March 16, 2026 • 19 mins
POLAND V VENEZUELA IS NO CONTEST And I am thrilled to have the President Emeritus of FEE Larry Reed back on the show to talk about Poland's adoption of capitalism versus Venezuela's adoption of socialism near the same time. The charts don't lie and if you need more proof that socialism is a greed based nightmare wherever it's tried tune in today at 1 to here Larry. Find his article on the subject here.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Joining me now is one of my favorite guests of
all time for a variety of reasons, because not only
is he an enormous egghead and so smart, he's also
just a genuinely nice man. His name is Lawrence Reed
or Larry Reid, as those of us in the new
call him. Welcome back to the show, Larry. It's been
a minute.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Yes, it has been great to be with you, Mandy,
thanks so much. So.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
I already told my audience in the last hour that
I saw a chart last week, and I'm not even
kidding when I say I immediately thought of Larry Reid.
The chart overlaid the GDPs of the country of Venezuela
with the country of Poland. And let's start off with
talking about your connection to Poland. What you've been busy
(00:44):
doing in Poland for a couple decades now, Okay.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Actually, my history with Poland goes back, believe it or not,
forty years. It was in nineteen eighty six, when Poland
was still a communist country under this way of the
Soviet Union, when I first visited the country, and I
spent time with the Polish underground at that time, the
anti communist resistance underground printers, underground insurance companies, even underground
(01:15):
schools and universities, people who were actively resisting the Soviet
imposed socialist regime. And I was arrested and throw it out.
But I was able to come back finally when the
Communists were kicked out in nineteen eighty nine. I've been
back to Poland many times since, and two and a
(01:35):
half years ago I was stunned when the President of Poland,
in ceremonies in Warsaw, bestowed upon me the highest honor
that Poland gives to a foreigner, the Grand Cross of
the Order. Well, let me get this right, the Grand
Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland.
(01:57):
And it was largely for my work assisting the anti
communist underground back in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
So let me ask you sort of when did you
start to realize that Poland had a real opportunity to
rebuild an economy that had been, you know, middling around
for many, many years, even after the fall of communism,
it wasn't quite catching fire. At what point did you say,
wait a minute, this could really be a thing, They
(02:26):
could really turn this around.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Well, it would have to be that very first visit.
Before I went there in nineteen eighty six, I had
a little reason, based upon what little knowledge I had,
to put Poland in any category different from any other
Soviet satellite country. But when I was there, I saw
firsthand how extensive this anti communist resistance was. That you
(02:53):
name it. If it had a public and legal role,
it had a private and illegal counterpart. Had created their
own entrepreneurial though illegal society underground. And I thought, holy
cal all these people need is a little freedom, and
they will go to town. Because they were practicing the
(03:14):
art of deception and of creation of wealth in the
face of a dictatorship. They were doing all those remarkably
courageous things and doing it so well that the Communist
government had a very hard time trying to stamp it out.
So I thought, the moment this and this place is free,
they will become one of the most prosperous countries of Europe.
(03:36):
And they have.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
So let's compare that. We'll do a little compare and contrast.
Because Venezuela, which was the wealthiest nation in South America
under the regime of Hugo Chavez, who ran on a
platform of greed, a platform of taxing the rich, a
platform of redistribution of wealth. And I'm using these terms
(03:57):
very specifically because now we're hearing them off in the
United States as a positive. What happened to Venezuela's economy
after the Great Equalizer Hugo Chavez took power, Well.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
He was elected in nineteen ninety eight, and you know,
for the about twenty years before he came to power,
Venezuela was drifting in the direction of bigger government. But
it was still a relatively free country and one of
the most prosperous in Latin America. But when Chavez got elected,
he campaigned on a platform of thoroughly socializing the country,
(04:32):
nationalizing companies, restricting investment, especially by foreigners, and also imposing
price controls and a welfare state and all kinds of
government this and government that and so forth. And that's
what he did. And then his successor, Nicholas Maduro in
(04:52):
the last decade and a half, continued that process until
he was nabbed by Donald Trump in early January. So
Venezuela under Chavez just turned around in the other direction
direction and sank. It Now is one of the poorest
countries countries in Latin America and at the same time
(05:15):
Poland now being one of the freest sword And so
the difference between the GDP gross domestic product of those
two countries today is just vast, and it tells a
remarkable story. Free people will produce, unfree people will flee
or sit on their fannies.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Well, and the line for Poland's GDP is not quite
ninety degrees, but it's above forty five. I mean it is.
