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first question can a poor country
reasonably aspire to become a high
income one within a few years second
question how much time would they really
need and third question how would they
do it dear viewer these are some of the
most common questions that you send us
here on this channel we've seen in
various videos how several countries
have managed to change their luck and
become locomotives well dear viewer in
this video i want to tell you about a
very particular case i want to tell you
about poland because poland's becoming
something of a new germany well listen
up
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here's a question for you and as always
please do not google it which do you
think is the city with the most polish
inhabitants warsaw maybe krakow well
wrong actually it would be chicago two
million polish people live in chicago
yes we are really not kidding here
dear viewer
it's not been easy for poles during the
second world war poland was the country
that suffered the most no less than one
out of every five poles that's almost
six million people which is the
conservative estimate by the way lost
their lives and after that disaster they
endured 44 years of a communist
government who in addition to exerting
an enormous amount of political
repression also left them as a poor
country
in 1989 when this system came to an end
poland's per capita income was between
three and five times smaller than that
of developed countries such as italy
france or the united kingdom but just
hold on a second because things they've
really changed
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poland a country located halfway between
paris and moscow and has 40 million
inhabitants completely changed its model
and since they've done this their
economy has grown by over 4
every year
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all right so now you might be thinking
did i just put too much emphasis on four
percent a year because it doesn't sound
that impressive i mean this is
especially if you compare it to the
pretty crazy growth rates that you can
see in the asian tigers four percent
kind of sounds like a joke right well
folks if you are thinking that you are
missing a couple of important details
the first is that we're talking about
almost 25 years of uninterrupted
economic growth here not even the great
crisis of 2008 and 2009 really affected
this country at all we could say that
poland's moving kind of like a giant
cargo ship it's not the fastest ship on
the water for sure but it has moved an
incredible distance
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put another way young polish people have
pretty much no idea what an economic
crisis is like
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the second detail is also very important
here because unlike what happened with
the asian tigers poland has had this
huge growth while being a consolidated
democracy and by the way that really
kind of dispels an important myth here
and that's that countries need a strong
hand in order to grow
well anyway thanks to this growth poland
has had an amazing 25 years this country
has gone from having average salaries of
between 10 to 15 000 american dollars
per month to having a per capita income
taking into account each country's price
difference that in 2018 will be higher
than that of greece portugal and every
latin american country
and the reality is it's also not really
that far behind spain or italy either
but having gotten to this point i think
there's a question that we really need
to answer how did they achieve this well
listen up because that's what we're
going to talk about in today's video
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the end of an era
for 44 years from 1945 to 1989 the
socialist state of the people's republic
of poland a satellite country of the
soviet union was in power by the way to
give you an idea of how great moscow's
control was it's said that when in 1950
the polish leader boloslaw beret showed
joseph staley himself a draft of the
future polish constitution that the
leader of the soviet union made dozens
of corrections by hand which of course
were taken into account anyway the
polish regime was one of the least harsh
in the entire soviet orbit
for example most of the land wasn't
collectivized the catholic church was
allowed to function with relative
freedom and even though political
repression was high it wasn't quite as
intense as it was in other countries
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even so of course as in any good
socialist country the state controlled
almost everything and in 1989 its
economy completely shattered
now thanks to all these small freedoms a
real political opposition emerged led
among others by lec valencia the leader
of the independent solidarity union the
first free union of all eastern european
countries
thanks to this when the soviet union's
power began to crumble poland became the
first country in eastern europe to set
its political transition in motion to
completely abandon communism and so on
june 4th 1989 the first relatively free
elections were held and with that was no
turning back
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shock therapy
just a few months after the first
elections in september of 1989 the
minister of finance lessek balceravits
set a plan on the table to shred the
entire communist fabric and replace it
with a capitalist model three months
later this shock therapy as it's been
known was launched
poland exerted a liberal program called
shock therapy the idea was either the
patient improves or dies from one day to
the next everything was liberalized in a
very rigid and centralized economy in
which prices and needs had nothing to do
with reality he called it the lunar
economy everything was fiction piotr
pineagenia olshinsky polish diplomat
suddenly everything changed
prices were liberalized controls were
lifted people were able to set up
