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Comment by jillesvangurp | Hacker News Reader

Think of it as an investment. The rest of the EU also benefits from their hard work, and economic prosperity. Other countries in the EU have also enjoyed economic growth and support over the years.

I'm old enough to remember internal borders with passport checks in Europe, before the wall fell and Poland was still on the other side of that. Nice to see them moving on from that.

Thanks to the EU free movement of people, I've now studied, worked and lived in four different countries. I know people all over Europe. I currently live in Germany. Germany benefits a lot from the EU. Yes it costs money. But there's trade, access to skilled labour, etc. as well. And if you look at Poland, it's what sits between Germany and Belarus & Ukraine. So, there's a strategic relevance as well. Poland doing fine is good for everyone else in the EU.

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> The rest of the EU also benefits from their hard work

I don't know. I want to agree with you, but a large part of the economic growth in Poland is off-shoring and cheap tax (~12% on contract) for tech workers. The average tech wage there now is pretty similar to the UK, and I don't really see many startups there - probably in part because of how bureaucratic their business system can be. I don't know if this influx of foreign money from off-shoring and surge in real estate pricing is sustainable or good in the long run.

Other than a massive influx of overdevelopment of flats in the cities (sometimes too rushed, I've seen reports of flat blocks subsiding because of cutting corners), I'm not sure where else the increase it.

Do you have any sources for the claim that a large part of growth is off-shoring?

Because that seems extremely implausible, and actually very insulting to the incredible success of Eastern Europe, before and after joining the EU, in closing the gap to Western Europe over the last 3 decades.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...

The reason for the growth over different time frames can differ. Anecdotal, but most of the IT people I know from Poland worked for, as they call it, "big corpo" and generally it's offshoring either directly with companies such as DXC/Luxoft or n-ix, or through local offices (Akamai for example). If you look at the average salary in Poland (in general), and the average tech salary + the number of tech workers there, it's easy to say a large part of the GDP is tech.

Whether or not it's offshoring is a little less obvious, but I can't think of more than 2 or 3 successful Polish tech companies.

What is the average salary, the average tech worker salary, and the number of tech and other workers in Poland?

There are other countries in the world or even in the EU where salaries are lower than in Poland. Why don't they see the similar growth? I guess this is more nuanced than just lowered salaries can explain it. Surely, that's part of the equation but to develop highly innovative economy, one needs to start with something. That's how China started, how Korea started etc.

It's easy to say but it's also wrong. I had Claude look for actual sources.

https://emerging-europe.com/it-sector-in-focus-poland/

The IT sector is 4.4% of GDP. Poland has seen 3% of GDP growth year on year.

I’m so confused. At least in tech all the big companies I work with are hiring in Poland because it is about the same as India after losses around fake hiring and the quality averages better.

It is absolutely a huge offshoring target at least for the US.

Everywhere is an offshoring target for US tech. Tons of US tech companies have Canadian offices because Canadian rates are far below US rates.

What exactly is confusing to you?

Anecdotes from your bubble inside one particular industry, that represents a small fraction of the economy of a nation, do not adequately explain the post soviet transformation of economies containing hundreds of millions of people. That's all.

Specifically I asked for evidence that current GDP growth is significantly driven by this specific type of foreign investment, as claimed. None has been forthcoming.

Large part is due to offshoring, but not the IT. Offshoring the manufacturing.

Also some companies are moving their offices from Poland to India now.

China was the offshore haven and built their own domestic economy off the expertise while still maintaining very low income taxes and 15% corporate tax for tech companies.

You dont have money, you complain. You (as in your country) get the money, yet you still complain.

Sure, its not ideally distributed, but nowhete is. Such economic success will drag many parts of the country up. Yes, jobs not paid the best will have to commute from further. But compared to where Poland was 2 decades ago (been there many times), its great growth and success.

Plus you guys have correct mentality to by far the biggest threat to Europe - russia. Not so common in eastern Europe, russian-paid politicians are quite successful in some places. But of course Poland has a history with russia to remember so thats luckily not an option.

Russia with conventional weapons is no longer threat to anyone.

>Think of it as an investment.

An economic investment as well as one of solidarity. People forget that the EU is a peace project that ensures peace via economic cooperation. This nuance seems trivial but is actually massively important. I can see trust degrading in the US but being fortified across the EU.

Look at Hungary recently, they did a 180 not because of Brussels or Berlin saying they should. Hungarians are sceptical of both. However they do trust the Polish people who they see as genuine peers who are very pro-EU.