When you say it's skyrocketed, you're not kidding. What are
the specific you know, as broad as possible. I don't
need you to give me a law line, a law number.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
But what did they do?
Speaker 1 (05:55):
How did they shape their economy to create the environment
where it's grown at this level.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Well, a friend of mine by the name of Lestich Baserovich,
who's still living, became the prime architect of post communist
Poland's economic recovery, and so in the early nineties he
put in place, along with the support of others in
the government, what became known as the Basarovitch Plan, and
(06:23):
it called for a radical and quick restructuring away from
Poland's long standing socialized economy. He decontrolled all prices, he
dismantled many elements of the welfare state. He privatized state
industries that were losing money and so grossly inefficient. He
(06:46):
put in place policies including lower taxes and freer trade
that made Poland the place that not only Poles wanted
to stay and invest in, but foreigners said, wow, this
is a place to put your mond. Look at the
opportunities we have here. So it became a haven for
foreign investment and new business startups by Poles themselves just
(07:08):
went through the roof because Boceovitch made it easier for
people to start businesses. And you know, if you go
back to when he started that, Venezuela was still, you know,
roughly the same in terms of per capita GDP as Poland.
But now GDP in Poland per capita is four or
(07:29):
five times what it is in Venezuela. The difference is
absolutely staggering.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Are there things that Poland is doing right now that
the United States should be paying attention in and all honesty,
what I actually mean by that is Colorado. I don't know,
have you've been paying attention to what's been happening in Colorado?
But we've rapidly destroyed our very very welcoming business environment
with overregulation, and we are moving things in the wrong
(07:59):
to because of big and outsized government in my view.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
That's my view.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
But even in the United States, we are less free
than we have been before, and it is harder now
to do business in the United States that I think
it's been in prior years. So is there anything that
we could learn from Poland at this point?
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Oh? Absolutely. If you look at the index of economic
freedom that measures the degree to which a country's economy
is free or capitalist versus unfree or a socialist you'll
find that. You know, thirty years ago, the US was
in among the top ten in the world and Poland
was way down that list, especially in the communist States. Well,
(08:44):
now we have slept and Poland has improved, and we're
not very far away from Poland's measurement. Poland is like
forty number forty in the world and we're number twenty
four twenty five. What we could learn from Poland think,
I think, broadly speaking, is freedom does work. And we
once proved debt in America, but we're kind of forgetting that.
(09:07):
But we ought to look to Poland as hey, you
can take an economy that was thoroughly trashed by forty
years of communism and making an economic powerhouse in relatively
short order, if you deregulate, cut taxes, and get your
fiscal house in order. I would cite specifically, for instance,
debt government debt. You know, in America, the percentage of
(09:30):
our national debt as a portion of gross domestic product
is about one hundred and twenty four percent. That is
to say, our national debt represents an entire year's output
and a good part of the second years. In Poland,
it's only sixty four percent. Venezuela, by the way, it's
two hundred and sixteen, so they're far worse. But you
(09:52):
can see that Poland has done a far better job
at managing its government debt and budget deficits than the
US has.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
They're former Eastern Bloc countries that are looking at Poland
and saying, huh, maybe we should be like them. Are
we seeing them become sort of the shining beacon on
the hill for those former Soviet countries.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Yeah, they are viewed that way as a shining city
on the hill throughout Eastern Europe. I would have to
give a lot of credit also to the Baltic states
of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia just to the northeast of Poland.
They're also very free and far fear than they were
when the Soviet Union dominated them. So they have followed
(10:35):
Poland's lead, and they might even say we led Poland
in some respects, and so they have very free and
prosperous economies today. The Czech Republic is another one that
has moved a great deal in the same direction and
has become such a marvelous place with its economy. The
more south in Europe you go, the less progress towards
(10:58):
freedom those former Soviet satellite countries like Romania or Bulgaria
have made. But nonetheless, they too have been moving in
the right direction and are considerably more prosperous today than
they were in their socialist days when the Soviet Union
dominated them.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
I'd like to see a comparison between Poland and Belarus.
