Poland now 6th-largest EU economy, ahead of Switzerland and Belgium | Hacker News Reader

Poland now 6th-largest EU economy, ahead of Switzerland and Belgium

euronews.com

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).

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).

Been to Poland a few times and it's pretty decent, everything as you say and unlike their immediate western neighbour their trains work too. It's a pretty nice place.

Now if only they didn't have a language that's made up mostly of WiFi passwords...

Did your change of choice happenned right when the GDP of Poland went above the GDP Belgium ?

>Polish living standard in major metro areas are significantly above Belgian standards.

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...>

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

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.

Nobody buys new though, these are for companies and posh people

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.

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

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.

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.

87% of Poles own a house in comparison to 67% in US.

due to large percentage of younger people not being able to afford to move away from their parents

you got a source for that?

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/home-owne...

Also my bad, it's 65.7% for US and 87.3% for Poland

A website does not a source make.

It's citing a wikipedia article, which itself has been flagged for needing a better source [0]. The wikipedia in turn cites Statista [1], which claims this is "original data" that cannot be verified without a paid account.

Additionally, the number itself seems to actually be taken from Eurostat (an actual source) [2], which helpfully defines what they mean as the 87% for Poland. Surprise, surprise, it's not actually "87% of Poles own a house". It's "87% of Poles live in households owning or renting their home". That's also conveniently missing from another headline-grabbing numbers like "16% share of housing costs to total disposable income", which refers to the total income of the entire household.

And if you want to delve deeper as for why these numbers might be what they are, you have to consider the following too:

Poland has Europe's 2nd highest share (>50%) of adults living with in their parents' home [3], with 3rd lowest average number of rooms per person [2], 2nd highest household size (number of people) [2], with one third of people living in overcrowded homes (3rd highest in Europe, vs the EU average of 16%)[2].

All this being said, I don't doubt for a second that US is much worse in this regard.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owner-occupancy#International_...

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/246355/home-ownership-ra...

[2] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/interactive-publications/h...

[3] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/ilc_lvps09/de...

All this effort to disprove OP's figures and source, without providing your supposedly accurate figures. What's the point?

what? i literally include the (actually sourced) eurostat figures in the comment. they just don't measure what OP was saying they do.

do you want me to run my own study of personal home ownership or something? lol

This is about country's total GDP. Per capita graph in TFA shows Poland is still behind Belgium [1].

[1] https://images.euronews.com/articles/stories/09/86/71/11/108...

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.

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.

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.

It doesn't matter for quality of life but it matters politically. Larger GDP in nominal terms = more influence in the world.

Its absolutely meaningless. Wealth cannot be measured. But nails and hammer blabla

Can you share more? What makes you feel less rich in comparison?

This may also be affected my the conditions I've grown up with (lower middle class, borderline poverty at times) but I find myself to be much frugal by default when compared to my friends from Western Europe. For example: I barely every get coffee from a coffee shop because in Poland the prices are ridiculous (≈$4.5/€3.7 for a flat white cup is standard). If I'm desperate for coffee when out (and didn't bring my own) I look for the nearest vending machine or, at worst, a Żabka (a 7-Eleven equivalent). The people I know from Belgium but also Germany or France just go to a Starbucks or Costa without hesitation. Just little habits like this are what makes me feel the difference in both mentality and income. PS Sorry for the late response.

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.

This is not viable long term, but cool to ride the train while the outsourcing lasts.

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

Why just in the last 5 years? They got a lot of money from the EU since 2004. And that's fine, because the EU also profitted from their membership. All relatively poorer EU countries are net receivers, but not all of them are able to use that money effectively, at least some because of huge corruption. So good for Poland they've been able to invest that money into good causes.

Indeed, this is a great example of how the EU manages to grow its internal market.

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

Good investment.

> 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.

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.

I live in Switzerland and have worked in projects in Poland. It's obvious which country is wealthier.

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.

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.

> 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.

> 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.

Yours is the non-sequitur: I responded to a claim that the EU was 'top-heavy', which I interpreted as 'economic output is concentrated in a few countries'. Regardless of GDP growth, Germany and France output far more than some much smaller but faster growing countries.

> 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.

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.

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.

Wrong. I’m a 40 something ethnic minority guy and I voted to leave. Back then I was in my 30s. Whats true is that remainers were more vocal and loud about their message, whilst the silent majority did what silent majorities do .. quietly won, they always do.

you’re in the minority of under 65s who voted to kill the economy and take away freedoms. You’re in the minority of workers (assuming you work).

Nobody claimed no one under 65 voted for Brexit, just the majority. At your age in rhe 25-35 bracket you were outnumbered 2:1.

