Poland Marks 30th Anniversary of Walesa’s Solidarity

As Poland marks the 30th anniversary of the Solidarity movement that tore a hole in the Iron Curtain and eventually helped topple the Berlin Wall, it’s worth taking a look at how much the country has changed.

Many Poles still feel dissatisfied with their quality of life, and some complain that life was better in the centrally planned economy that guaranteed employment for all, even if it didn’t pay any real money. At least the society was more egalitarian with everyone forced to share poverty.

But as daily Puls Biznesu shows today, compared to 30 years ago Poles can afford bigger apartments, more cars and an enormous amount of household appliances.

Over the past three decades, the average Polish consumer’s income has increased six times. The currency is free floating and fully exchangeable, which means that in dollar terms Polish average salaries went up from a barely noticeable amount of sometimes as low as 20 dollars during communism — when the dollar was one of the few safe havens for wages received in the form of worthless stacks of paper communists called money — to more than 1,000 dollars a month now.

Read more: http://blogs.wsj.com/new-europe/2010/08/31/poland-marks-30th-anniversary-of-walesas-solidarity/