Belarus has remained under the thumb of the dictator, who
has no desire to not be part of the Soviet Union.
I mean, really, this guy's never left the past. I'd
be interested to know about their economy versus people who
have chosen to pivot in a different direction.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Yeah, that would be easy to do. There are websites
where people can just punch in the name of the
countries that want to compare. Georank dot org is one,
and you can compare two countries at one time by
way of a number of measurements. Another one is the
Index of Economic Freedom that is on the website of
(11:58):
the Heritage Foundation, or the Economic Freedom of the World Index,
which is on the website of the Fraser Institute in Canada.
Any of those will would show you those comparisons. And
I can tell you from my knowledge of that area
that Poland is way ahead of Belarus economically, politically, and
probably by just about every other measure. Belarus is maybe
(12:22):
the most hardline regime still around after the fall of communism.
Its leader sort of like the old communist days, and
he doesn't want to let the country be freed.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
I'm talking with Larry Reid, he's the president emeritus of
the Foundation for Economic Education. Got a couple good questions
from our text line. Larry, is there any correlation to
education performance with the same studies to show economic growth?
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Oh? Yes, In fact, there are a number of measurements
that are quite revealing to look at things like per
people spending. I assume the person is asking this in
regards to the United States or I think Poland.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
I think that they's asking like is it because of
a better educational system or was I mean, you look
at Cuba, though, Cuba has one of the highest rates
of literacy in the world, right, so they're well educated people,
but they still suffer under a communist regime. But have
there been changes to the educational system in Poland, for instance,
(13:29):
maybe in curriculum or what they're teaching or how the
kids are being educated in the first place.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Yeah. You know, communist regimes the world over have always
bragged about how they focus on literacy, and they do
on paper at least seem to have or seem to
have high literacy rates. But the issue always is, well,
once people know how to read, what are you going
to let them read? So you can have a very
high literacy rate. But in a country where most of
(13:59):
what you'd to read has been banned Venezuela, you know,
the government has taken over the press there under Maduro
and stuff is their literacy rate is just slightly below
that of Poland, But you can't read anything you want to.
They want you to know how to read, so you
just read their communists propaganda. But if you look at
(14:19):
measurements around the world, the US in particular, there are
a lot of indicators that suggest that what correlates more
strongly with student outcomes than any other single factor, more
than what you spend, more than size of a class size,
is parental involvement. The more parents are involved in the
(14:42):
education of the children, the better they do. That's true
even in areas where the schools aren't very good, and
it's true in places where the schools do seem to
be good but take too much credit for it, where
it's really the parents who are preparing the kids well
and making sure they do their home work at home
and helping them out. Currental involvement is the number one
(15:06):
factor that correlates more strongly than any other, and I
think this is true anywhere in the world in student outcomes.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
It must have been very interesting to watch from your
perspective the arc that has happened in Poland. I'm sure
that you know people who have flourished financially and have
gone from you know, living under a communist regime to
acquiring and accumulating great wealth because of the entrepreneurship or
the levers of capitalism being available to.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Them in Poland?
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Is that your experience? I mean, have you been able
to see the pit the per capital income rise in Poland?
And what was that like to watch as a free
market enthusiast and observer.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Oh, it's been exciting. I have lost count at how
many times I've been back to Poland since it became free,
Probably seven, eight, nine times, maybe more. And every time
I go, I see more color, I see more life,
I see taller buildings, I see more renovations and construction cranes,
(16:13):
and people well dressed and prosperous, with lots of great
restaurants in stark contrast to those gray dark days of
the communist period. You could see it. It's very, very evident.
And you know that the number of billionaires in Poland today,
(16:35):
in free, largely capitalist Poland is ten. Ten billionaires in
Poland Venezuela. Under the socialists, of course, they don't like
billionaires unless they're in government. There's only one. And I'm
trying to find out who that person is. That these
are numbers from last year. I suspect that it might
have been Nicholas Maduro. Or at least one of his friends.
(16:58):
But in Poland there are ten billion airs and they
should be proud of that.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Somebody on the text line said this, it's easy for
Poland to keep their spending in check when they're protected
by NATO and don't spend the required GDP function for protection.
