It&#x27;s difficult to attribute success. Heck, it&#x27;s difficult just to compare your situation to the situation 20 years ago when you were a different person.<p>The populists in Poland and Hungary made a story where good aspects of the current development (for example: competitive workforce, open borders) are taken for granted and bad aspects like perpetuating big differences (like, wages, or quality of public institutions) between Hungary&#x2F;Austria or Poland&#x2F;Germany are attributed to some evil manipulation by the seemingly neutral EU.<p>Every explanation for the big wage differences is quite complicated: you can&#x27;t rely on any popular simple ideology. If market is efficient, why the difference? If state-regulated society is just, why the difference? This leaves space for quite stupid populist &quot;solutions&quot; that are not true, but at least short.<p>Full disclosure: I&#x27;m from the Czech republic.