I got to go to both Oslo and Stockholm during my study abroad. both cities are expensive as hell.

I hate paying 8 bucks for a McDs meal in Stockholm, and $12 in Oslo!
$40 for a 1/5th of Jack Daniels, or $7 dollars for a pint of beer isnt fun either.

Hell, the only thing thats cheap is swedish snus(snuff) and i have to order it from there now that im back in the US. one of those bad habits i picked up while i was there haha.

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Originally posted by policerobots I got to go to both Oslo and Stockholm during my study abroad. both cities are expensive as hell. I hate paying 8 bucks for a McDs meal in Stockholm, and $12 in Oslo! $40 for a 1/5th of Jack Daniels, or $7 dollars for a pint of beer isnt fun either. Hell, the only thing thats cheap is swedish snus(snuff) and i have to order it from there now that im back in the US. one of those bad habits i picked up while i was there haha.

you can order snus? hmm. ive been interested to have some, not like a full time thing tho...its fucking powerful as shit.

i just wish i had bought a WE tshirt there|

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'That's like telling a Kodiak bear to stop fcking older men.'

Here pizzas are usually about 25-35kn (4.50-6.50$).

But did any of you guys eat out in Poland or Czech republic? God damn it stuff is cheap over there. Food is literally about 50-60% cheaper than here...

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1+1=10

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Here pizzas are usually about 25-35kn (4.50-6.50$). But did any of you guys eat out in Poland or Czech republic? God damn it stuff is cheap over there. Food is literally about 50-60% cheaper than here...

Yes, and then again is croatia really cheap too

But yeah, Czech republic in particualr is sooo cheap

Okay, so I had nothing to do tonight, so I decided to rebut this article

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Originally posted by malek OSLO — THE received wisdom about economic life in the Nordic countries is easily summed up: people here are incomparably affluent, with all their needs met by an efficient welfare state. They believe it themselves. Yet the reality - as this Oslo-dwelling American can attest, and as some recent studies confirm - is not quite what it appears. Even as the Scandinavian establishment peddles this dubious line, it serves up a picture of the United States as a nation divided, inequitably, among robber barons and wage slaves, not to mention armies of the homeless and unemployed. It does this to keep people believing that their social welfare system, financed by lofty income taxes, provides far more in the way of economic protections and amenities than the American system. Protections, yes -but some Norwegians might question the part about amenities.

First of all, even the homeless are better off in Scandinavia, even if you live on the street, you still have the rights to healthcare, social benefits and pension. It was pretty hard to find statistics on it though, so it’s hard to say that the statement is true or not.

I don’t think any of the Scandinavian countries have a minimum wage, but to compare, a worker on McDonalds in Norway would earn about 17 USD per hour, meanwhile a worker in the USA would make about 5 dollars per hour. So, I think from a Norwegian point of view, it would actually be appropriate to call a US worker, a “wage slave”.

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In Oslo, library collections are woefully outdated, and public swimming pools are in desperate need of maintenance. News reports describe serious shortages of police officers and school supplies. When my mother-in-law went to an emergency room recently, the hospital was out of cough medicine. Drug addicts crowd downtown Oslo streets, as The Los Angeles Times recently reported, but applicants for methadone programs are put on a months-long waiting list.

I have been in Oslo, Stockholm, and some major American cities such as New York, San Francisco, Phoenix and Detroit. And I can honestly say “Drug addicts crowd downtown Oslo streets”, is no different from drug addicts in any US city, quite the opposite. Oslo and Stockholm do have problems with homeless/drug addicts, but so do 98% of all the world’s major cities! Hard to find statistics about it, but I couldn’t see any difference.

As for healthcare, how come the US was ranked like 40th country in the world by the WHO, meanwhile Norway and Sweden was much higher. Her mom didn’t get her medicine, well that’s too bad, but I don’t think it is anything that happens very often. I would like to see any statistics on that before I believe it. I have never ever heard about anyone who didn’t get his/her medicine. And why the hell would you go to an emergency room to get cough medicine, they might just have said so to get her to get the fuck out of there to take care of more important patients instead

The police force is a problem in Sweden, so I guess the same might go for Norway. The police force simply cannot handle all the new criminality that is going on. I think the US have like 5 times as more cops per capita than Sweden or something like that, so the problem is that we have to few cops, and something like that takes time to change (since it has worked before there hasn’t really been a need for it). But yeah, he have got a point here.