If votes were weighed by years you have to live with it remain would have won with about 65%.

I hope you’re enjoying it.

Im sat in Hydepark writing this as I smoke a Cuban cigar .. so excuse the typos .. but in an egalitarian society ur age doesnt entitle you to a greater vote .. Aldo what happens is that political attitudes change with age … so like at 25 you typically have fewer dependants .. fewer responsibilities and less skin in the game but as u get older you may have kids .. mortgage .. a career and much more to protect .. (sorry to give such dad vibes but u get the point ) .. so naturally as u age it makes u less enamoured with utopian promises and be more conscious of consequences .. like immigration .. healthcare .. inequality etc etc

This is also why ur weight votes by years left to live logic is flawed .. democracy is basically one person .. one vote .. not one vote weighted by how many years you have left to live .. it wouldent be fair I I ask u to start weighing votes by how much taxes you pay, dependants u supporter or years worked .. would it ?

PS: I do work

So you’re in the selfish minority that stinks up public areas. Big surprise.

.. and you’re in the generous majority that enjoys inhaling the fresh smells of "post beer" human urine, vomit, dog faeces, and the whiff of weed in public parks ;)

> 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”

Recent polling shows that ~20% of Leave voters favour rejoining the EU, so, well, apparently some of them learned.

Brexit is widely regarded as both a failure (in the UK) and a cautionary lesson (in the rest of the EU).

By widely you mean the guardian readership ? Or some left leaning poll ? What’s your source ?

It is fairly clear that all polling favours rejoining: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potential_re-accession_of_the_...

Interestingly, the inflection point seems to have been within months of the UK actually leaving (while the UK formally left in Jan 2020, nothing changed until Jan 2021).

i see. so according to you (and the polsters) i guess its fair to conclude that a significant majority either wanted to remain in the EU or came to feel that way after brexit ... to further play along .. nigel farage .. an outsider to the political system (lets call him political white hat hacker) .. was able to exploit vulnerabilities in this system and the public opinion to get brexit over the line ..

I'm curious to understand why those vulnerabilities existed in the first place .. and why weren’t they patched? also once you get hacked, its a sobering experience and u invest more in fixing the root cause .. so net net .. even with your narrative, brexit has been amazing for Great Britain (the best country in the world imho)

It was really more Johnson than Farage, though he was by no means the only mover. There had been a campaign to convince the British people that all their problems were down to the EC/EU since the early 70s.

Remember, a lot of brexit voters voted for, essentially, a completely fantasy situation; they thought they'd be getting a situation similar to Norway, only with no free movement and with opt-outs from all rules. The EU was extremely clear from the beginning that this was not on the table (it never made sense in the first place; you can't have a single market where one participant is excused from following any of the rules), but Johnson et al were telling them that was what they were voting for. The hard(ish) brexit they ended up with is very much not what most people will have been expecting.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/987347/brexit-opinion-po...

The UK was always, ah, _special_. Factions in the UK were propagandising for some sort of Brexit essentially since the UK joined the EC.

That said, recent polling _in the UK_ shows a solid majority favouring rejoining the EU. About 20% of people _who voted leave_ now appear to favour rejoining the EU. Brexit actually getting sufficient support to win a referendum was kind of a moment-in-time thing.

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.

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

What constitutes a top of the line house in Eastern Europe? It's unlikely to be what Mississippians consider top of the line.

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

>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.

American houses are made of paper. They need reroofing so often the cost always comes up in discussion of house ownership.

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.

My friend’s inflaws have an old house in France. They’ve just had an air-air AC system installed, are you saying AC isn’t available in Europe?

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

Berkley is defiantly not representative to most of the USA. They have strange regional politics that restricts most residential construction.

> Keep being smug, it just proves my point,

I wasn't trying to be smug, sorry it came across that way.

How much did it cost?

About $100 per sqf, using literally the best material I could find for the envelope and most things, the tiles will last hundreds of years, the insulation is 50% thicker than most builds in the area, the windows are top of the line passivhaus certified, etc.. The only thing I couldn't get was hardwood floor but this was mostly due to the heating floor

https://www.moderndream.cz/katalog-domu/

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.

Interesting, thanks for the link. For comparison, here are the "top of the line" houses in my area (Iowa, not Mississippi):

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.

The link I provided is a builder and the standard cost for what's considered somewhat high end modern construction. Tons of new homes like this BTW.

Your link is just expensive homes on real estate with varying levels of build quality by the look of things so not exactly comparing apples to apples...

