Six Ideas for Poland
noahpinion.blog
noahpinion.blog
I was in south east Poland for the last 2 weeks and the cafes I went to there were definitely a cut above what I’m used to in the UK.
The article doesn’t mention how good the roads and rail have become. When I first went to Poland about 20 years ago I spent all day on a train that stopped at farm fields and travelled no faster than 20mph. The main roads I drove on were hilariously bad, utterly destroyed by long lines of HGV trucks. Even many roads in more affluent areas like around Krakow were poorly engineered (flooding).
The roads this time were massively better. I still found plenty of old bad roads in more rural areas but the top tier roads (autostrada) are better than anything we have in the UK. The tier below that are generally better than most motorways current state of repair in the Uk - but it helps that the Polish high speed roads (~120kph - where the top tier autostrada are 140kph) are just better designed.
Now there’s high speed high quality rail (again quite a bit better than my experience in the UK), maybe the old PkP rolling stock is still there somewhere but I only saw modern high speed or freight trains.
Time stood still. It reminds me of eastern Europe pre-EU.
But if you insist, sure, the few miles of British motorway don't include roundabouts. They do tend to start or end with them though ;)
It's an unrealistic anxiety that doesn't come up when deciding FDI destinations within the EU.
A bigger issue for me would be around the administrative capacity within Poland. What's to prevent PiS or a PiS-style populist party from returning to power, and redeveloping acrimonious relations with Brussels?
(Btw, this is a common concern across the CEE - Babis and Duda's losses were too close for comfort, and if it weren't for generous tax holidays, some serious AoP planning would have happened)
The difference between Hungary and Poland's GDP per Capita and development indicators is marginal, but Hungary's acrimonious relations with the EU has caused companies to shift greenfield investments to Poland, Czechia, and Romania.
Also, the larger economic boom across the CEE is largely a result of investment outflows from Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus in the 2015-2016 when the Ukraine war started, and the sanction regimes began. This is reflected in GDP per Capita across the entire CEE
Japan was SK's largest trade partner well into the 1990s, and most chaebols started off as JVs or tech transfers with Japanese keiretsus.
Same thing in Taiwan.
Germany was post-Warsaw Pact Poland's "Japan".
Israel has won or at least didn't lose multiple wars against their neighbors over multiple decades, and has mostly solid peace deals with Egypt and the Saudis. Few middle eastern countries can throw military resources around like Russia or NK, too.
How do you figure? Even if NATO actually invokes article 5, nuclear doctrines of involved countries do not suppose immediate nuclear escalation from a conventional war. Of course, risk of nuclear war goes up if Russia invades, but it doesn't automatically go all the way to 100%.
Then just don't put them on death ground. If they have a way out, with loss of prestige and resources, but still staying in power, they will take it. India and Pakistan have had border clashes when both countries already had nukes. It was close and very dangerous, but it is still a counter-example to claim that every war between nuclear nations is just automatically bound to become a nuclear war.
Oh, I wouldn't go that far. In fact, I think you could occupy as much as 80% of Russia. As long as you make sure that Putin and his friends were left alive and in charge of the remaining 20%, they wouldn't do a thing.
All that said, I do in fact support giving Ukraine what it needs in order to defend itself. I think that is in fact a worthy and noble goal.
My mistake, but it was not intended rhetorically.
And, you know, I've never over-reacted or misinterpreted someone. Never. Um... at least not today... um, well, uh...
I also was a bit hair-trigger in my reply to you. In particular, you gave pphysch more grace (the first time) than I gave you.
I do need to remind myself to slow down and check both GP and parent before responding (which is what I didn't do here), so it's all good, really.
Nuclear annihilation will not come because of some desperate last ditch effort, but because of some politicians convincing themselves that they not only survive, but win, a nuclear conflict. And it's easier than ever to see that sort of mentality spreading in a world where narrative has become far more important than reality, at least to the idiots and octogenarians in charge.
Any aggression towards Poland is a very different level and degree than against Ukraine, Georgia, Chechnya, etc.
Do you really believe the EU and NATO would sit on their hands in case some low level pro-Russia insurgency popped up in Byalystok or Lublin? Not only that, do you believe the Polish government would be doing nothing and accepting pro-Russian separatism cropping up anywhere in its territory?
I don't think there's anything the Poles hate more than Russian imperialism, not even sure if they hate Hitler more than that to be honest...
Rather than alluding to some imagined well-spring of "hate" within the Polish character or soul, another take on the Polish attitude, which I personally favor, goes like this:
They're done with being invaded, occupied, pushed around and/or talked down to by all of their various neighbors and competing empires over the past many centuries.
Meanwhile, most of them (even by far their worst occupier in recent memory -- the Germans) seem to have learned a thing or two, and have moved on to other (more subtle, and in any case non-violent/coercive ) forms of one-up-manship in the great game of national assertiveness of competition.
Except for one of course. And that's the one they rationally devote their concerns in regard to, in the present moment.
sounds like a pretty good reason to me to worry about it.
Stop repeating FUD. Really, _everything_ about Russian foreign policy has always been to appear larger than they are, to push soft power as hard as they can, and to be very careful to pick only on evidently weaker neighbours with hard power.
There will never nuclear war. It will always be used because it's a threat that works for some people. That's Russia psy-ops for you: even in the open Westerners have trouble accepting it because it confronts them with their own irrationality.