private businesses they stopped printing
money the economy began to open up to
the world and a plan was launched to
privatize public enterprises
so within a short time not even the
polls could recognize poland also the
government had a very clear idea about
the future poland needed to get as far
away from russia as possible and
strengthen its ties with the rest of
europe and the united states so was the
result of all of this well a few years
later they joined both the european
union and nato now what model do you
think the country has followed since
then
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change of course
now we've already told you plenty of
times the world is getting better
poverty is decreasing and countries are
getting richer but despite this
belonging to the club of rich countries
is still a difficult mission even so
everything points to poland achieving
this within a very short amount of time
dear viewer this country is becoming
eastern europe's germany
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see poland has become an industrial
powerhouse flooded with multinationals
and like in germany its small and
medium-sized companies have begun to
cross the border the result since 1989
its foreign trade has multiplied by more
than 25. polish exports amount to almost
200 billion dollars per year which
represents more than 40 percent of the
country's gdp which is a seriously high
number
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this simply explains why polish roads
are full of trucks so now you must be
wondering well how are they achieving
all of this what on earth is the key to
their success well dear viewer take note
here the polish recipe has four main
ingredients
first the establishment of institutions
that attract a lot of foreign investment
legal security property rights ease of
setting up companies and competition for
example 14 special economic zones have
been created where any interested
company can gain many advantages
second strict controls of public
accounts poland's government is one of
the most healthy in the european union
public debt for example is barely 50
percent of the gdp and almost as
importantly since 1989 they have been
set on fighting inflation so no printing
bills to finance the government
basically the opposite of countries like
argentina
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third quality education you heard that
right poland has managed to make their
educational system work and they've done
it without wasting huge amounts of money
its rate of university students is
higher than the average of the european
union 9 out of 10 young people complete
secondary education and according to
international studies the polish
education system is one of the 10 best
not just in europe but in the whole
world
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and fourth there's moderate taxes for
example companies are taxed 19 while
small companies are taxed 15. and income
tax breaks down into two brackets 18 for
the first 24 000 and 32 for the rest
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and in addition because poland is a
fairly conservative country families
have even more advantages so if we take
into account both personal taxes and
pension payments poland is the fourth
oecd country where families pay less
direct taxes
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so it's with these four ingredients that
poland has managed to become eastern
europe's germany an export and
industrial power with a healthy
government and a quality of life that
just keeps on growing the best proof of
this is perhaps that within a few years
the great power of the east has gone
from being a country of immigrants to a
country of immigrants
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from a country of immigrants to a
country of immigrants
in recent years if something has
characterized the polish economy it's
the simple availability of work
unemployment is approaching six percent
and many companies are beginning to have
a problem finding workers
initially foreign companies would only
look for highly experienced employees
with titles now they take everyone and
give them a month of training if
necessary roman polik entrepreneur and
of course if companies need a lot of
workers and can't find them while wages
go up
the average gross salary in the first
quarter of 2018 was 7.1 percent higher
than in the same period in 2017. average
gross salary exceeds 1400 per month the
central statistics office of poland and
you know what this situation has led to
well first many young poles who until
recently left on mass to richer european
union countries now are deciding to stay
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and second in recent years more than two
million ukrainians have settled in
poland especially young people looking
for better opportunities than the ones
they could find in their country of
origin this means that poland now has
more people arriving than leaving
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now as we always say visualpolitik not
everything is so great poland is facing
quite a serious aging problem and the
law and justice party a very nationalist
and very conservative party won every
recent election and now controls the
country some of their decisions have
caused the european union to threaten
poland with sanctions and even suspend
their rights as a member but that's
something we're going to address in a
future video now it's your turn do you
think poland would be a good example for
cuba or would the chinese model actually
be better well leave your answer in the
comments section below as well as in
this survey and i really hope you
enjoyed that video if you did please
don't forget to subscribe to our channel
for brand new videos also do not forget
to check out our friends at the
reconsider media podcast they provided
the vocals in this episode they were not
mine and as always
thank you for watching
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