That's the US largest cause. That is not accurate.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
I looked it up.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Poland has actually met their commitment from the very beginning,
and now they're exceeding that commitment and spending a record
level on their own defense. After what's going on in Ukraine.
I can imagine they're concerned. They share a border with Ukraine,
so that's something they've gotten paying attention to.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Absolutely, absolutely, you're right, Mandy. They are in the lead
in terms of the portion of their GNP devoted to defense.
They are at or well beyond the amount of President
Trump has been pressuring the NATO countries to spend. And
even that understates it, because you know, they're on the
border there with Ukraine, and in the first year or
(17:53):
two of the invasion by the Russians, Poland absorbed over
one and a half million Ukrainians. Wow, that is a lot. Yeah,
and you know the most amazing thing is they didn't
absorb them by putting them in refugee camps. You couldn't
(18:13):
find a refugee camp, you know. How they absorbed them.
They welcomed them into their homes. Oh wow, And that
was the most remarkable thing. So that contributed to the cause.
You might say, it's not military spending, but wow. Could
you imagine us taking in what that would be the
equivalent in the country our size, but it would probably
(18:35):
be you know, taking in ten to twenty million, right
and taking them into our homes. Well.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
The only disappointing about this whole conversation is it sounds
like we're never going to be able to use Pollock
jokes again. And I'm not going to lie. I miss
those from the seventies and eighties, Larry Reid. They were
always so fun, of course, at the expense of Polish people,
who are proving to be quite smart these days. Larry Reid,
President emeritus of a Foundation for Economic Education. Larry earlier
(19:02):
in the show, I told the story of how I
got to know you, and I don't even know if
you remember this. I read a column of yours in
the Washington Post and I called up the Mackinaw Institute
to get clarification, and Larry picked up the phone and
we just chatted for like thirty five minutes before I
was like, oh, yeah, I have a radio show, would
you like to come on. I will never forget that,
and I have enjoyed our conversations ever since, and I
(19:23):
hope to have many more.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
And that was in when you were in Naples, Florida,
and I was spending time down there. So that's we
connected in person. Yeah, that must be what twenty years ago.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
I don't even We're not old enough for that, Larry.
We'll just talk about how long that was.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Larry.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Was good to talk to you again, my friend. We'll
talk to you again soon.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Okay, Thanks Mandy,
Joining me now is one of my favorite guests of
all time for a variety of reasons, because not only
is he an enormous egghead and so smart, he's also
just a genuinely nice man. His name is Lawrence Reed
or Larry Reid, as those of us in the new
call him. Welcome back to the show, Larry. It's been
a minute.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Yes, it has been great to be with you, Mandy,
thanks so much. So.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
I already told my audience in the last hour that
I saw a chart last week, and I'm not even
kidding when I say I immediately thought of Larry Reid.
The chart overlaid the GDPs of the country of Venezuela
with the country of Poland. And let's start off with
talking about your connection to Poland. What you've been busy
(00:44):
doing in Poland for a couple decades now, Okay.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Actually, my history with Poland goes back, believe it or not,
forty years. It was in nineteen eighty six, when Poland
was still a communist country under this way of the
Soviet Union, when I first visited the country, and I
spent time with the Polish underground at that time, the
anti communist resistance underground printers, underground insurance companies, even underground
(01:15):
schools and universities, people who were actively resisting the Soviet
imposed socialist regime. And I was arrested and throw it out.
But I was able to come back finally when the
Communists were kicked out in nineteen eighty nine. I've been
back to Poland many times since, and two and a
(01:35):
half years ago I was stunned when the President of Poland,
in ceremonies in Warsaw, bestowed upon me the highest honor
that Poland gives to a foreigner, the Grand Cross of
the Order. Well, let me get this right, the Grand
Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland.
(01:57):
And it was largely for my work assisting the anti
communist underground back in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
So let me ask you sort of when did you
start to realize that Poland had a real opportunity to
rebuild an economy that had been, you know, middling around
for many, many years, even after the fall of communism,
it wasn't quite catching fire. At what point did you say,
wait a minute, this could really be a thing, They
(02:26):
could really turn this around.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Well, it would have to be that very first visit.