They didn't do a 180 at all. Tusk basically shares Orban's entire platform, particularly vis-à-vis the EU. Orban just got caught in corruption scandals.

Orban is a Russian asset. Tusk isn't.

Hungary is massively pro-EU as shown by polls (86% in 2025).

I wonder if that's part of why the US is a superpower: the richer states being forced to invest in the poorer ones.

In the early 20th century Texas for instance was a poor state, a recipient of federal funds, but now it's an economic powerhouse. (To be precise I still think it's a recipient of federal funding but it holds its own now.)

> Think of it as an investment. The rest of the EU also benefits from their hard work, and economic prosperity. Other countries in the EU have also enjoyed economic growth and support over the years.

It is for as long, as the EU exists in its current form. The rise of anti-EU parties in both Poland and Germany makes it a risky investment.

Thankfully most people have learned from the absolute shambles of Brexit and either of these countries leaving is extremely unlikely.

Have they? https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c1428pev1n0t

Be careful about reading too much into that. Our elections yesterday were for local and sometimes regional representatives - not our central national government. The result might still prompt a change in our unpopular Prime Minister but the high vote for Reform won't necessarily translate into voting for them at the next general election. We often see protest votes for alternative parties in local politics and everyone was expecting one this time.

Surveys here have been showing a trend towards greater public support for the EU. Its advocates have been pushing for closer integration and even talking of a referendum on rejoining. Although of course this also has to be viewed cautiously because the polls before the Brexit referendum had also pointed towards remaining and one of the biggest fans of the EU recently has been that unpopular PM who might not be in office for much longer.

I meant people still in the EU have learned, and laughed, and vowed not to make this mistake.

People in the UK, like the US, seem addicted to voting for morons then being surprised when they do the things morons do.

Also Hungarian change of government has cut off some of the "dark money".

Thinking about that risk increases said risk.

Also, for Germany, and I assume, other EU countries, cohesion and economic strength of the EU is the most important value that exists.

Not necessarily. The fact that investment pays of by cooperation is an argument for it.

There is pretty common trend of people complaining about X being bad coz EU but most of the time it turns into one of

* It was pretty sensible EU directive implemented badly by national govt * It was pretty sensible EU directive implemented okay but communicated badly * Outright lie about the problem and the scope of it.

One example: The people complained that "EU will force them to pay to scrap solar panels"

The truth: Some countries added price of recycling into price of the solar panels, some didn't. Those that did had free recycling, those that didn't needed owner to pay a fee when scrapping it. So, naturally, buying solar panel from country with no fee was cheaper and scrapping it in country with fee was free. EU noticed that loophole and forced countries into including the fee in panel cost:

The truth: Poland applied it by just applying fee to panels bought before the rule unification

The lie number 1: EU forced that implementation on Poland. Nothing was forced, that way of "fixing it" (vs eating the cost was what Polish govt chose

The lie number 2: (and I have no idea where it came from) "You will have to scrap your panels made before this date AND pay for it".

Sometimes I suspect most of that is just russian propaganda using anything to undermine EU

> Outright lie about the problem and the scope of it.

One of my favorites was “EU is banning juice”, when the definition of juice was being standardized and local producers of fruit-flavored sugar water couldn’t keep selling their beverages as “juice” anymore.

There's the classic "bendy banana law" which British tabloids pushed a lot to paint the EU as an inefficient bureaucracy.

In reality it was a way to harmonise banana grading, no one was forbidden to sell abnormally shaped bananas, it would just be classed lower than the "Extra" class.

I a sure it's Russian propaganda that the EU has basically tried for the last 3 years to ban encryption so that it can access all your personal messages without a warrant?

Or is it also Russia propaganda that it wants to force VPNs to collect data on their users or force everyone to use their real identities online so that it makes it easy to prosecute anyone for wrong speech?

https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/the-eu-pr...

Nah, you are right the EU is good for us. No issues there at all.

Just because their is a a circulation of some misinformation, doesn't mean everything is. No institution is perfect. Also it are the member states, that are pushing for it, while the EU parliament is what stroked it down so far.

> Think of it as an investment. The rest of the EU also benefits from their hard work, and economic prosperity. Other countries in the EU have also enjoyed economic growth and support over the years.

This is something I tell people I am generally politically/socially align with (liberals/progressives) when they start talking about “handouts for red states.” California and other areas were not developed on their own, they required years of sustained federal investment and interest in the area.

It obviously goes without saying that conservatives in the US need to stop demonizing taxes so much for the same reason/they need to recognize that as the some of the largest beneficiaries of federal tax dollars they are cutting their nose to spite their face (I believe Kentucky is still the most subsidized state in the US).

