish immigrants can be found all over Europe.

most commonly now - Germany, if you're able to - Canada, if you don't have valuable skills - Netherlands.

That being said... if you have a good job, like in IT, you're better off remaining in Poland. You just have to grit your teeth.

the only Polish citizen I know, went to England for work as a young man, worked hard for giant companies, got remote work and started his family in Poland. I have no updates but I thought he had a very decent house now in Poland, and was doing well with remote C++ work.

It has a big impact on the EU as well when an EU country start flouting the EU laws.

Apparently not, because the EU doesn't seem to be up for enforcing them.

I think they want to, but they seem to doubt the tools they have for enforcement. I suspect some of the COVID funds will be held back.

Edit: Actually they have already frozen 35 bn Euro. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/22/brussels-launc...

Well, look at it this way: how bad it must have been for those people to prefer the 500zł instead?

I'd say that's what the previous government missed completely: that the old state of affairs simply didn't work for many people.

It still doesn't work as all those social programs are unsustainable from fiscal viewpoint.

It's all financed by debt and inflation.

Not true. In fact, those programs are only barely more expensive than "podatek liniowy", which got introduced decades ago and which is essentially a subsidy for the wealthy for being wealthy.

Care to explain the reason behind currently skyrocketing inflation and PLN devaluation then?

https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/inflation-rate. Also, while it's kind of hard to say for sure how Poland is doing, and while there definitely are some things that the current government is horrible at, it would be quite a stretch to say it's the "500+" program's fault. Especially given that "podatek liniowy" still exists.

Poland is able to keep its unemployment somewhat down, by keeping the zloty weak relative to the euro, and therefore helping Polish exports. And before anyone says "Poland has a lot of unemployment" compare it to other weak Eastern European countries on the euro. Poland could end inflation if it wanted higher unemployment, but for now it accepts the higher inflation and weaker zloty so as to help exports and so limit how bad unemployment might get.

I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted. If you believe there is no link between the currency, inflation and employment then you're engaging in a well known economic fallacy. See "The Doctrine of Immaculate Transfer":

https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/the-doctrine-of...

"The fallacy comes in when you say, “Well, given that it’s all about spending imbalances, exchange rate policy has nothing to do with it.” This is what John Williamson of the Institute for International Economics once dubbed the Doctrine of Immaculate Transfer. (Uh-oh, Erick Erickson’s gonna come after me …) It’s a popular fallacy, especially at the WSJ, although I’m not sure if it rises to zombie status."

I can’t downvote yet, but you can indeed lower unemployment without rampant inflation or devaluations.

That's true, there are 2 main approaches, but they both have real costs, and neither is obviously better than the other. In the face of a severe economic shock, such as the global financial crisis of 2008 or the pandemic of 2020, you would expect to see unemployment increase. The two approaches to reduce that unemployment are:

1. Keynesian stimulus. The government could stimulate demand, either by increasing the purchases where it is the final consumer (military, education spending) or it could give money to citizens so they can spend more. It's important that the increase in spending is not initially offset by tax increases, so this means the government has to take on debt.

2. Devalue the currency so as to help exports. This way you avoid taking on debt, instead you rely on increased money from exports to stimulate the economy. But here, instead of debt, you pay for the stimulus via inflation, as imported goods are now more expensive.

Keep in mind "increase exports" is relative to what your main trading partners are able to consume. The EU is the main trading partner for Poland. When the EU is in a deep recession, Poland's exports can be expected to fall, so "increasing exports" might only keep them at their previous rate (the rate that existed before the crisis).

Whatever you do, there is some cost. Either you take on debt or you take on inflation. There is no way out of the crisis that is completely free.

You are right, but unemployment in Poland has been very low for at least a decade now, while the inflation is a recent thing.

The crisis is also recent. The Covid-19 pandemic arrived in Europe in early 2020. Please see the other comment that I just wrote in this thread. Poland has 2 paths out of the crisis, it can take on debt or it can take on inflation (or it can mix the two). But there is no free way out of the crisis. Whatever strategy it decides on will have some consequence that will take a few years to unwind. And that is mostly true of all nations, of course, though Poland's situation is somewhat unique, in that it is in the EU but has its own currency, which has tended to make devaluation an easy option for it.

One can imagine an alternate universe in which Poland has been lead by progressives for the last 30 years, who make big investments in science research and education so that Poland came up to speed quickly on high-technology industries and so rapidly increased labor productivity. In that alternate universe, the government of Poland would be able to follow a policy of tight money, such that zloty would gain value against the euro. And of course, some of that happened, labor productivity increased. The zloty was 6 to 1 against the USA dollar in 1989 and then got to 2.5 to 1 around 2011 or 2012, before sinking again. One can imagine, in this alternate universe, Poland made such huge investments in science research and education that the zloty eventually got to be 1 to 1 with the USA dollar.