Btw, I Heard that American public pools and libraries are all in top shape! Except for that, hard to prove anything here, cause I really have no personal experience, and it’s something that’s pretty hard to find statistics on.

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In Norway, the standard line is that there must be some mistake, that such things simply should not happen in "the world's richest country." Why do Norwegians have such a wealthy self-image? Partly because, compared with their grandparents (who lived before the discovery of North Sea oil), they are rich. Few, however, question whether it really is the world's richest country.

If you want to compare richness, why not take America’s favourite measurement of it – the GDP. Norway’s (nominal) GDP is almost 50% higher than USA’s. Even Sweden’s GDP is slightly higher than US’s. So I guess Norwegians are richer than their grandparents, but not only that, they are a hell of a lot richer than the USA too!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...l%29_per_capita

That said, I think there are better ways of measuring richness, but I doubt that the US would rank any higher in any of them.

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After I moved here six years ago, I quickly noticed that Norwegians live more frugally than Americans do. They hang on to old appliances and furniture that we would throw out. And they drive around in wrecks. In 2003, when my partner and I took his teenage brother to New York - his first trip outside of Europe - he stared boggle-eyed at the cars in the Newark Airport parking lot, as mesmerized as Robin Williams in a New York grocery store in "Moscow on the Hudson."

America does have a lot more cool cars. Yes. It is not as much of a status symbol in Scandinavia as it is in US (although it’s still cool to have a cool car, but it’s not the world’s most important thing. However, that does not necessarily mean that Americans live better lives. Also, airports generally have cooler cars than the average parking lot )

About furniture, I would say the opposite, here in Canada, and at a few families I have visited in the US (my host family have relatives there), they all have furniture that we would never even dream of saving in Sweden. So I had the opposite experience. Doesn’t really prove anything, but neither does his statement which was also solely based on personal experience.

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One image in particular sticks in my mind. In a Norwegian language class, my teacher illustrated the meaning of the word matpakke - "packed lunch" - by reaching into her backpack and pulling out a hero sandwich wrapped in wax paper. It was her lunch. She held it up for all to see. Yes, teachers are underpaid everywhere. But in Norway the matpakke is ubiquitous, from classroom to boardroom. In New York, an office worker might pop out at lunchtime to a deli; in Paris, she might enjoy quiche and a glass of wine at a brasserie. In Norway, she will sit at her desk with a sandwich from home.

For some reason in Norway they don’t have school lunches, so you cannot buy anything at the school and you don’t get anything either, so you have to bring it yourself. I think this has to do with some old thought that everyone should have similar lunches, although I have heard that there are discussions in Norway to implement a similar system for school lunches as we have in Sweden.

In Sweden everyone gets a warm lunch for free in school. It is really a great thing. It is not top class food, but it’s not bad either, and there is usually like 2-3 courses to choose between plus some vegetarian meal plus different vegetables. And don’t even get me started on how bad the Canadian school lunches are and I heard the American ones are as bad so you should just STFU

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It is not simply a matter of tradition, or a preference for a basic, nonmaterialistic life. Dining out is just too pricey in a country where teachers, for example, make about $50,000 a year before taxes. Even the humblest of meals - a large pizza delivered from Oslo's most popular pizza joint - will run from $34 to $48, including delivery fee and a 25 percent value added tax.

Yes I agree, teachers make way to little money, but somehow it seems to be enough to get new ones coming so I guess that’s the reason why it hasn’t been changed yet, but it should.

And pizza discussion already taken care of

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Not that groceries are cheap, either. Every weekend, armies of Norwegians drive to Sweden to stock up at supermarkets that are a bargain only by Norwegian standards. And this isn't a great solution, either, since gasoline (in this oil-exporting nation) costs more than $6 a gallon.