All of us should want our states cooperation with the federal government so we can all rise together, and we need to view investing in our neighbors as a collective good.

>This is something I tell people I am generally politically/socially align with (liberals/progressives) when they start talking about “handouts for red states.” California and other areas were not developed on their own, they required years of sustained federal investment and interest in the area.

If they were to ask where you think this "federal investment" funding came from, what would you reply?

Preferably your taxes in particular.

It’s a fair point, but there is a significant difference between investment in infrastructure and education versus just supporting states that are intentionally degrading their infrastructure and education.

Upwards spiral versus downwards. Money pours in for both cases, but only one is really an investment.

Much of it would come from borrowing, which would be paid back using tax revenues in later years from the regions developed using that investment. Just like most investments.

Equating investments in California with the welfare state that is Louisiana is a take

The West Coast of the United States, California, Washington, and Oregon. will just move on like the rest of the world is moving on away from the United States. Turning your back on infrastructure useful infrastructure medicine education, science, schools is not a winning hand long-term.

If you look at a map of the American South Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia will just move on. Actually it’s already happening and has been happening for the last 30 years. Other parts of the American South are however, stuck more firmly in the past and getting further behind and that also applies to some of the Midwestern states.

Louisiana has another ongoing long-term problem the gulf of Mexico is eating away at the bottom half of the state lands end is moving further north that involves scientific observations oh boy thems fighting words.

> California and other areas were not developed on their own, they required years of sustained federal investment and interest in the area.

In a similar way, Western Europe benefited from a lot of investment after WW2, while Eastern Europe didn't receive the same investment then.

So the recent investment OP mentioned is just balancing the scales.

World War II significantly contributed to the development of the West Coast of the United States mid century. San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle harbors became crucial to the war effort in the pacific, leading to industrial expansion and the establishment of the UC system and the junior colleges in California, which eventually led to Silicon Valley, also the large water projects built 50-60 years earlier and the the transcontinental railroads built 50 years prior also didn’t hurt the expansion and growth of the West Coast of the United States either.

Building useful infrastructure, in the can do America of the past worked, the parasitic AI data centers currently, however, appear to be a financial dead end.

That era of America appears to be gone at the Federal level, infrastructure, schools, science, medicine, college, vaccines, voting etc. etc. don’t appear to be on the current menu.

A rising tide lifts all boats

People need something to resent or hold in disregard. Government and taxes are a good target. The problem only really begin when someone actually tries to reduce or eliminate that target. It's the old "be careful what you ask for, you might just get it".

The argument that red states receive handouts is essentially a myth. Almost the entirety of the "handout" is social security/medicare based on where retirees live (notably the sunbelt), where military bases are located (rural areas of less populous states), and where most Federal land management offices and employees are located (the mountain west). Ironically, it counts Federal employment as "welfare" with more steps.

Two of the three are intrinsically tied to the locale. You can't move the National Forests to Manhattan. They closed the military bases in the most expensive areas like California decades ago to save money so they are mostly located in flyover country now.

Social Security actually is a welfare handout but retirees are choosing to move to red states. Unless one is arguing to forcibly prevent retirees from moving to the sunbelt, Social Security dollars will disproportionately flow into those states.

There is no red state "handout".

A cursory search indicates an even split of red/blue states put in more than they get, but that 7 of the top 10 receivers of federal aid are red states. But ultimately my point doesn’t hinge on the ratio: everyone should support solid investments in all states.

You can give all the caveats you want but my point is it doesn’t matter what the reason is, these states rail against taxes and the federal government despite leaning heavily on their investment and “donor states” need to see it as a positive for all of us.

Why does it matter if it’s national parks or military bases or whatever? Do you think these states would gladly give it up so they can “liberate themselves from federal intervention” or whatever? Fat chance.

They show their true colors when blue states need FEMA funding for natural disasters and they balk at any one else getting federal aid.

This [0] mentions that social security, medicare, public assistance and military and other federal wages were a wash, as of 2018-2022 data:

> Digging deeper into the component parts of federal contribution, red and blue states received similar dollar amounts in direct payments on a nominal ($6.9 trillion) and per capita ($42,900) basis, much of which come in the form of payments from Social Security, Medicare, and public assistance programs, such as the earned income and child tax credits. The red and blue states also receive similar amounts for military and non-military wages (excluding the U.S. Post Office, which is self-funded) on a nominal ($650 billion) and per capita ($4,900) basis.

Tax receipts were listed as the most significant difference, and after that other things like military bases, block grants, federal contracts and highways, some going one way, and some the other.

