[jakozaur]

Poland's first partly free election was on 4 June 1989, preceded by the roundtable negotiations.

The protests in Czechoslovakia came later, called the Velvet Revolution, from 17 to 28 November 1989. In June 1990, Czechoslovakia held its first democratic elections, a year after Poland.

Poland paved the way for the whole of central and eastern Europe. The Round Table produced the negotiated-exit template that Hungary built on in its own talks that summer, and that Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and the Baltics drew on as their regimes fell within months.

And it did so from the deepest macroeconomic crisis of any of the satellite states: hyperinflation running into the hundreds of percent by late 1989, an unresolved sovereign default from 1981, and chronic shortages.

Since then Poland has converged fastest of any of them. From a low base it has climbed to the upper-middle of central and eastern Europe by GDP per capita PPP, overtaken Hungary, and is now closing on Czechia and Slovenia.

[somenameforme]

I'm curious what this means in real terms from the perspective of a Pole.

GDP/capita is often a relatively useless metric in modern times. For instance Ireland has one of the highest GDP/capitas in the world -- around 50% higher than the US. But that's because of economic games with their working as a tax haven to enable corporations to avoid paying taxes to their home countries. It doesn't translate to anything for the average Irishman.

[scyzoryk_xyz]

As a Polish millenial the perspective is a rollercoaster. In one way the transformation of absolutely everything over and over and over is mind blowing in a positive way. OTOH we're also all paranoid running on what feels like a never ending hamster wheel of inflation, raises and mortgages. And then Gen-Z's feel straight get up locked out of everything.

We visit western European countries and it's like WTF it's cheaper here?

The multi-generational spread is wild - my boss remembers being raised in 80's scarcity culture verging on 2-3rd world hunger. But our entry level employees are running around demanding everyone to be up to date with everything they see and hear in these little glowing rectangles. It's like two separate progressions have been superimposed on top of each other.

[dhosek]

Just as a quick note, the “second world” would have been the Eastern Bloc countries, so by definition, living in Poland in the 80s would have been 2nd-world conditions.

[disgruntledphd2]

Thank you! Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who remembers this. For example, Ireland was a third world country because (theoretically) we were non aligned.

[trhway]

>We visit western European countries and it's like WTF it's cheaper here?

Warsaw is the only place in Europe where a casual search out of curiosity brought 15-20K euro/month developer positions.

[mjtk]

Vibecession at country scale. Seems like growth feels like instability for many citizens.

[daliusd]

Same story in Lithuania

[pseudohadamard]

The Baltic states are a pretty odd mix, Estonia could be any western European country while Latvia next door still feels in places like the Red Army has only just pulled out. It was quite a jolt going from one to the other.

Mind you since we'd started from Russia both of them looked pretty good in comparison, that place was dire.

[boogierobis]

Dude has not been to Narva lol

[sam_lowry_]

Also economic inequality is quite differently shaped across ages

People over 60 are poor, 40..60 are a mixed bag, 20..40 are struggling to keep up.

[rayiner]

> GDP/capita is often a relatively useless metric in modern times.

"Often" is the wrong modifier. GDP/capita aligns very closely with material standard of living for the median person. If you look at the GDP/capita growth in India and China since 1990, or South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, since 1950, that reflects very real increases in material standards for ordinary people.

There's two, relatively well-understood situations where GDP/capita isn't reflective:

1) Countries where the economy is dominated by resource extraction or tourism 2) Tax havens

But it's pretty easy to tell whether one of these exceptions applies. It doesn't in the case of Poland, which has a broad, diversified economy with a high level of industrial production.

[somenameforme]

In the past GDP/capita used to track pretty strongly with most of all desirable metrics. So then it became the goal, and it started becoming heavily detached from those metrics - Goodhart's Law in action. For instance since 1979 in the US (first date this was measured by the Fed) real median wages are up about 14% [1] while real GDP/capita is up 118%.

And those values are even more detached than the inequity there makes clear, because for about 90% of that time wages were completely flat (and even declining) while GDP/capita kept booming up up and away. So the connection between the two has become very weak while in the past it was quite strongly connected. And that's just one random example - pick most of all those desirable metrics and it's a similar story. GDP just doesn't track with them so well anymore at all.

And when you try to compare between countries GDP becomes completely farcical as the ability to produce a zillion dollars of services doesn't translate, or even have much to do with, the ability to produce a zillion dollars of things.

[1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

[standeven]

Isn’t GDP pretty easy to boost with deregulation and government overspending, at least in the short term? Neither of which benefits the people.

[bobthepanda]

You can’t really keep that up over 35 years though, which is what Poland has achieved.

[philwelch]

Deregulation does benefit the people, at least if it's done in ways that lead to sustained economic growth.