Isn’t there Americans too that drive to other states where it is lower sales taxes or whatever to shop? Would be the same thing here, a lot of people in Norway live very close to the boarder, so naturally if it is cheaper in Sweden they take the drive. It’s probably same thing everywhere in the world. And gasoline is a lot more expensive all over Europe, it has to do with saving the environment though, I guess America doesn’t care about stuff like that though

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All this was illuminated last year in a study by a Swedish research organization, Timbro, which compared the gross domestic products of the 15 European Union members (before the 2004 expansion) with those of the 50 American states and the District of Columbia. (Norway, not being a member of the union, was not included.) After adjusting the figures for the different purchasing powers of the dollar and euro, the only European country whose economic output per person was greater than the United States average was the tiny tax haven of Luxembourg, which ranked third, just behind Delaware and slightly ahead of Connecticut. The next European country on the list was Ireland, down at 41st place out of 66; Sweden was 14th from the bottom (after Alabama), followed by Oklahoma, and then Britain, France, Finland, Germany and Italy. The bottom three spots on the list went to Spain, Portugal and Greece. Alternatively, the study found, if the E.U. was treated as a single American state, it would rank fifth from the bottom, topping only Arkansas, Montana, West Virginia and Mississippi. In short, while Scandinavians are constantly told how much better they have it than Americans, Timbro's statistics suggest otherwise. So did a paper by a Swedish economics writer, Johan Norberg.

I really tried to find stats for every state in the US but I didn’t find anything. However, I doubt the nominal GDPs or the states would be that much higher, in that case some of the states must be REALLY poor to bring down the whole countries GDP.

If someone has the stats of GDPs for every state, please show it.

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Contrasting "the American dream" with "the European daydream," Mr. Norberg described the difference: "Economic growth in the last 25 years has been 3 percent per annum in the U.S., compared to 2.2 percent in the E.U. That means that the American economy has almost doubled, whereas the E.U. economy has grown by slightly more than half. The purchasing power in the U.S. is $36,100 per capita, and in the E.U. $26,000 - and the gap is constantly widening."

First of all, economic growth isn’t everything, there are so many more benefits that a European have, but not an American. Secondly, Europe does have some problems with it economy, that needs to be fixed. That said, Sweden’s GDP growth has been good and constant the last 10 years or so, that is since we reformed our economical system, and I think most Scandinavian countries have had that.

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The one detail in Timbro's study that didn't feel right to me was the placement of Scandinavian countries near the top of the list and Spain near the bottom. My own sense of things is that Spaniards live far better than Scandinavians. In Norwegian pubs, for example, anyone rich or insane enough to order, say, a gin and tonic is charged about $15 for a few teaspoons of gin at the bottom of a glass of tonic; in Spain, the drinks are dirt-cheap and the bartender will pour the gin up to the rim unless you say "stop."

This is just the stupidest comparison ever, I don’t get why this would say anything!? Anyone smarter than squirrel should realize that, and I also think that this comments is similar to the rest of his article, very vague arguments (except for the state one, which I didn’t have any info for, and which it wasn’t the author of the article who wrote anyway).

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In late March, another study, this one from KPMG, the international accounting and consulting firm, cast light on this paradox. It indicated that when disposable income was adjusted for cost of living, Scandinavians were the poorest people in Western Europe. Danes had the lowest adjusted income, Norwegians the second lowest, Swedes the third. Spain and Portugal, with two of Europe's least regulated economies, led the list.

I also here tried to find any more info about this, but I couldn’t, so I will leave that to the unknown. I’m not entirely sure how this can be true though, out of personal experience I would say it is not. But then again personal experience isn’t a very good way of comparing things…

I also read somewhere that these studies don’t take into account education and healthcare costs. Which would greatly benefit America’s stats. Since Scandinavians doesn’t really pay anything for healthcare or education, meanwhile Americans pay a shit load for it, then obviously if that was taken into account the numbers would be different.

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Most recently, the Danish Ministry of Finance released a study comparing the income available for private consumption in 30 countries. Norway did somewhat better here than in the KPMG study, lagging behind most of Western Europe but at least beating out Ireland and Portugal.

