In the opinion of today issue of Gazeta Wyborcza (the leading Polish newspaper, 2006-9-04) every second young Polish person (in age between 18 and 24 years old) is thinking about leaving the country in next 2 years. In the total number of adults it is every 5th person. The number of people thinking about emigration and people who just left the country is growing.Gazeta Wyborcza asked its readers to answer the question what should be changed in Poland to resolve this problem, and why Poles abroad are feel better and can manage and sort out things and problems much better, while in Poland they are falling into apathy and they are loosing the faith in success.
The answer is not to be a one paragraph but the conclusion is very simple – Poland as a state with its economical, tax and insurance system is a kind of monster or parasite that sponge on its own citizens. It is not a state created for the citizens, but the citizens are servants for the state.
I will try to explain it below (I hope my English is not a barrier and it is easy to understand).
Here is an example from my own life:
I used to conduct my own one-person small business – a webdesign and concert agency. For 12 months I had to pay 200 euro per moth for a social insurance. 200 euro is a quite big amount of money in Poland. It is a cost of labor for every employer. In addition this amount of 200 euro is equal to standard monthly salary in poorer regions of Poland including the 2nd biggest city – Lodz (my home town), thus for an employer the real cost of job he or she gives is much bigger than a salary. The same for an employee it is less money he or she gets than employer spends.
It is commonly know that big part of this contribution is eaten by bureaucracy and the Social Insurance Office (ZUS) is a monster managed by the people linked with the ruling party. The very good example is a project of introducing information technology in this office which hasn’t been finalized for 7 years or more.
Anyway… I had my own business and I paid contributions for whole year so, and after closing it I gained an entitlement to get an unemployment compensation from the state. To get this money (100 Euro monthly) I had put forward certificate of all contributions I paid for Social Insurance to my local Polish social welfare. It is impossible to get this certificate in one day, I had to wait for it about 1 or 1,5 month. After getting this certificate I would have to wait another month for an official decision of the social welfare if the money help is granted or not. Thus… the time to get a money help which I deserve by law is about 2 months of waiting. Try to imagine people without any opportunities to get a job in Poland… it is almost impossible to survive having only 100 euro per month, and it is impossible to live having no money at all.
I should also remind about Ministry of Treasure which is full of clerks who have to collect as much money from the companies, small firms etc as they can. So a small mistake in tax declaration can effect in a very big fine penalty, and don’t hope, they will find a mistake for sure if you not bribe them. There are some examples of the big leading Polish private firms that bankrupted because of fine penalties. After years it occurred that clerks were wrong, but they were not called to account of they own wrong decisions. So the Treasure Office clerks are like medieval tax collectors. They are right, even if they are wrong, and they are not in charge of they own mistakes. It doesn’t matter if your tax declaration/testimony is perfect, if one of them claims it is wrong then it is wrong, even if it is correct.
The political crisis, the law regulations that change so fast, the high prices of labor and the ruling corruption in every Polish civil office make Poland a state hard to live.
For us, Ireland seems to be much easier country to live, a state founded for its citizens, even for us – Poles – the emigrants.
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