[mejutoco]

> GDP/capita aligns very closely with material standard of living for the median person

GDP is an average, not a median, so it might align with the average person, not the median. The average/mean can hide many things (see Anscombe s quartet) which is one of the problems with GDP IMO.

[rayiner]

It depends what you’re using the data for. If you’re comparing across countries, or looking at a developing country over time, it’s a relatively small factor. The ratio between the average and the median isn’t that big even in the U.S. (about 1.3). Meanwhile, Poland’s GDP per capita has tripled since 2005: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location....

[mejutoco]

> The ratio between the average and the median isn’t that big even in the U.S. (about 1.3)

Being off by 30% might not matter for some usages, but it is not a small amount. It seems the median is more accurate to report and we agree.

[dhosek]

I don’t know that there is any way to calculate a median value of GDP/capita. You can look at income distributions and find a median income and compare that to a mean income, which could allow an estimation, but beyond that, GDP is an intrinsically composite number which cannot be easily (at all?) broken down to individual contributions. I assume income is what the parent commenter is basing the median-mean comparison on, but it’s kind of out of nowhere with no explanation.

[rayiner]

For purposes of comparing countries to each other and the same country over time, it’s not 30% off. The average skews higher than the median everywhere, so it’ll be 1.3/1.x.

If you have reported median incomes that are calculated the same way across countries and over time, that would be better. But many countries don’t reliably track that data, and the ones that do calculate it in completely different ways.

[Ygg2]

When economy goes K shaped (only ultra rich or ultra poor with no in-between) GDP is good preidictor of how the ultra rich are fairing.

For everyone else a roulette wheel is a better measurement.

[rayiner]

No economy is K shaped. The vast majority of US income (78%) is earned by people outside the top 1%. It was as high as 90% during the bad economy of the 1970s. Since 1975, real GDP per capita has increased by a factor of 2.8. So the proletariat have 12 percentage points less of a number that’s 2.8 times bigger.

[Ygg2]

Sure there are. US economy is K shaped. You either become rich or end up poor.

It's economy geared for the rich. Where poor only exist to give rich a confidence boost.

[rayiner]

You: "US economy is K shaped. You either become rich or end up poor."

Reality: "The vast majority of US income (78%) is earned by people outside the top 1%."

[felixg3]

Within a short time, especially since the EU accession, the development of Poland is just remarkable. I have personally spent a lot of time there and I think the quality of life, safety, access to healthcare, is excellent. Sure, it’s not perfect, but - I know, capital city bias, but I can’t think of a better place. Macro data, as imperfect as they are, reveal a dramatic trajectory in Life expectancy, HDI, while the gini-coefficient remained relatively stable.

[pipes]

I'm Irish. Well northern Irish. The Republic Ireland seems a lot richer than when I was growing up in n. Ireland. Ireland is the second biggest exporter of software in the world now. I'm pretty certain the tax paid by both corporations and their well paid staff definitely translate to something for the average Irish man. Even if he thinks it doesn't.

[wooger]

US tech companies that 'on paper' export software from Ireland as a tax loophole make it technically the 2nd biggest exporter of software in the world.

There are more people in single 2nd tier city metro areas in other European countries than in the whole of Ireland.

[kazinator]

The protests in Czechoslovakia came earlier, in 1968! The Soviets rolled in the tanks in response.

Poland had a mass solidarity movement rise up in 1980. The USSR didn't decide to send in the military then; they were lucky.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_reaction_to_the_Polish_...

There was a lot of unrest in Poland, and general strikes. Martial law was imposed.

If you were an immigrant from Czechslovakia in a refugee camp in Austria at around that time, you'd be learning to speak Polish.

[cromka]

So 1990 Eastern Europe freed itself thanks to... 1968 Czechoslovakia?

[kazinator]

Of course not (but we can't say it didn't matter, either).

[keiferski]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1956_Pozna%C5%84_protests

[legulere]

Even earlier in Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_uprising_of_1953

Here in Germany they very often talk about the importance of what happened in Poland for the reunification

[card_zero]

I'm enjoying the way this dispute reflects on the USSR. We were the first to try to escape! No, we were the first, years before that! No, you're both wrong, it was us!

[kazinator]

Nope; I longed to escape long before you dreamed of it!

[eduction]

Self glorifying nonsense. Gorbachev ALLOWED Poland to not get crushed. You think Poles were any braver in 1989 than the Chinese people who laid down their lives in Tiananmen? You think your solidarity was in any way superior to what they did, what the Hungarians and Czechs did decades earlier? You succeeded due to good timing and because Gorby was your ultimate overlord rather than Deng Xiaopong. Poles should go thank him.

Stephen Kotkin says this much better than I ever could. https://youtu.be/0tXvLJXkFFg?t=295&si=26yINqxrcSdOUxCv