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Comment by haunter | Hacker News Reader

And that’s western Europe. Now imagine what’s happening in the poorer EU countries (Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania etc)

The "new" European economies are poorer but they're also more egalitarian. Lower average income, but more people near the average. That creates the odd situation where a young person born into poverty in, for example, Poland, or Estonia, may have better prospects than someone born today into poverty in the UK, or even France. More of a real chance at social advancement, ending up middle class and socially-economically secure. Quite a reversal from just a few decades ago.

I was recently in the UK and a friend there expressed a similar pessimistic sentiment— "things are really bad here, the whole world is going down the drain".

Back where I'm from, things aren't looking as bleak as they are in the UK. I found that comment amusing really. The assumption that since Britain has historically been wealthy and a one of the better places to live, if things are not looking great there, they must be so everywhere or something.

Romania has the highest home ownership in Europe. Hungary is third. The UK is near the bottom.

In eastern Europe it's common to see young people building their own houses in rural towns near the big cities. They earn less money, yes, but they don't waste 50% of it on rent.

It's a different way of survival.

Switzerland has the lowest. A famously poor country of people wasting their money on rent, somehow topping all rankings concerning standard of living.

> Now imagine what’s happening

Now there's a western-centric statement, if ever I saw one. Why do you assume "the poorer EU countries" are like the west, only worse? Other replies give more nuance.

Poland's doing ok. So are Romania and Hungary. There is inflation, but there is also a lot of economic growth.

As a Romanian I can confirm that, all things considered, we are not doing that bad. Inflation hurts a lot of people, of course, but we’ve had way, way worse than this back in the ‘90s, so those of us who are older than 40 or so just sigh, maybe swear at the politicians and then hope that things won’t get worse.

What’s really helping, for now at least, is that housing is still relatively affordable (with the exception of Cluj, a very IT-focused city). If that housing affordability were to disappear then, yeah, the optics would definitely change.

I don’t think Poland is doing ok. Inflation has screwing people over, and rents are absurdly high.

they are cheaper to begin with. 10% inflation on expensive countries has more impact, considering that wages remain static everywhere

Apparently the poor of east europe are doing better than the poor of britain. And in tech, a lot of folks in east europe actually own and can afford things.

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