The numbers were interesting. They added it up to $1 trillion going from blue to red states.

[0] https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/118494/documents/...

Yes, this is an important aspect of the EU, and other countries like Spain and Ireland benefited in the same way.

And it's a good thing, but I wish Eastern European countries would recognize this and become more of a team player instead of shitting on EU.

Poland waited for Trump 2nd term, threatening the take some of the EU territory by force to finally transition from buying US weapons to buying from other European countries.

I’m not very familiar with deep EU politics. But I’ve heard a lot of complaints from colleagues in countries like Germany and the Netherlands about feeling like their taxes mainly help countries like Poland.

While what you’re saying may be true, and this prosperity may be good for all of Europe, I think there is a lot of resentment about who the beneficiaries of the EU structure are.

This is how it works. Ireland was a net beneficiary until 2018, and now it is a net contributor (one of only 10 net contributors). These are decades long investments, Poland joined in 2004. Per capita Poland is not the "greatest" beneficiary but I don't think that will help win any arguments for those already resistant to facts or reasoning. https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/12/09/eu-budget-who-p...

Not to mention a stronger economy means stronger defense against the Russian threat.

Okay, but Poland taking all / most of the credit is just strange in that light.

"I'm old enough to remember internal borders with passport checks in Europe"

Did you recently crossed borders? On many the checks are there again, because of fear of immigration terrorism or something, so the people could see, politicians were doing something to make them feel safe (but what I could see when passing borders, especially between poland and germany, were looong lines of trucks, so much for free flowing goods).

Not sure of the current situation, though, but last summer and autumn was horrible with checks (probably still better than what was before, but having experienced the real open border situation, having them restricted again is frustrating).

Not the same extent like it was before… Now most of the times is just slowed down traffic (quick glance who's in car and move on), and more than that I was maybe stopped two times for quick chit-chat (where/why I'm heading). And I crossed, multiple times, borders of DK (they had checks since 2018?), DE, A, IT, CH, CZ…

Quick ID check happened once - when I was traveling with bus across border.

Back in a days it was a lot, lot slower and more detailed.

"Back in a days it was a lot, lot slower and more detailed."

Oh for sure, I have childhood memories of the really dark time, but it is way worse now, than it was back in 2015. I missed flixbus connections because of intense checks and changed vacation plans avoiding long waiting times at borders within EU (my recommendation, cross at night).

Flixbus are a primary target for those inspections...

Is this something new within the last year? I just travelled on Flixbus across Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland and received no checks.

Is it only certain countries?

> Is it only certain countries?

Every country can choose independently, and for each border. From a cursory search, it appears e.g. Poland currently only checks the borders with Germany and Lithuania. You'd have missed any checks on your specific trio, if this list was true at the time:

https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/schengen/schengen...

Your current state is how Canada used to be from the US. Early 2000s we just showed drivers licenses. Went camping, up to Nelson. Then it got less friendly (US side) then passports required. To the point we stopped going. It sucks when politicians make our world smaller as in 'we have access to less' instead of smaller as in 'it's a small world after all'.

Not just Canada but all of North America. I used to go into Mexico with my friends as a teenager to find trouble. No passport or adult supervision required.

I'm surprised how quickly people have forgotten that North America was a giant open border zone until very recently. You only needed a passport to travel overseas. In hindsight that was actually a pretty unique arrangement.

If you miss the old days, try the bus from Vilnius to Minsk. It’s a full on border control just like in the times of the Soviet Union. Only 35 km away from an European Union capital city.

I was just in Europe this February. I took a bus from France to Germany and customs checked the passports of everyone on board.

Try going to Switzerland by car (from France for example), and you'll see what an actual border check is.

Pretty different from having a chance to be stopped by a random check while crossing.

Hm, I went there multiple times from different directions, including france last year and at most had to show ID, but was usually waived on. It really depends I guess.

> I'm old enough to remember internal borders with passport checks in Europe, before the wall fell and Poland was still on the other side of that. Nice to see them moving on from that.

Europe is the outlier here. The rest of the world checks your passport when you come in their country because they like to know who comes and who goes for a lot of reasons including public safety, biosecurity and so on.

The fact that Europe has basically given up on trying to filter who comes in is not necessarily a model that is desirable for the rest of the world.

> Thanks to the EU free movement of people, I've now studied, worked and lived in four different countries.

You can do that without Europe as well. Do you think people did not move to another country or studied in another country before the European countries decided to remove borders? What about now with all the students moving to the US/UK/Australia/Canada?

The question is not whether it is an investment or whether it is not.