If you just want to see expensive real estate in Czech Republic (I know, not Poland, but still Eastern Europe) here: https://www.sreality.cz/hledani/domy?razeni=nejdrazsi&cena-o...

Ah, I can't read Czech so I didn't know :P

P.S. I'm not trying to prove anything, I just thought it'd be interesting to compare. I think my original comment about top of the line houses in Eastern Europe came across as combative/challenging when I didn't mean it to.

Ah. Yeah it sounded combative. Also there's a stereotype of Eastern Europe being poor. Also both myself and another poster interpreted top of the line as meaning the house itself + finishes, not just price/location.

Anyhow it's a funny place. My wife's 92 year old grandma had to be forced to add heating and an indoor toilet to her 100+ year old farmhouse (old people are stubborn) meanwhile, her cousin in the same village has a modern home with solar panels and every convenience you can think of (including AC).

Top of the line in price but inside it looks like social housing or cheap hollywood studios lol, it so fucking tacky

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.

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

The conclusion you should draw from this is therefore "GDP is a shit metric for measuring anything and even worse as a target".

Poorest is a function of per-capita income and larger economy is a function of population. You're comparing different things.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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].

[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...

Holistic...chooses one single state....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_French_regions_by_Huma... Guess France is a third world country too.

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.

Childbirth mortality, lifespan-healthspan, murder rate, paid vacation, worked hours per year, job security, etc.

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.

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.

Yeah, us American's don't even want lower Childbirth mortality, longer lifespan-healthspan, lower murder rates, paid vacations, lower worked hours per year, job security, etc. Those things are just for crappy countries.

You sure defended the heck out of our big, beautiful, great again, rapidly declining shit sandwich. Not sure the euros will buy it (it's a shit sandwich after all) but we can feel less bad about our declining numbers/values/social contract. All we need is this lamp. And that's it. And this deck of cards. But that's all we need. We don't need those other things. And this, this paddle game. This lamp, and this deck of card, and this paddle game. That's all we need. None of those other things listed. We don't need none of that. What do you think we Americans are, some kind of jerk or something?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VbI5zcB8Ac

I'm looking at facts. If someone tells me that the US qualifies as a third-world country based on metrics, and those metrics don't support the claim, I'm going to point that out. I'm sorry if this upsets you. (Not really.)

Should we do better? Absolutely. Are we a third-world country based on the listed metrics? No.

There are plenty of things that are actually wrong with this place without making up stuff like Americans working more and having worse job security than first-world countries.

Not facing the choice of dying or going bankrupt?

What’s the metric for that?

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.

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.

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.

Actually medical debt is the norm for why people face bankruptcy in the USA.

65% of US bankruptcies are due to medical debt. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/medical-b...

"Most bankruptcies are medical debt" and "most people do not go bankrupt from medical issues" are completely compatible statements.

> Should people with shit jobs have shit health care? No, and it's very unfortunate that this is how things work.

Coming back to my original comment.

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

The big beautiful bill just cut off 4 million people's insurance assistance including mine.

But nice, blame the uninsured people for not having insurance because of... checks notes.. the unrelated programs they don't qualify for that almost all states have for coverage for children. Not a very honest 'to be totally honest' no-example example.

You friend's dad will most likely be required to give up his home and assets if he survives the treatment. Many US seniors are now divorcing in order to protect their homes and assets from medical expenses.

100,000,000 American owe $220 billion in medical debt. https://www.ilr.cornell.edu/scheinman-institute/blog/healthc...

In the US medical bills are half of all debts sent to collections.

41% of US adults have health care debt, 14 million had medical debts over $1,000 and 3 million had debts over $10,000. https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/the-burden-of-medi...

65% of US bankruptcies are due to medical debt https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/medical-b...

530,000 American families file for bankruptcy due to medical bills every year https://balancingeverything.com/medical-bankruptcies-statist...

Debt burden is strongly associated with increased likelihood of suicide attempt https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33989465/

I lost my medical insurance due to the big beautiful bill. It's an interesting change in patriotism when your country says 'you know what, just fucking die because you are rebuilding your life. We don't believe in second chances in the USA'. For millions and millions this country is a ghoulish nightmare.

100 million Americans owing $220 billion in medical debt is an average of $2,200 per person. That's too much, but that's not bankruptcy levels of debt. 100 million Americans owe $1.6 trillion in auto loan debt.

530,000 medical bankruptcies per year, in a country of 350 million. That number is too high, but the average American does not go through this.

Please understand the difference between saying "everything is great" and "it's not great, but it's not as bad as you say it is." I'm saying the latter, in response to comments incorrectly stating that the average American experience is that major medical issues result in bankruptcy.