But that isn't what happened. Poland has been governed by center-right and far-right parties who've limited government involvement in the economy and who have avoided big bets on future investment, outside of infrastructure investments. So, as a practical matter, devaluing the currency, and accepting inflation, has been the most convenient way for the Polish government to keep unemployment down.

The 500 PLN extra for kids by itself was not necessarily going to cause skyrocketing inflation. I don't necessarily agree with how it was implemented, but it's true that we had a huge lack of important support for less wealthy.

However, on top of that, you have a lot of simply bad management, and also ridiculous amounts of fraud by ruling party politicians. This means that a lot of money is leaking from the budget in various ways into pockets of people associated with current government, and another (possibly bigger) chunk of money is lost by mismanagement - including things as simple as replacing experienced people with nepotism-pushed ones who then fail to process documents for EU funds.

This year we ended up with huge fines (increasing daily), with direct cause being continued operation of Turów surface mine. What is often missed in discussion is that Czech Republic didn't want it closed or fined - they requested that in exchange for continued operation, Poland funds waterworks necessary to ensure nearby villages & towns on Czech side of border have access to potable water, as the mine caused considerable lowering of water table.

So rampant spending on often idiotic things, which also heavily goes into pockets of party nomenclature (so it doesn't even have the benefit of being "make work") results in considerable lack of funds in the budget...

The social programs could be made to work. They don't because all other areas of government are broken, but they make for good lightning rod for attention, both negative and positive.

There are some social programs that make no sense, like coal mining ones (we're at the point where I'd vote to have current coal miner wages frozen in exchange for closing the mines - i.e. everyone currently working underground would continue to get their last yearly wages till pension for not working at all)

And the budget is crushed by all sorts fraud and mismanagement, with vanity projects funneling money to people connected to Law&Justice party (examples: creating new passage between Vitula Lagoon and Baltic sea; new power generation block in Ostrołęka - currently demolished before it ever got finished; Centralny Port Komunikacyjny - a giant useless airport without reason to exist, and yet nearly no work is being done other than funnelling more and more money to friends; etc. etc.)

The Central Airport makes sense. There are 0 big airports in this part of Europe. It could be used by 60mln people (Slovakia, Belarus, Ukraine etc..). It even makes sense for people in Berlin to use it. (Frankfurt - Moscow. 2000km without a big airport)

Besides, you can close down WAW and use the land to expand the city. You also don't have to expand other airports, which are close to cities and cause massive noise pollutions.

It makes absolutely zero sense as it is just too far away from business and tourist spots.

I reckon you're an avid supporter of PiS?

What does it mean "just too far away". It's gonna be much closer than a lot of airports e.g. London Stansted

I do not support any party

CPK isn't competition to Stansted, ha, it's not even a competition to Heathrow, Gatwick, Frankfurt, Munich or Paris CDG.

The connection graph of airlines is based both on where people are, and what logistical bases they can get, and a) LOT doesn't have long range network capable of driving more traffic than Okęcie can sustain b) no other long-range airline is going to operate long range flights from CPK

The central airport doesn't make sense because there are no airlines that will use it as hub (other than LOT, which can't even overload Okęcie), especially now that Hub&Spoke is reduced in prominence. To just get reasonable amount of people from Poland they'd have to close pretty much all other airports in Poland, which would cripple local travel (some trips I take would go back to >9h, or I'd have to fly to Berlin and take a Taxi).

Berlin is a corner case of national capital that is in aviation terms in the boonies. Frankfurt Auf Mein and Munich are big hubs because that's where Lufthansa has logistical bases. The 2000km distance doesn't do anything, that's a short hop for airliners. That means that Berlin will do profitable important routes direct... which happen to be mostly to airline hubs, with few exceptions.

So there's no reason for people from neighbouring countries to use it, it require artificially breaking other airports in Poland to have even a sliver of reason (easily debunked by anyone with idea of state of polish airports). It's whole existence happened because one man had an unresearched biased idea and the party jumps at his whim.

Can you explain from someone not from Poland, what does 500zł mean? Is it some sort of minimal wage?

Current government introduced 500 PLN a month (about 25% of median net salary) for each kid younger than 18. It was promoted as a solution for demographic problems, but it barely helped, what it did instead is persuade people who don't care about politics to vote PIS. That and reversing the unpopular (but necessary) retirement reforms of previous government made PIS very popular and they used that popularity to unconstitutionally dismantle checks and balances and to take over every independent institution there is.