Before I went there in nineteen eighty six, I had
a little reason, based upon what little knowledge I had,
to put Poland in any category different from any other
Soviet satellite country. But when I was there, I saw
firsthand how extensive this anti communist resistance was. That you
(02:53):
name it. If it had a public and legal role,
it had a private and illegal counterpart. Had created their
own entrepreneurial though illegal society underground. And I thought, holy
cal all these people need is a little freedom, and
they will go to town. Because they were practicing the
(03:14):
art of deception and of creation of wealth in the
face of a dictatorship. They were doing all those remarkably
courageous things and doing it so well that the Communist
government had a very hard time trying to stamp it out.
So I thought, the moment this and this place is free,
they will become one of the most prosperous countries of Europe.
(03:36):
And they have.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
So let's compare that. We'll do a little compare and contrast.
Because Venezuela, which was the wealthiest nation in South America
under the regime of Hugo Chavez, who ran on a
platform of greed, a platform of taxing the rich, a
platform of redistribution of wealth. And I'm using these terms
(03:57):
very specifically because now we're hearing them off in the
United States as a positive. What happened to Venezuela's economy
after the Great Equalizer Hugo Chavez took power, Well.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
He was elected in nineteen ninety eight, and you know,
for the about twenty years before he came to power,
Venezuela was drifting in the direction of bigger government. But
it was still a relatively free country and one of
the most prosperous in Latin America. But when Chavez got elected,
he campaigned on a platform of thoroughly socializing the country,
(04:32):
nationalizing companies, restricting investment, especially by foreigners, and also imposing
price controls and a welfare state and all kinds of
government this and government that and so forth. And that's
what he did. And then his successor, Nicholas Maduro in
(04:52):
the last decade and a half, continued that process until
he was nabbed by Donald Trump in early January. So
Venezuela under Chavez just turned around in the other direction
direction and sank. It Now is one of the poorest
countries countries in Latin America and at the same time
(05:15):
Poland now being one of the freest sword And so
the difference between the GDP gross domestic product of those
two countries today is just vast, and it tells a
remarkable story. Free people will produce, unfree people will flee
or sit on their fannies.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Well, and the line for Poland's GDP is not quite
ninety degrees, but it's above forty five. I mean it is.
When you say it's skyrocketed, you're not kidding. What are
the specific you know, as broad as possible. I don't
need you to give me a law line, a law number.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
But what did they do?
Speaker 1 (05:55):
How did they shape their economy to create the environment
where it's grown at this level.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Well, a friend of mine by the name of Lestich Baserovich,
who's still living, became the prime architect of post communist
Poland's economic recovery, and so in the early nineties he
put in place, along with the support of others in
the government, what became known as the Basarovitch Plan, and
(06:23):
it called for a radical and quick restructuring away from
Poland's long standing socialized economy. He decontrolled all prices, he
dismantled many elements of the welfare state. He privatized state
industries that were losing money and so grossly inefficient. He
(06:46):
put in place policies including lower taxes and freer trade
that made Poland the place that not only Poles wanted
to stay and invest in, but foreigners said, wow, this
is a place to put your mond. Look at the
opportunities we have here. So it became a haven for
foreign investment and new business startups by Poles themselves just
(07:08):
went through the roof because Boceovitch made it easier for
people to start businesses. And you know, if you go
back to when he started that, Venezuela was still, you know,
roughly the same in terms of per capita GDP as Poland.
But now GDP in Poland per capita is four or
(07:29):
five times what it is in Venezuela. The difference is
absolutely staggering.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Are there things that Poland is doing right now that
the United States should be paying attention in and all honesty,
what I actually mean by that is Colorado. I don't know,
have you've been paying attention to what's been happening in Colorado?
But we've rapidly destroyed our very very welcoming business environment
with overregulation, and we are moving things in the wrong
(07:59):
to because of big and outsized government in my view.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
That's my view.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
But even in the United States, we are less free
than we have been before, and it is harder now
to do business in the United States that I think
it's been in prior years. So is there anything that
we could learn from Poland at this point?
