by Most definitely (hahahahahaha!).Nobody seems to have picked up my coinage yet, but they are suddenly noticing the issue, although unable to label it. Just to be clear, having a "Poland problem" means that a nation's economy has become disconnected from its politics. Thus Poland is the star transition economy that was the only nation in Europe not experience a decline in GDP in 2009, but its politics have gone sour with an authoritarian, populist, nationalist, and racist government taking control.In today's Washington Post Charles Lane had a column focusing on Angela Merkel and Germany. It is all about the irony that it has been this top performing economy (envied even by also good performing neighbor Poland), yet she has been unable to form a government, with a new far right wing
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Nobody seems to have picked up my coinage yet, but they are suddenly noticing the issue, although unable to label it. Just to be clear, having a "Poland problem" means that a nation's economy has become disconnected from its politics. Thus Poland is the star transition economy that was the only nation in Europe not experience a decline in GDP in 2009, but its politics have gone sour with an authoritarian, populist, nationalist, and racist government taking control.
In today's Washington Post Charles Lane had a column focusing on Angela Merkel and Germany. It is all about the irony that it has been this top performing economy (envied even by also good performing neighbor Poland), yet she has been unable to form a government, with a new far right wing anti-immigrant party entering parliament and blocking coalitions. Title of column is "Actually, it's not (just) the economy, stupid."
He also, accurately in my view, says the problem is also in the US and other high income nations. I shall post later about the US case, but, yes, the US has a Poland problem also. I follow with two choice quotes from this column, noting that I am not usually all that impressed with Lane, but agree with him pretty much on this one.
"Germany's economy is the strongest in Europe and was even spared the worst of the 2008-2009 recession. Yet a significant portion of its people, many more, apparently, than the traditional party system could absorb are angry just the same - about the influx of immigrants from the Middle East and Africa, about crime and violence, or about what Merkel called the "pace of contemporary life." Now many are angry about the rise of the right.
Later in the column Lane actually quotes a famous line from Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto:
"Everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones...All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned."
Addendum: 1/5/18: As it is, the good economic performance of Poland in 2009 is related to that of Germany at the same time, although Germany did actually go into recession, if not all that deep or long. Poland had (and has) its own currency, the zloty, and a lot of what kept it having positive growth in 2009 was that it let thr value of the zloty fall, with it thus being able to export a lot to Germany. But they have both ended up having the same problem, "ungrateful" citizens turning against governments that did better jobs of delivering the economic goods than their neighbors.
Barkley Rosser