Ah, another great study. It is well known that Ireland and Norway are both amongst the poorest in Europe!

There must be some serious flaw in these studies, I would like to know how they do them.

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The thrust, however, was to confirm Timbro's and Mr. Norberg's picture of American and European wealth. While the private-consumption figure for the United States was $32,900 per person, the countries of Western Europe (again excepting Luxembourg, at $29,450) ranged between $13,850 and $23,500, with Norway at $18,350.

I guess that also here they don’t count things such as health care and education? I guess there is a hell of a lot more stuff that goes into that category too that would benefit Europe!

Also, this does not take into account the big inequalities in the US, some people in the US can spend A LOT of money, meanwhile the average joe doesn’t have it better. So some kind of median would be better indeed! Didn’t find any figures for that though.

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Meanwhile, the references to Norway as "the world's richest country" keep on coming. An April 2 article in Dagsavisen, a major Oslo daily, asked: How is it that "in the world's richest country we're tearing down social services that were built up when Norway was much poorer?"

Isn’t this a problem for every developed country though, as we get richer, social security gets more expensive. I don’t know the solution to the problem, but I know that this is not a problem specific for Scandinavian countries.

Anyway, I think this article was complete bullshit and I’m sure it would be easy to disapprove even more things, but I tried and succeeded to do so with most of his arguments anyway.

Anyway, thanks for me and sorry for all my grammar/sentence errors bye

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Originally posted by St_Andrew Okay, so I had nothing to do tonight, so I decided to rebut this article

Actually, you're not rebutting his argument. You're undercutting it. To rebut it, you would have to demonstrate that Norway is the worlds richest country, or that Norwegians don't think so themselves.
(Sorry, had to write that - I've spent the last four weeks reading on the topic of formal argumentation (), and now there was suddenly a chance to use all that knowledge for something.)

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Originally posted by St_Andrew I don’t think any of the Scandinavian countries have a minimum wage, but to compare, a worker on McDonalds in Norway would earn about 17 USD per hour, meanwhile a worker in the USA would make about 5 dollars per hour. So, I think from a Norwegian point of view, it would actually be appropriate to call a US worker, a “wage slave”.

In Denmark we have a minimum wage. It's around $15/hour - more if you're a member of a union which has an agreement with your employer.

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Originally posted by St_Andrew I have been in Oslo, Stockholm, and some major American cities such as New York, San Francisco, Phoenix and Detroit. And I can honestly say “Drug addicts crowd downtown Oslo streets”, is no different from drug addicts in any US city, quite the opposite. Oslo and Stockholm do have problems with homeless/drug addicts, but so do 98% of all the world’s major cities! Hard to find statistics about it, but I couldn’t see any difference.

New York vs. any Danish city I've been to: New York has faaaar the greater percentage of low-life. They may not be trodding around downtown, but there's certainly enough of them. As far as I can understand from my friends here, they stay away from downtown areas because the police is systematically harassing low-life when it leaves its designated areas (bad parts of Brooklyn & Bronx).

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Originally posted by St_Andrew America does have a lot more cool cars. Yes. It is not as much of a status symbol in Scandinavia as it is in US (although it’s still cool to have a cool car, but it’s not the world’s most important thing. However, that does not necessarily mean that Americans live better lives. Also, airports generally have cooler cars than the average parking lot )

Further, big SUVs are heavily taxed in Europe (because they are bad for the environment), and large cars are generally useless in dense Europe.

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Originally posted by St_Andrew Anyway, thanks for me and sorry for all my grammar/sentence errors bye

Yeah, you're a disgrace.

Good post.

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Originally posted by St_Andrew Okay, so I had nothing to do tonight, so I decided to rebut this article First of all, even the homeless are better off in Scandinavia, even if you live on the street, you still have the rights to healthcare, social benefits and pension. It was pretty hard to find statistics on it though, so it’s hard to say that the statement is true or not

Dude, not to call bullshit... but BULLSHIT.

Turns out that not only are the US/Americans wealthier and more productive than Europeans, but it's better to be poor in the US than in Europe:

http://www.timbro.com/euvsusa/

This is the actual study cited in the original article...