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Oh? Absolutely. If you look at the index of economic
freedom that measures the degree to which a country's economy
is free or capitalist versus unfree or a socialist you'll
find that. You know, thirty years ago, the US was
in among the top ten in the world and Poland
was way down that list, especially in the communist States. Well,
(08:44):
now we have slept and Poland has improved, and we're
not very far away from Poland's measurement. Poland is like
forty number forty in the world and we're number twenty
four twenty five. What we could learn from Poland think,
I think, broadly speaking, is freedom does work. And we
once proved debt in America, but we're kind of forgetting that.
(09:07):
But we ought to look to Poland as hey, you
can take an economy that was thoroughly trashed by forty
years of communism and making an economic powerhouse in relatively
short order, if you deregulate, cut taxes, and get your
fiscal house in order. I would cite specifically, for instance,
debt government debt. You know, in America, the percentage of
(09:30):
our national debt as a portion of gross domestic product
is about one hundred and twenty four percent. That is
to say, our national debt represents an entire year's output
and a good part of the second years. In Poland,
it's only sixty four percent. Venezuela, by the way, it's
two hundred and sixteen, so they're far worse. But you
(09:52):
can see that Poland has done a far better job
at managing its government debt and budget deficits than the
US has.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
They're former Eastern Bloc countries that are looking at Poland
and saying, huh, maybe we should be like them. Are
we seeing them become sort of the shining beacon on
the hill for those former Soviet countries.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Yeah, they are viewed that way as a shining city
on the hill throughout Eastern Europe. I would have to
give a lot of credit also to the Baltic states
of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia just to the northeast of Poland.
They're also very free and far fear than they were
when the Soviet Union dominated them. So they have followed
(10:35):
Poland's lead, and they might even say we led Poland
in some respects, and so they have very free and
prosperous economies today. The Czech Republic is another one that
has moved a great deal in the same direction and
has become such a marvelous place with its economy. The
more south in Europe you go, the less progress towards
(10:58):
freedom those former Soviet satellite countries like Romania or Bulgaria
have made. But nonetheless, they too have been moving in
the right direction and are considerably more prosperous today than
they were in their socialist days when the Soviet Union
dominated them.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
I'd like to see a comparison between Poland and Belarus.
Belarus has remained under the thumb of the dictator, who
has no desire to not be part of the Soviet Union.
I mean, really, this guy's never left the past. I'd
be interested to know about their economy versus people who
have chosen to pivot in a different direction.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Yeah, that would be easy to do. There are websites
where people can just punch in the name of the
countries that want to compare. Georank dot org is one,
and you can compare two countries at one time by
way of a number of measurements. Another one is the
Index of Economic Freedom that is on the website of
(11:58):
the Heritage Foundation, or the Economic Freedom of the World Index,
which is on the website of the Fraser Institute in Canada.
Any of those will would show you those comparisons. And
I can tell you from my knowledge of that area
that Poland is way ahead of Belarus economically, politically, and
probably by just about every other measure. Belarus is maybe
(12:22):
the most hardline regime still around after the fall of communism.
Its leader sort of like the old communist days, and
he doesn't want to let the country be freed.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
I'm talking with Larry Reid, he's the president emeritus of
the Foundation for Economic Education. Got a couple good questions
from our text line. Larry, is there any correlation to
education performance with the same studies to show economic growth?
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Oh? Yes, In fact, there are a number of measurements
that are quite revealing to look at things like per
people spending. I assume the person is asking this in
regards to the United States or I think Poland.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
I think that they's asking like is it because of
a better educational system or was I mean, you look
at Cuba, though, Cuba has one of the highest rates
of literacy in the world, right, so they're well educated people,
but they still suffer under a communist regime. But have
there been changes to the educational system in Poland, for instance,
(13:29):
maybe in curriculum or what they're teaching or how the
kids are being educated in the first place.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Yeah. You know, communist regimes the world over have always
bragged about how they focus on literacy, and they do
on paper at least seem to have or seem to
have high literacy rates. But the issue always is, well,
once people know how to read, what are you going
to let them read? So you can have a very
high literacy rate. But in a country where most of
(13:59):
what you'd to read has been banned Venezuela, you know,
the government has taken over the press there under Maduro
and stuff is their literacy rate is just slightly below
that of Poland, But you can't read anything you want to.