Basically they did the same as every wannabe authorithatian ever - pay people to love you and take over the country while they still do.

I see. In Russia Putin also introduced some payments for kids this year (or even earlier)

So did Canada and the US... Vote-buying is a common strategy, not something unique to authoritarian governments. Especially with COVID giving a lot of governments carte blanche to run massive deficits, it appears to be easier than ever to implement.

What happens when the whole western world is on that?

Agreed it is super frustrating. I still have a ton of ties with Poland and the level of disillusion among my contacts there is absolutely overwhelming. Brexit has caused a lot of Polish people that had set up shop abroad between a rock and a hard place: some of them were planning to move back but those plans are now on hold forever. And the ones remaining in Poland that were trying their hardest to move the country forward are now also thinking of abandoning the country because they feel the current slide down will not be arrested for a long time.

I don't get what connection does the Brexit have to Poland, would you explain?

There were about a million Poles in UK that migrated in early 00s when UK was the first to open borders to new EU members and when Poland had huge unemployment still.

I think there is a Pole diaspora/immigrant pop. in the UK, so Brexit would affect their ability to move through borders for employment purposes and thus affects plans for settlement, doing business and so on.

A lot of Poles moved to the UK to work.

Poles who moved to Britain because they were all part of the EU and there was economic opportunity are now an entirely different status in Britain. Like an Oklahoman coming to California as an American, and then finding they're not anymore.

Your analogy isn't accurate, Poles in Britain still have EU passports so can move around as they wish.

It looks like a fair number of people applied for settled status in the UK just in case they wanted to use it to work part of the year here.

Brexit is bad but it is worse for native British people than those with EU passports.

> Brexit is bad but it is worse for native British people than those with EU passports.

The Brits that I know in various European countries have been dealt with quite civilly, as opposed to some of the people that I know that had moved to the UK where they find themselves suddenly without rights after being solid contributors to that society, sometimes for decades.

What makes you write this particular sentence?

By "native", I mean someone with a UK passport living in the UK at the cut-off date of Jan 2021. They are now unable to work in the EU without a work permit for a specific job.

In theory, a Pole who applied for and got "settled status" in the UK can move around to work just as they could before Brexit. I have no idea how well applying for this works though.

Ah, you mean for Brits to go to work outside of the UK now versus someone originally from Poland who would want to go to work somewhere else in the EU. Right, but that's mirrored by how hard it would be for someone else from some EU country to come to work in the UK now. The UK very explicitly negotiated for that.

The thread suggested that Poles in the UK had lost freedom of movement, I'm just pointing out that this isn't the case.

>suddenly without rights after being solid contributors to that society, sometimes for decades.

This is a stretch by any measure. I'm an estern european in UK. Once I applied for ILR(Indefinite leave to remain) I can go and come with 0 problems. Not sure what "without rights" you are talking about but brexit doesn't bother me in any way.

We have plenty at work that arrived in uk around 2-3 years ago and they continue their lives without problems, go home for holidays and so on. Some work for us as self-empleyer/contractors. Not even those have any issues.

There are countless stories of people who have had to go through the most absurd contortions in order to be allowed to stay in the UK. I'm happy that that didn't happen to you but don't dismiss this as 'a stretch by any measure' because things worked smoothly for you.

It will take an enormous amount of effort and money to fix everything they brought down. But I believe in Poles - they rebuilt their capital from ruins after WW2, they made an enormous progress after they became a democracy, so no doubt they will also manage to fix everything the populists are destroying right now. But as you say - it's a pity Polish people lost a few years and lots of opportunities.

Destroying is a bit of an overstatement. Unfortunately we live in a political climate, not only in Poland, that whenever left-wing candidates lose an election, it's populism and backsliding on democracy. But if the candidate that was supposed to win, wins, companies are all foreign owned and NGOs control all spheres of life, then it's freedom and democracy.

Except there were no left-wing candidates here. Poland has effectively two-party system, with both parties being somewhat right-wing.

Even worse, majority of politicians in two biggest party come from fracturing of previous right-wing party...

And another view on that is that they are both left-wing socialists who want to regulate and tax everything and who vote the same on all major issues, from tax increases to immigration. The recent example being the increase of traffic fines.

Ah, a Konfederacja fan!

(For context: in Poland people who demonstrate the kind of political illiteracy displayed in the comment above generally vote for Konfederacja party, which can't be easily described in traditional categories due to how illiterate it is.)

