How much was the overpopulation problem in Poland alleviated by the migration of Poles to the Recovered Territories?

[gebhk]

A) Yes
B) You would need to ask someone with expertise in the matter. Clearly there was great progress albeit given the starting point, it would have been difficult for there not to have been. Clearly, also, it was patchy and there was a growing East-West divide.

[wm]

Polish GDP per capita, according to the Maddison Project. This is why Poland had to tax cars so high (i.e., it was a tax on the rich,) there was no other choice.
Although some say, Poland never recovered from pre-war levels, that ww1 was even more devastating than ww2.

poland.jpg (17.38 KiB) Viewed 736 times

[Futurist]

Based on this chart, Polish GDP per capita recovered by 1938. Were car taxes dropped by then?

[wm]

Well, considering it was at the same time in Germany it was 4993, the answer could be only - no.

[Futurist]

Quite amazing--even Germany 80 years ago was as poor was dirt-poor Honduras or India are right now!

[wm]

This's what so many people don't understand. They think because a cop killed a man we live in hell.
But in fact, we live lives impossible to 19th-century robber barons.
They say even in the fifties, some rural parts of Germany suffered from hunger during pre-harvest. An in the US too.

[Futurist]

Yes, people in the West today are often quite pampered in comparison to their ancestors. Even US blacks live much better than African blacks live.

[wm]

After his return to the United States, Muhammad Ali said
“Thank God my granddaddy got on that boat”
after a reporter asked,
“Champ, what did you think of Africa?”

[gebhk]

This should probably go into the 'motoring through Poland' thread.....

This is why Poland had to tax cars so high (i.e., it was a tax on the rich,) there was no other choice.

I'm sorry but this statement makes little sense to me on a number of levels.
1) There are always choices, especially when it comes to selective taxation and Poland did not have to tax motor vehicles punitively. That was a deliberate choice from a virtually endless range of options. For example punitive taxing of riding horses (also a preserve of the rich) and horse-drawn vehicles would have been a much more effective form or raising revenue if that was the sole point of the exercise. Given that horse-drawn vehicles damaged the road surface more than pneumatic-wheeled motor vehicles, you could even offer some reasonable justification for this.
2) If you want to tax the rich, then tax the rich. That was what the variable rate income tax was invented for.
3) Taxing motor vehicles was not just a tax on the rich. It was also a tax on small businesses on doing business rather than their profits (trucks and buses - which were in fact taxed more heavily that the private cars of the rich) and the general public which paid taxes on any bus tickets they bought - they too were hardly likely to be part of the 'rich' class.

That is before we even address the issue whether deliberately reducing the efficiency of domestic industry and agriculture, making it less competitive and discouraging both external and internal capital investment as a result, is a good idea, especially when you have financial woes already..........

[wm]

The peasants rode horses too and massively used horse-drawn vehicles.
The peasants were overtaxed as well, and angry about it, as demonstrated by the Great Peasant Uprising in 1937 (and the earlier peasant strikes).

[gebhk]

The peasants rode horses too

Given that only about 2% of the horses were riding horses and that they were very expensive, I find it jolly unlikely.

massively used horse-drawn vehicles

Precisely - which is why taxing them made sense if raising income was the goal.

[gebhk]

Were car taxes dropped by then?

To be clear, I don't think many folks object or objected to a road tax in principle - which is what the PFD was supposed to be. There is a logic to vehicle owners making a greater contribution to the maintenance and construction of roads - they get the most benefit. The objections to PFD were that firstly the money was more often than not diverted elsewhere and, secondly, that it was set at a rate which crippled motorisation. Not unlike some British councils, who taxed small businesses out of the high street: instead of having a reasonable and steady income they had, in many cases, nothing and no business which damaged the economy. At the same time the government was sponsoring and promoting the horse transport industry to the tune of millions. Therefore, the argument that poverty was the driving force behind this tax, just does not add up.

However the answer to your question is that no, the taxes were not dropped - and there is no reason that that should be a problem in itself - so long as the rate was sustainable and the income used appropriately. I have a vague (very vague) notion the rates were changed towards the end of the 30s which stimulated the growth of numbers. Alas it will take some digging to find the information.

[gebhk]

Incidentally - cars used for business attracted a 25% higher tax. So if this was a tax on the rich, personal car-owning class, it was spectacularly badly designed.....

Taken in its totality (the PFD tax was not by any means the only tax on motor vehicles) the government's fiscal policy up until perhaps 1937 in this area could be interpreted, arguably, as an attempt to drive motor vehicles off the road and to replace them with horse-based transport. This, however, created two big problems. Firstly, horse transport was less efficient, less inflexible and more costly. Secondly there were not enough horses in general and not nearly enough horses of adequate quality to satisfy the needs of the economy in general and the armed forces in particular and there was no way of rapidly increasing stock.

[gebhk]

Were car taxes dropped by then?

I am nowhere near finished trawling through the relevant legislation, but some patterns emerge. In the broadest sense, it would appear that the powers that be realised slowly that taxing motor transport out of existence was not the greatest idea ever. The level of tax was reduced over the years. Ignoring all manner of complications (for example vehicles with solid rubber tyres attracted a higher tax and metal-rimmed ones a higher tax still), if you were the new proud owner of a 1.5 tonne commercial truck and I am reading the bumph correctly:
From 28.2.31 you paid 600 zl tax.
From 29.3.33 it was 525 zl
From 2.7.36 it was 300 zl
From 16.2.38 it was 20 zl

[Sid Guttridge]

Have we established that there was an "over population problem" in Poland"?

By what is this being measured?

Hitler also cited an "over population problem" as justification for "lebensraum", so I am always suspicious when I hear this reasoning. At the same time he was pursuing a pro-natalist policy. For ultra nationalists like him, the idea of reducing the birth rate was anathema. Their answer is to acquire more land, necessarily off others.

It is amazing how often the UK has been declared "full" over the last 50 years and yet still manages to accommodate millions more people. The same is true of almost everywhere else in the planet.

Cheers,

Sid.