Now add in all the Americans that don't go to doctors to get treated because their insurance doesn't cover it or it's too expensive, and you're again arguing my original comment for me

Bankruptcies normally impact whole families. So 530,000 bankruptcies could easily be 4,000,000 people impacted, per year. Over the last 20 years that is over 20% of the population.

Or they could all be single people who went bankrupt because they gambled away all of their money, but they list medical bills as a contributing factor because their bankruptcy filing included a $20 copay for treating their gambler's elbow. See, I can make up stuff too.

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.

This is some Reddit ass "America bad" diatribe that doesn't mesh with reality

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...."

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...

That's a non sequitur. The healthcare system has very little impact on life expectancy.

It doesn't work OK at all, you spend twice as much per capita for worse services on average

> but there's a pretty big gulf between a significant minority who can face massive financial burdens from medical care

"significant minority".

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.

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.

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.

If you pay much more and get worse results that's objectively not OK. It means the system is inefficient and could be easily improved saving lives and money.

> 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.

I've seen this defence many times, in different contexts, and it always strikes me as very strange. Why do you assume most Americans are rich? And why do you assume they are the ones that matter? Very weird. But let's take it at face value.

Looking at the graph of life expectancy vs percentile of income - US seems to be below 80 years for 50th percentile:

https://preview.redd.it/at-every-income-level-us-americans-l...

Which would make your point false regardless of the weirdness of it.

Another interesting graph: https://ourworldindata.org/cdn-cgi/imagedelivery/qLq-8BTgXU8...

I would not call it "OK".

> What do we call a place like Hungary which is quite a bit below the US here?

I could do the trick you did, sayign that Hungary has the same life expectancy as Illinois, and richer parts of EU has better life expectancy, therefore Hungary doesn't matter. That would be disingenious tho. It does matter, and healthcare in Hungary obviously isn't doing OK. It is more cost-effective than US tho.

> Why do you assume most Americans are rich? And why do you assume they are the ones that matter? Very weird. But let's take it at face value.

Seriously? The quote you're responding to divides Americans up into "the poorest" and everyone else. By definition, most Americans are not "the poorest." I'm not assuming anything.

This comment tree is very frustrating. People don't seem to understand the idea of metrics, or "objectively," toss out sophomoric "America bad" nonsense like, "you don't get paid vacation" (almost everyone does), "you go bankrupt if you get cancer" (almost nobody does), "you work more than other rich countries" (we don't), and act like any correction is a equivalent to saying we're the best.

There are real criticisms to be made about the US. There are ways in which the US is behind other wealthy nations and we shouldn't be. But it is very much not "basically a third-world country masquerading as a first-world one...."

> EU life expectancy was 81.7 in 2024. Two years makes one of them OK and the other not?

No. We call the place with higher maternal mortality, higher infant mortality, huge number of medical bankruptices, higher untreated chronical diseases due to insurance issues etc. despite spending significantly higher on healthcare not OK

How exactly does the healthcare system cause people to crash their cars, abuse recreational drugs, overeat, and commit violent crimes?

Medical bankrupcy would make you homeless and cause you to abuse drugs and commit crimes at higher rate for one example.

Badly controlled medical system with bad incentives caused opioid crisis.

Bad incentives (government and healthcare system earning money on people getting sick instead of losing money on them) also makes it less likely for the system to focus on healthy work-life balance (paid maternity leave, paid vacations, good preventive care, education for healthy lifestyle) and instead focuses on expansive aftercare.

What a weird comment. Most people who go through bankruptcy don't become homeless. And most people who go through medical treatment don't become bankrupt.

If it happens much more in US than in other countries - it contributes.

There's about 500 000 medical bankrupcies in US per year. That's huge.

Also - medical debt (not even bankrupcy necessarily) contributes significantly to homelessness:

https://publichealthpost.org/health-equity/medical-debt-home...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32513034/

> two-thirds [of homeless interviewed] reporting current medical debt. Almost half reported trouble paying medical bills for themselves or family members. Almost one-third believed medical debt was in part responsible for their current housing situation. More than half with medical debt incurred this debt while they were covered under insurance. People who had trouble paying medical bills experienced a more recent episode of homelessness 2 years longer than those who did not have such trouble, even after controlling for race, education, age, gender, and health status

Your numbers are way off. Most people who file bankruptcy have some medical debt but medical debt is seldom the primary cause of bankruptcy. When people suffer a loss of income or get overextended then they tend to prioritize their housing and car bills out of necessity, and quit paying medical bills.

