When you lose 20% of your population and then spend 50 years under communist rule because your allies sold you out, there’s really only one direction left to go—up.

A lot of people either forget, or never learned, that Poland was once one of the largest and most influential states in Europe.Yes it was long time ago, but the potential was always there. The real challenge was surviving the consequences of being caught between neighbors whose ideologies gave rise to two of the deadliest systems of the 20th century.

Well there are plenty of countries that aren't facing those conditions now, or in the recent past and still have shitty economies. It undersells how hard it is to build a strong economy and therefore undersells how hard Poland has worked.

I don’t understand why people constantly mention EU subsidies and not mention the billions of wealth destroyed or taken during the world wars, partitions, or the deluge.

That is not true. Poland run substantial trade deficits (as opposed to China) up to very recently giving sizable marked for products manufactured by western Europeans and thus __helping__ and not hindering West European workers. And this trade deficit was enabled by mainly external investments (and little but by subsidies). Also since PL was converging this investments were more profitable then in the west.

Also I am of not very popular anymore opinions that not distorted trade help both sides of the trade and immigrants really help economy of country that they immigrate into. Including workers.

Most of the subsidies go back to the western Europe in the form of cheap products, and cheap labor. Also these subsidies were used to buy technology, machinery and goods from the West. Let's have Germany pay few trillions in reparations, and we can give back the billions in subsidies. Deal?