Poland
The Solution To Poland’s Unemployment Problem
Posted 14 February, 2006 Poland is controlling the increase in unemployment by exporting its workers. But even in spite of the thousands of workers who have immigrated to Western Europe, legally, and the United States, illegally, unemployment in Poland has risen. So more effective measures must be taken to increase the number of young people who leave Poland to find employment.
The current Polish government has done little or nothing to give any hope about a job in Poland to Polish young people. The Polish government has been concentrating on giving money to families who have babies and to increasing payments to others who are essentially on the government dole.
The Polish government has been focused on two things. The first is exacting revenge on anyone who might have been associated in anyway with the communists of old Poland. Of course they ignore the “Mohair Berets” who admire Gierek and the wonderful days of communism under his rule as he drove the country into disastrous debt. They want to have a mass lustration of 100000 people. In that group they even want to include journalists that work for private TV stations.
They have also set up an anti corruption office to prosecute anyone they consider corrupt. Where they will go with that is anyone’s guess, but it is consuming a lot of time and money.
In the mean time people in Poland are desperate for work. They seem willing to take any work. In the UK, they take dangerous jobs picking cockles on tidal flats where ferocious tides trap and kill cockle pickers. Women are lured into jobs that eventually find them trapped in prostitution. But that does not stop the people looking to get out of the country.
And of course, the President of Poland wants to help them get out of the country by getting looser visa requirements from the USA. One of his main missions on his trip to see President George Bush this February was to press President Bush on relaxing visa requirements for Polish people.
It is only lucky for Poland that the matter is out of President Bush’s hands and nothing was done. Because as soon as the visa requirements are lifted, Poland will suffer a severe brain drain as the best and the brightest abandon the country and go to the United States to work. And probably stay. Given the record of Polish people going to the US and overstaying visas, it is likely that the US will end up with many more bright, young Polish people, illegal immigrants, but happily contributing their talents to the United States.
Additionally the EU seems ready to relax its work rules to allow Polish people to work in more countries in the EU. This will be great for Poland’s unemployment problem. The unemployment rate will go down and the Polish government will be able to tout how it made it easier for Polish people to leave the country.
Because it is becoming easier to export the young to solve unemployment, there is no real need to provide any opportunity for young people in Poland. And that is just what is happening. Nothing for the young other than a one time payment to them if they have a child and a program to pay part of the interest on housing loans – but only on new and not pre-owned housing.
The government may think that this assessment is not correct. So we must leave it to the voters to decide. The thousands of young people who leave Poland everyday, and the hundreds of thousands who want to go the United States are voting now. They are voting with their feet and with their attempts to get into the United States legally or illegally. The traffic is out.
And as soon as the EU frees up work rules, the traffic out will probably increase and Poland’s unemployment problem may stop rising, and maybe go down.
Now that is a great way for the Polish government to solve the unemployment problem without having to raise taxes, or do anything for that matter. It makes for happy people because they got out of the country and consider themselves lucky.
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