Source: living in Warsaw for many years.
regardless of which side wins that war their demographics are dwindling
If they let in migrants (even so many Ukrainians is a problem IMO), if they give in to "diversity is a strength", if they give into equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity.... The country will be lost.
There's no guarantee that voters like this guy won't vote in a PiS or a PiS-style populist due to nativist sentiment as well as anger at non-redistributive development (Warsaw/Lodz/Gdansk/Wclow vs everyone else), and as a result the Polish govt ends up having to give us additional tax breaks and holidays to minimize our concerns (great for us, not as great for Poles).
True! But I'm fine dealing with populist headaches in a $4T and $2.7T economy instead of a $690B economy.
I moved to the US in 89.
I've watched the US basically be destroyed by policies that basically are even worse over in Europe.
Up until recently, Poland was still a shinning beacon of hope. It's getting worse but hopefully the eastern European rationality kicks in and they wake up before it's too late.
The lefts ideas have made enough places pretty terrible. They don't need to do it to ONE MORE place.
It's not a left or a right issue - when I want to start a foreign office, I often need to bring in talent from my other offices.
If it's a pain to get short term work visas for my employees (India, China) or if there are fears of safety and xenophobia (Israel, India), my employees don't feel like helping start those on-site offices.
If my employees don't want to visit those countries, we may as well choose one of the several other CEE states like Czechia or Romania.
Already Romania has almost caught up to Poland in GDP per Capita and social indicators despite being much poorer barely a decade ago.
> It's not worth taking your investment money if it means destroying one of that last non destroyed European countries.
Be careful what you wish for.
Hungarian voters thought the same way 10 years ago, and that lead to capital outflows to Poland and Romania.
Almost every large private sector Polish employer by revenue is owned by a foreign MNC. 40% of the Polish economy is owned by us "foreign investors".
We're fine moving that money away, and that did start towards the end of the Duda administration due to political instability, with a lot of capital outflows to Romania which rolled out the red carpet for us.
And if you want to start a Polish office, hire Polish people. Don't tell me you need Indians and Chinese people. If you can't do it with Polish people because we're too dumb or lazy or uneducated for your business, oh well. Don't just import people. Most poles don't want them.
However bad you think right wing Polish people are, it's probably worse when you're not in the room. So please consider than in your next round of investment.
Even so i disagree with the article author that claims Poland has not left the middle income trap. On the contrary, with the recent huge increases in minimum wage and still strong dependency on manufacturing, the moment to check is actually now. Of course there is a lot of inertia in DFI but in my surroundings I hear of big corporations leaving for cheaper places. Volvo for example just left and 3M will have a local restructuring. There has been an inflection point on IT wages a well. Maybe it is a blip, but I think there is reason to worry.
All in all, Poland is a great place to live, and you kind of can see progress as time goes by. Something that cannot be said of many other developed places.
[1] https://notesfrompoland.com/2024/02/01/births-drop-to-new-po...
You're being downvoted but you aren't wrong.
A lot can go wrong in a decade.
In 2024, Poland (and Hungary) are at the same comparative level of development they were in 2014 (using distance from the WB High Income GDP per Capita threshold as a proxy), yet their 2014 peer Slovakia was able to significantly increase it's GDP per Capita to near Czechia levels (tbf Slovakia was also able to leverage Czechia's development).
Historically poorer Romania has also started catching up to both Poland and Hungary recently due to significant FDI inflows due to political instability in both countries in the late 2010s.
Both Poland and Hungary are at a precipice - if they can conduct lasting reforms within their administrative system over the next decade, then they are absolutely on track to becoming a developed country. Medium case, they could end up like their 2014 peer Uruguay and Panama - stuck with laggard growth. Worst case, they could end up like their 2014 peer Argentina (but stuff would have to go seriously wrong).
> If not for the inflow of Ukrainians labor shortages would cripple the economy
And Belarusians and Russians - Poland and much of the CEE became nations of immigrants by 2016 as labor and capital inflows from Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia began due to the start of the Ukraine War in 2014, and the subsequent sanctions regimes.
> There has been an inflection point on IT wages a well. Maybe it is a blip, but I think there is reason to worry
I think T1 salaries are around $30-60k now across the CEE, which is largely comparable to similar talent in every country excluding the US and Canada.
The hard work for Poland is to now leverage it's existing talent (both domestically and in the diaspora) to build strong global players. Historically poorer Romania is following this path with companies like UIPath and BitDefender, and Czechia did something similar with Avast and JetBrains.
Aside from Allegro and CD Projekt, I can't think of a major multinational Polish tech company.
In fact, almost every major Polish company is either entirely owned by a foreign investor or state owned. I think Eurocash is the only notable exception.
I have zero doubt we’d invoke Article V immediately and even if we were lucky and nuclear war was not the result, Russia’s conventional forces are at an order of magnitude more of a disadvantage to the west.
They won't go pay an exponentially higher price by invading a nuclear state, which, thanks to NATO, is what they'd be doing invading Poland. It's strange to think there's not a substantial difference between invading a non-NATO, non-nuclear state and one that is.
It’s just strange to me when people act like it isn’t a huge part of the calculus, or that invading a NATO nation is an obvious next move for Russia, when 70 years of history indicates otherwise.