Right, I might phrased it imprecisely. Anyway let me show you screenshot from my bank taken today (sorry it's for some reason only in polish):
https://imgur.com/a/ISthS
so putting 10k PLN (2k EUR) for 24 months in, you'll gain 50 EUR and small text at the bottom says it's BEFORE taxation!
Average gross wage depends on region, but it's around 1k EUR per month. I cannot find median, values but it's much lower, most people here don't have two cents to rub together not to mention to put twice the average salary for 24 months to get 50 EUR
"The problem with Poles is they don't want to save," Borowski says.
In 2001 so called 'Belka's Tax' was imposed, which is annulling the capital gains tax (19% or something). This makes any placing to actually lose money (even more if you count inflation in).
So saving money in sock's drawer is out of question because of inflation, in banks it's even worse, that's been going on for 17 years. How we're suppose to save then?
> At least Lenin, Stalin and Molotov rose due to their merits, not their birthrights. Russia went from being a country pushed around by the Japanese, with an GDP equivalent to 1917 Brazil, to a superpower sending satellites, men into space, probes to the Moon (the first country to do so). It also had little crime and little poverty.
Following your logic so did Hitler. Whew, my first Reductio ad Hitlerum ever, but to my defence you've started with tasteless jokes.
It's easy to fell into this 'communism was good idea but bad implementation' meme. I've lived in communism era in western Europe and believe you me same things were happening as you describe (Kochs, Waltons etc), there was still '1%' just not mentioned in newspapers as 'those who got wealthy by hard work'. Lower and middle classes were basically under oppressive regime.