Comments by "Alex" (@Alex-df4lt) on "Will Eastern Europe OVERTAKE Western Europe?" video.

@pamietamGryWpodchody Poland has one major disadvantage - location. When Russian army goes on a trip westwards, Poland's prosperity is over.
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Common market leads to more intense competition. East Germany could claim its industries have been completely taken over by the West Germany. In reality it doesn't matter. What matters is if you produce high quality goods and innovative products. If you don't, don't blame the West, you can only blame yourself. It's the same as if you immigrate to US and fail to take advantage of the opportunities it affords.
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@serebii666 Czech GDP growth after 2018 leaves a lot to be desired. Good luck with catching up with Western EU with GDP growth in 2.5-3% range. Babis's ANO party is leading in polls by a large margin and let's be honest his presidential campaign had more in common with Orban's policies than pro Western ones. With an aging population, popularity of such politicians will only increase. The current government was formed only due to Babis being too successful at stealing votes from his former coalition partner CSSD which didn't make it into parliament. He is coming back into power after the next parliamentary election. Czechia has almost no army to speak of, it is very poorly equipped, basically a country waiting to be conquered. It has underdeveloped infrastructure with populism being a huge problem in politics. Voters prefer handouts to investments. With an aging population and aforementioned problems, this country has a minimal chance to catch up with Western EU. I don't care what extrapolation from 1990s shows us as the current situation is not good at all.
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@serebii666 Czech Republic did stop catching up with Western EU, but that is mostly due to old people with socialist mindset who would love to welcome Russia back. Those usually don't speak foreign languages, admire Putin, blame the West, Soros, capitalism for their misfortune.
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@serebii666 GDP per capita (PPP) is misleading. I would prefer to live in a country with higher nominal wage even if GDP per capita is the same. I have decided to move to the UK as Eastern Europe has too many conservative minded people and most countries except for Poland have quite small job market.
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Eastern EU cannot overtake Western EU because it is too conservative.
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@qwdjfbskxnsjx Forget about Slovakia, it's another Bulgaria. Too pro Russian and too conservative. It's suffering from a huge brain-drain that can no longer be compensated by immigration from Belarus, Ukraine or Russia. Not a good place to raise children at all. It's a Russian misinformation campaign testing ground to be applied to Czechia. From all V4 countries, Poland is probably best positioned in the long term, despite being too conservative.
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@serebii666 I never claimed size of job market is related to wage level. You have just misrepresented my thoughts. When you go to buy a car, go on vacation, buy a laptop or anything else produced abroad, the price will be almost the same. I prefer higher nominal wage than to look purely at PPP. You highlighted high tax rate in Germany, but conveniently forgot to add what services Germans get in exchange, such as highway network and high speed trains. Czechia is many decades behind what Germany had in 1990. What's worse Czech GDP growth is too low to catch up with Western EU and the population prefers to vote for populists. That is not a recipe for becoming an advanced economy, but a path to stagnation.
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@serebii666 Except that Germany's economic motor ran out of cheap Russian fuel. Extremism is on the rise in Germany and other Western EU countries, while Orban style populism is on the rise in Eastern EU. Hardly a recipe for sustainable economic growth. Countries that suffer from brain drain cannot catch up with countries that benefit from it.
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Eastern EU countries look at US as a role model rather than Western EU, but the influence of the old socialist generation that doesn't speak any languages is still huge.
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I totally agree. In fact I have decided to move west myself.
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Russia will do everything in its power to drag the whole region down in the next 20 years. If Kremlin has one cow while you have two, it will simply kill yours to conceal deficiencies in its economic and political model.
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