I always think what's the actual benefit now of living in a "rich country" if everything is just more expensive? So if you live in the USA you'll maybe have a nicer car and nicer computer than someone in Poland, but otherwise it's all a wash and probably nicer in Poland. All the things that actually matter to quality of life are pretty much the same or even nicer in a poorer country?
Poland is a wrong example, it had almost 30 years on uninterrupted growth and has better infrastructure and services than the nearby Germany.
Trains are cheaper, better run and more comfortable. Highways are better than German. Even gas stations. I often find myself waiting to cross the border so I can get to the loo in the first Orlen on the Polish side.
And don't let me start on housing and taxes.
Polish economy even benefitted from the Russo-Ukrainian war:
> Poland is a wrong example, it had almost 30 years on uninterrupted growth and has better infrastructure and services than the nearby Germany.
Not wrong, but I think that when you're growing and building things tend to be "easy(-ier)" than later on when you're maintaining. When you don't have anything it's easy to say "We need X.", but it's harder to justify to folks "We need to maintain X."—there's not as much ribbon cutting for maintenance projects:
If there's no highway bridge over some chasm, building the bridge can be obvious. When there's a bridge already there spending (tens/hundreds of) millions to rehabilitate or rebuild it will get more pushback.
China had little infrastructure and has built a whole bunch (e.g., high speed rail) over the last few decades: I'll be curious to see how things are in fifty or so years when they have to rebuild things.
First off, Poland benefitted immensely from EU funds. Better infrastructure is better in Poland for the same reason it is better in Spain, Spain just had those funds earlier.
As for the migration policies, I think you are pointing in the right direction but the reality is more subtle.
Old European countries consider work to be a privilege, Poles, having lived in the Warsaw Pact country, still perceive work to be an obligation.
A refugee arriving in Germany can't start working and lives off welfare while his case is settled, which may take years.
A similar refugee arriving in Poland has to find a job both to survive and to obtain legal residency.
This has the downside of driving down wages but the upside of creating even more jobs.
Amazon, Lidl, Zalando and many other labor-intensive businesses set shops just across the border for a reason.
It depends what matters to you in quality of life.
For me the most important things are having purpose and love in my life - and you can find that pretty much anywhere.
A bit unrelated but US citizens decided that healthcare doesn’t really matter to them much but going everywhere with a nice car does - so it depends what the priorities are
Most US citizens are for socialized health care. However, t seems that both parties are bought by the health care industry and prevent the change the people want.
This doesn’t make sense to me though.
If the majority of the population is for something it __will__ be implemented.
If a party fucks over the peoples will repeatedly like this, why would they still be voted into power?
But the general population votes on who will be in congress right?
Edit: so if I vote for John Smith and then I find out he voted against this healthcare issue I care about; I will for sure not vote for him again, instead for a candidate that keeps their promises.
At least that’s how it works in my country, all the votes in congress are public, you can even listen in to most of their sittings.
If both of the major parties are against something, you can only vote for some independent third party, which in the foreseeable future will never even have a single seat in Congress (not to mention a ruling majority). In countries without winner-takes-all electoral system (everybody except UK and USA) it's much easier for smaller countries to gain ground and hence they have a wider selection of viable parties, but in the UK and USA people are pretty much screwed.
Everything is more expensive in the USA is quite an exaggeration. Being able to afford (better) consumer goods/services/experiences is quite nice in itself not to mention the quality of opportunities present. I don't see many people emigrating from rich countries either.
This is such a good point, i've had similar thoughts before. That basically after the "middle income" level countries don't really get "better" they just get more expensive and more developed (which to be sure does have some positive impacts)
I’d be very careful with this kind of comparison: Often the differences show up in weird places.
For example, I travel between two countries with similar lifestyles and consistently notice lower quality of goods in the country with the lesser-valued currency. It’s subtle enough that you might not notice: Smaller quantities, not quite as good as, fully assembled versus some assembly, etc. Modern industry has gotten really good at masking these changes, and local consumers just don’t know that it can be better.
Given that the original article is criticizing the unequal wealth in the USA, a GDP PPP (which is an average) but higher concentration of wealth would imply that most people in the USA are much worse off.
If you work in a high-paying profession, you'll probably be able to retire faster (off your savings) in US than in Poland. On the other hand, in the US you'll have to work harder and more hours.
That's what I was doing as well (only in Bytom lol, to have even lower life expenses), till I retired at 41 years old. But, software engineers are an exception. Everybody else is pretty much making local salaries, which are lower than american ones in terms of purchasing power.