The question is whether growth is objective and fair or whether it is not.

For comparison of wealth in Poland, ALL net-subsidies would have to be deducted, because this is essentially wealth taken from other countries, and distributed to poorer areas in the EU. I am not disputing that this leads to more growth; I am disputing the "country xyz is now rich" while not even mentioning the subsidies. And that reuters article does not mention that at all.

It also has to be mentioned because the crazy bureaucrats in Brussels want to aggressively expand eastwards. They think that the richer areas in the EU need to pay for that expansion. I simply fail to agree with that "logic" at all and I also consider it hugely unfair to richer areas. The richer areas made good decisions; now this is being negated by bureaucrats in Brussels. That is unfair. (This is not meant against Poland, but against the constant expansionistic agenda from Brussels.)

Economic zones are NOT zero sum.

And the EU wants to insulate itself from Russia with friendly, ideologically-compatible countries. Can't put a price tag on safety

That also works the other way around: Eastern European countries wanted to join the EU (ok, more importantly NATO, but also the EU) to make sure they never ever again slid into Russia's "sphere of influence". Notwithstanding certain populist EU-skeptic right wing parties that don't seem to mind that anymore (some would say because they are financed by Russia), that's generally still true...

I agree, but people are very weary of these things because of the (correct) belief that their appropriation is guided by unaccountable bureaucrats. It stands in need of justification that Europeans feel they never got to hear

> but people are very weary of these things because of the (correct) belief that their appropriation is guided by unaccountable bureaucrats.

People believe this because every single member state is using EU institutions as a punching bag whenever they have issues locally. The people have no idea how the EU work, they only hear about it when used as a bogeyman

I agree, but subsidies aren't free as well. Simply making the overall cake bigger doesn't necessarily pay out for everyone - some have to foot the bill.

Why not? If the increase in cake size is bigger than the subsidies then it can be a net win, even for the people paying the subsidies.

It also ignores the fact that absent the EU, countries would still have a lot of subsidies.

Because the total increase of the cake can mostly be transferred to those that receive the subsidies. It's not that hard to understand: if you redistribute 10% of total wealth from the top quartile to the bottom quartile for 1% in additional total growth, then even if that additional growth went completely to the top quartile, it would be a net -9% of total wealth for them. I don't say that's a bad thing per se. But it doesn't help to willfully ignore that fact.

Edit: I just now got the part "If the increase in cake size is bigger than the subsidies" – that's a ridiculous assumption. EU total growth in 2025 was 1.5% or 295 billion USD. From 2021-2027, the EU budget committed roughly 370bn € each for Agriculture subsidies and for Cohesion Policies, totaling 720bn € over 7 years; 2025 has seen ~130bn USD from those two buckets alone. Germany alone has paid another 60bn in subsidies the same year. Oh, and there has been a total of 417bn USD in energy subsidies in europe in 2023 (most recent data available). Even if we could attribute all total growth to subsidies alone, we'd have a factor below 0.5 – and that doesn't include any growth through private investmen, PPP, or any kind of increase of regular public spending.

I think what matters is the size of (for example) the German economy with and without the EU.

Futhermore, what matter is the amount of tax collected by the EU. Energy subsidy is not money collected by the EU and distributed.

OTOH, the more developed EU countries want the less developed countries to be reasonably well-off, so they can keep buying stuff from them. E.g. 56% of Germany's exports went to other EU countries in 2025. And, while Trump and Xi Jin Ping are around, that's only going to become more important...

"56% of Germany's exports went to other EU countries in 2025" - because those products are no longer competitive in the open market.

Yeah, they're so uncompetitive that Trump had to introduce tariffs to keep them out. China is a different topic, but I wouldn't generally call German products uncompetitive...

Trump introduced tarrifs because of insane economic and political illiteracy and for no other reason.

The tariffs put on the US by Germany were higher than the other way around in some cases, even though the US wasn’t exporting such products in any significant amount.

The Holocaust was a decision taken by one of the two pillars of the EU, Germany, so countries nowadays being rich or poor has nothing to do with past “good” decisions of those countries populaces. And before anyone commenting that the Holocaust and the German economy are two orthogonal subjects, just look at the corporate history of German industry giants VW and Bayer.

Worse, Germany has one of the worst upward mobility stats in the EU. If you look at the filthy rich families in Germany, most of them have ties to benefitting heavily from WW2.

Neither VW and Bayer are rich because of the Holocaust. They are rich because of good business environment and good corporate decisions after 2nd world war.

From a purely economic viewpoint Holocaust and 2nd world war were very very stupid decisions.

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