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by wowoc 39 days ago
The article on AP literally has a graph showing outsized growth of Poland compared to these countries (measured in GDP per capita).
2 comments

"GDP measured in constant 2021 international dollars, adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP) to account for differences in the cost of goods and services across countries"

Meh, idk what magic maths they pull, but any other sources I find do not corroborate their graph.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352708343/figure/fi...

https://dimiter.eu/Visualizations_files/cee/gdppc_country.pn...

that is a graph of growth, but they started from different baselines, e.g. Hungary was famously known as "the happiest barrack in the communist camp".

Slovakia and Hungary have trailed % growth compared to Poland, but they are far richer countries now that they were 20 years ago, and the GDP per capita for Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia is quite close to each other[0].

I'm not trying to say Poland didn't do well, it did! I'm just saying the advantages of being in the EU outweigh any national merit by a lot, which should be quite self evident.

[0] GDP, nominal, per capita: 31,336 / 28,430 / 31,242 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

If you account for PPP comparing 2006 and 2026 and also take into account cost of living, Slovakia is not that much richer.

Ukraine saw similar rise of PPP per capita as Slovakia and Slovakia wasn't even invaded in 2014.

Switzerland's GDP per capita PPP growth is same as Slovakia and Switzerland is not in EU.