The US healthcare financing system is a disaster and needs reform. But if you look deeper into the alarmist reports about medical bankruptcies you'll find that they're lying with statistics to push a political narrative.

https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(09)00525-7/fulltex...

> The article by Himmelstein et al1 in this issue of the The American Journal of Medicine documents that health care expenses were the most common cause of bankruptcy in the United States in 2007, accounting for 62% of US bankruptcies compared with 8% in 1981.2

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6366487/

> Table 1 displays debtors’ responses regarding the (often multiple) contributors to their bankruptcy. The majority (58.5%) “very much” or “somewhat” agreed that medical expenses contributed, and 44.3% cited illness-related work loss; 66.5% cited at least one of these two medical contributors—equivalent to about 530 000 medical bankruptcies annually.

"Medical expenses contributed" is awfully vague. Doesn't any expense contribute to bankruptcy? I'm more interested in the ~40% who didn't have medical expenses contribute. Are they not seeing doctors at all, or are they on a program that covers all medical expenses?

I find this framing to be extremely misleading. "Medical bankruptcies" suggests something like someone gets cancer and insurance doesn't cover the treatment and they end up a million bucks in debt to the hospital. But the numbers above seem to cover someone who got fired, bet all their savings on black at the roulette table, and also visited the dentist.

It's actually worrying that people seriously believe stuff like this.

Simply wrong in most states.

Most? This kinda affirms my point. Where healthcare is free at point of use, the problem is non-existent.

No it doesn't. You said "probably will bankrupt your family." This is not true.

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.

Unless you're one of the 15+ million who are disenrolled from Medicaid. Or you're one of the 8.1% uninsured in states who didn't expand ACA: https://academic.oup.com/healthaffairsscholar/article/2/1/qx...

But sure, the poor should just stop being poor.

See my original comment. These advanced cancer treatments are often not paid for by insurers.

Which cancer treatments are those?

Great news, but could we have a higher GDP per capita, please? That's the most important part, isn't it?

- i came expecting to read something about how taking no immigrants has helped or something along those lines

- has there been any studies conducted on how 10% immigration affects a country's economic outcomes?

But its not true! We had like massivie migration in last few years, mostly Ukrainian though

Not surprising at all. Sane government that’s been focusing on what Poland needs above what anyone else demands.

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.

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?

Yeah, they may be defining 'freedom of expression'... interestingly. For instance, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT-free_zone - such freedom of expression!

No, think of the US founders who were freedom of speech champions.

Yet conservative in sense that they... declared independence? I'm trying to follow the second half of that logic train.

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.

Ah, yes, when I think 'conservative', I think... revolutionaries?

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.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr...

> Wouldn’t „more freedom of expression“ imply less conservative?

Depends on the status quo, I suppose.

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.

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.

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“?

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.

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.

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.

Right. So the same people protect people from being killed by providing them with healthcare, food and shelter?

After all to do that doesn’t require involuntary servitude to carry a fetus for 9 months

The Polish government provides that for its citizens along with foreigners.

https://www.gov.pl/web/family/social-assistance-principles

The Catholic Church also provides additional services that includes food, healthcare and shelter.

https://caritas.pl/

So yes, it seems like the people who support abortion bans do provide them with healthcare, food and shelter.

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.

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?)

No it’s not related to removal of PiS at all. Poland’s economy was booming under PiS

Did it stop booming afterwards?

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").

There’s a reason the solidarity movement arose in Poland

Remarkable culture

Did you also talk about this:

> “Throughout OECD countries, men are much more likely to die from suicide, acute alcohol abuse or a drug overdose – on average, almost 4 men for every woman. This gender gap is largest in Poland, at 8.2.”

See figure 5.8 at https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/2020/03/how-s-life-2020...

What do you think might be the reason behind this?

> It stood out from the other Eastern European countries that I visited on that trip.

Just note for the other readers, don't call people in Poland, Czechia, Slovakia or Hungary Eastern Europeans unless you want to irritate them and look like pretentious tourist.

While you were in Poland, did you call it "Eastern Europe" to people's faces? How did they react?

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".

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.

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.

Not to remove any merit from Poland, but I think the EU deserves a bit of recognition here.

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.

Best thing Poland did was not join the Euro

I think you're onto something here.

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).

Truly Poland stronk.

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.

Lol Switzerland isn’t in the EU.

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 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.

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).

Yeah, it's a bit confused. The map shows the EEA, not the EU.

It isn't an EU member but it is part of the EU single market.

Barely. There are import duties on everything. Seems the old agreements that expired were hard to replace. At least they got the academic research funding sorted last year.

Part of EEA and Schengen, but those are not the EU.

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