Both of Dennis and Justin are right about Poland. It is growing rapidly and has succeeded in reorienting its exports westward, aided by a willingness to let the zloty float downwards, in contrast to the strong currency approach taken in the former GDR that has devastated it. As Dennis notes, Poland has avoided full privatization, making it a lot like China actually, but as Justin noted it has also had lots of polarization and lots of losers. Unemployment has been gradually declining, but no government has yet succeeded in getting itself reelected in Poland, a definite sign of continuing unhappiness.
Of the Baltic states, Estonia has done the best as usual, aided partly by close ties with Finland, which is back on a pretty strong growth path.
You're way off with respect to the Czech Republic, Justin. They went through a major financial crisis a year ago in May, actually the immediate predecessor to the crash in Thailand, and have had very low growth since then. However, they have avoided high unemployment and have maintained a fairly equal distribution of income as has Slovakia.
Hungary is not nearly as far behind the C.R. as you said. They were maintaining the best social safety net of all until the last few years when they did major budget cutbacks under outside pressure, thus making their income distribution much worse. Although not growing as fast as Poland, Hungary is in pretty good shape compared to most of these. Gradualism has paid off there.
Slovenia is doing just fine on most fronts, thank you, as we fans of workers' management never cease liking to point out, :-). However it is no longer the case that a majority of the capiatl stock is state-owned. But, they have strongly favored workers' ownership and have resisted foreign direct investment for buyout purposes. They are under strong pressure from the EU to relax these restrictions as a condition for joining the EU. Barkley Rosser On Fri, 27 Nov 1998 20:13:06 -0800 (PST) Dennis R Redmond <dredmond at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU> wrote:
> On Fri, 27 Nov 1998 JKSCHW at aol.com wrote:
>
> > Slovenia seems to hanging on to the worker controilled
> > cooperative socislaim of the former Yugoslavai, with OK results. Poland's a
> > disaster story, polarization, poverty, the works. Unlike Russia, though, it
> > has an economy. Humgary's atwo decades behind the C.R, so it'a anybody's
> > guess. The Baltics are in terrible shape because their economiesa re
> > depoendent on Russia's. Finland too, by the the way.
>
> Poland has been growing 7% a year for awhile now, though, and Finland's
> economy has turned around after the meltdown of 1990-93, posting some of
> the highest growth rates in the EU. None of this is due to shock therapy,
> of course; Poland tried it briefly, the economy imploded, and since then
> they've gone back to the Listian basics (tariff walls, widespread state
> ownership, tough negotiations with Western firms, etc.). Finland was hurt
> by the Soviet collapse, but the welfare state is alive and well there.
> But it's true that the richer countries have gotten richer, and the poorer
> countries have gotten shafted, which is exactly what neoliberalism is all
> about, now isn't it.
>
> -- Dennis
>
-- Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb at jmu.edu