The political competition in Poland is between the center-right and the far-right. If you look at someone like Donald Tusk, the stuff he promotes is all right-wing stuff: free markets, foreign investment, free movement of capital, minimal government oversight of the economy. It's pretty much the standard right-wing agenda of the last 100 years. He's simply moderate compared to someone like Kaczyński.

In the case of Poland, traditional denominations left-right are meaningless. In economic terms, the current government is very leftist: it seeks the votes of the poorest citizens, increases the tax burden of those who earn above average and so on. In many aspects, they are very similar to past socialist governments before 1989. Paradoxically, the officially leftist party that actually ruled Poland for some time was quite progressive in economic terms.

So, regarding Poland, instead of using terms like 'left-right', it makes more sense to use something like the Nolan Chart. This would make the current government of Poland closer to the area of "authoritarian," that is, restricting both economic and personal freedom.

Cuerrent gov is left? Omg. They support and pay money for ultra right organisation and racist movements! Populism is not "left"!

I'm not sure you understood my comment. What I mean is that traditional denominations like left-right are completely inadequate. It's like arguing that the NSDAP was a leftist party since they had "sozialistische" in the name - trying to cast multi-dminensional phenomena onto one dimension results not just in inadequacy but completely obscures the actual situation.

In the case of the current ruling party, they certainly brand themselves as right-wing and they want to occupy the whole spectrum from the center to the right. However, their way of thinking in economic terms, their dislike of private business, their understanding of the function of the government and local government, of centralization, public vs private property etc. - all this is very much related to their experience of the past socialist regime. The reforms they are doing right now basically mean taking money from individual people running their own businesses and transferring them to the rest, creating one of the most weird taxation schemes Poland saw so far.

> then PiS got elected and everything went to shit, 6 years down and I don't recognize this country or its values anymore

Is there concern this could impact Poland's NATO status in the long run? In the short run, of course not, it's strategically located. But in the long run, as values diverge, isn't there fear it could become untenable for a U.S. president to call for spilling American blood to protect such a country?

I think PiS is endangering itself. Exit from EU would be catastrophic strategically. Despite its anti-Russian rhetoric, sometimes I wonder whether the leadership of PiS is actually being paid by Putin to weaken Poland and the EU.

Of course it might affect Poland's NATO status. I mean not like the formal membership. Turkey is still in NATO after all.

But relying on membership alone is plain stupid. If "spilling blood to protect such a country" becomes a problem, the response will degrade from actual help to some meaningless gestures. "We tried really hard to help them! Too bad our troops did not make it on time!"

Values-wise, Poland is still way closer to the West than, say, Turkey.

NATO has nothing to do with values, though - what matters is where the US wants its Air Force bases.

NATO prefers authoritarian and extreme-right wing over socialist modern democracies. The EU on the other hand not.

The EU membership is in danger, not NATO. And if the EU wouldn't hope the next elections would fix that, Poland would have been thrown out already.

There are a couple of other authoritarian eastern block countries who are now encouraged by Poland, which will blow up to a full blown crisis if not handled immediately.

Not a Pole, but my spouse is. Assisted my father-in-law, in a wheelchair, to make it up the stairs to vote for EU membership. So much optimism that day. It makes us so sad to see what has happened. PiS is piss, imo.

>PiS voters won't care as long as the state gives them money

TBH, I'm kinda tired of this "PiS voters are state dependants" notion. Sure, it's heavily popular in rural religious east but there's also a certain urban demographic that's being underrepresented by other parties. I'm in the 25-30 yo bracket, Warsaw, BSc summa cum laude, three foreign languages, top 1% earner (which is not that hard to achieve in Poland working in modern tech). If I were to vote today, I'd either skip the vote or vote for PiS. Also got some like-minded friends. Anecdotal evidence, sure. It's also a case of "but all of my polls showed Hillary and Remain over Trump and Brexit".

> so you close Giertych

It's mindblowing how skillful and cunning he was in avoiding any repercussions, including being freed without paying the bail. For an average person such problems would be beginning of an end, courts would cut off any appeals instantly. Gods are untouchable regardless of the side they are standing.

We're talking about a lawyer, not an average person :)

Not knowing law doesn't free you from repercussions. Knowing law often does.

tbh he is an asshole of a big kind, nowadays people seem to forget that it is due to him that we have nationalists in Sejm, he was the first to introduce him - and he lead ONR to a relative rise.

The only reason why he isn't on the side of PiS or Konfederacja is that he hates Kaczynski for personal reason. And vice versa.

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