They want you to know how to read, so you
just read their communists propaganda. But if you look at
(14:19):
measurements around the world, the US in particular, there are
a lot of indicators that suggest that what correlates more
strongly with student outcomes than any other single factor, more
than what you spend, more than size of a class size,
is parental involvement. The more parents are involved in the
(14:42):
education of the children, the better they do. That's true
even in areas where the schools aren't very good, and
it's true in places where the schools do seem to
be good but take too much credit for it, where
it's really the parents who are preparing the kids well
and making sure they do their home work at home
and helping them out. Currental involvement is the number one
(15:06):
factor that correlates more strongly than any other, and I
think this is true anywhere in the world in student outcomes.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
It must have been very interesting to watch from your
perspective the arc that has happened in Poland. I'm sure
that you know people who have flourished financially and have
gone from you know, living under a communist regime to
acquiring and accumulating great wealth because of the entrepreneurship or
the levers of capitalism being available to.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Them in Poland?
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Is that your experience? I mean, have you been able
to see the pit the per capital income rise in Poland?
And what was that like to watch as a free
market enthusiast and observer.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Oh, it's been exciting. I have lost count at how
many times I've been back to Poland since it became free,
Probably seven, eight, nine times, maybe more. And every time
I go, I see more color, I see more life,
I see taller buildings, I see more renovations and construction cranes,
(16:13):
and people well dressed and prosperous, with lots of great
restaurants in stark contrast to those gray dark days of
the communist period. You could see it. It's very, very evident.
And you know that the number of billionaires in Poland today,
(16:35):
in free, largely capitalist Poland is ten. Ten billionaires in
Poland Venezuela. Under the socialists, of course, they don't like
billionaires unless they're in government. There's only one. And I'm
trying to find out who that person is. That these
are numbers from last year. I suspect that it might
have been Nicholas Maduro. Or at least one of his friends.
(16:58):
But in Poland there are ten billion airs and they
should be proud of that.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Somebody on the text line said this, it's easy for
Poland to keep their spending in check when they're protected
by NATO and don't spend the required GDP function for protection.
That's the US largest cause. That is not accurate.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
I looked it up.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Poland has actually met their commitment from the very beginning,
and now they're exceeding that commitment and spending a record
level on their own defense. After what's going on in Ukraine.
I can imagine they're concerned. They share a border with Ukraine,
so that's something they've gotten paying attention to.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Absolutely, absolutely, you're right, Mandy. They are in the lead
in terms of the portion of their GNP devoted to defense.
They are at or well beyond the amount of President
Trump has been pressuring the NATO countries to spend. And
even that understates it, because you know, they're on the
border there with Ukraine, and in the first year or
(17:53):
two of the invasion by the Russians, Poland absorbed over
one and a half million Ukrainians. Wow, that is a lot. Yeah,
and you know the most amazing thing is they didn't
absorb them by putting them in refugee camps. You couldn't
(18:13):
find a refugee camp, you know. How they absorbed them.
They welcomed them into their homes. Oh wow, And that
was the most remarkable thing. So that contributed to the cause.
You might say, it's not military spending, but wow. Could
you imagine us taking in what that would be the
equivalent in the country our size, but it would probably
(18:35):
be you know, taking in ten to twenty million, right
and taking them into our homes. Well.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
The only disappointing about this whole conversation is it sounds
like we're never going to be able to use Pollock
jokes again. And I'm not going to lie. I miss
those from the seventies and eighties, Larry Reid. They were
always so fun, of course, at the expense of Polish people,
who are proving to be quite smart these days. Larry Reid,
President emeritus of a Foundation for Economic Education. Larry earlier
(19:02):
in the show, I told the story of how I
got to know you, and I don't even know if
you remember this. I read a column of yours in
the Washington Post and I called up the Mackinaw Institute
to get clarification, and Larry picked up the phone and
we just chatted for like thirty five minutes before I
was like, oh, yeah, I have a radio show, would
you like to come on. I will never forget that,
and I have enjoyed our conversations ever since, and I
(19:23):
hope to have many more.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
And that was in when you were in Naples, Florida,
and I was spending time down there. So that's we
connected in person. Yeah, that must be what twenty years ago.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
I don't even We're not old enough for that, Larry.
We'll just talk about how long that was.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Larry.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Was good to talk to you again, my friend. We'll
talk to you again soon.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Okay, Thanks Mandy,
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