Turns out, that if you use the US definition for low-income, that over 40% of Sweedish households would be considered low-income and the number is even higher for poorer EU countries...

So there are more poor families in the EU, and those poor families have less than the same poor family would in the US....

Who'd have guessed?

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Originally posted by mps242 Dude, not to call bullshit... but BULLSHIT. Turns out that not only are the US/Americans wealthier and more productive than Europeans, but it's better to be poor in the US than in Europe: http://www.timbro.com/euvsusa/ This is the actual study cited in the original article... Turns out, that if you use the US definition for low-income, that over 40% of Sweedish households would be considered low-income and the number is even higher for poorer EU countries... So there are more poor families in the EU, and those poor families have less than the same poor family would in the US.... Who'd have guessed?

The link doesnt work....but i would be interested in reading the article if you would post the correct one........

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*** Sig edited -> see rule #5
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y142/dublin6/100-percent-liberal.gif

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Originally posted by mps242 Dude, not to call bullshit... but BULLSHIT. Turns out that not only are the US/Americans wealthier and more productive than Europeans, but it's better to be poor in the US than in Europe: http://www.timbro.com/euvsusa/ This is the actual study cited in the original article... Turns out, that if you use the US definition for low-income, that over 40% of Sweedish households would be considered low-income and the number is even higher for poorer EU countries... So there are more poor families in the EU, and those poor families have less than the same poor family would in the US.... Who'd have guessed?

Don't know if you intentionally tried for an ignorant troll post, but you managed to do one. If you had read this thread, you would know that none of us are impressed with GNP or other means statistics. The report you linked to (http://www.timbro.com/euvsusa/pdf/EU_vs_USA_English.pdf) is built *solely* on means statistics, which doesn't say anything substantial about the wealth of the individuals of a nation.
As to your claims on poor people being better off in the US - where do you find that information in the report? I've been through it, and the only place where statistics, which would warrant such conclusions, are mentioned is in the introduction where they are disregarded because they are difficult to use. Give me a pagenumber so I can be convinced.
Finally, the report is released by Timbro, which has a political agenda of liberalizing the market in Sweden.

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Originally posted by trancaholic Don't know if you intentionally tried for an ignorant troll post, but you managed to do one. If you had read this thread, you would know that none of us are impressed with GNP or other means statistics. The report you linked to (http://www.timbro.com/euvsusa/pdf/EU_vs_USA_English.pdf) is built *solely* on means statistics, which doesn't say anything substantial about the wealth of the individuals of a nation.

Well, it doesn't say anything substantial if you assume from the get-go that they don't. Honestly, if you read the report starting with the conclusion that it's bullshit then it's pretty easy to dismiss the data... It doesn't make you correct, it just means you've worked backwards from an assumption... If the data shows that G(N/D)P is positively correlated with disposable income, consumption, and material posessions and negatively correlated with levels of poverty or the number of people below $X of currency normalized income then wouldn't it be safe to say that you not being "impressed with...means statistics" is really just you denying reality?

But hey, ignore all those pesky correlations and resulting information, instead we can just ask for antecdotal information on how much a pizza actually costs in Oslo...

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As to your claims on poor people being better off in the US - where do you find that information in the report? I've been through it, and the only place where statistics, which would warrant such conclusions, are mentioned is in the introduction where they are disregarded because they are difficult to use. Give me a pagenumber so I can be convinced.

Compare the table on page 15 with the table on page 22. Read Section 3.3 and 3.4 starting on page 20. And finally, the living space table on page 23.

Basically it comes down to this... if *low income* Americans have substantially similar levels of material goods as *all* Europeans, and they have more living space per person as *the average* European then isn't it fair to say that, materially (since that's what this thread is about), it is better to be poor in the US than poor in Europe (where one can only assume that the poor in Europe would rank below the mean in Europe for material goods)?

And, poverty aside, if being in the bottom 1/4th of American earners puts you on the same level as the bottom 40% of the wealthiest European nations then aren't you substantially better off being in the US in general?

Sure, you can say there are other important factors like accumulated savings or some other stat, but that just raises the issue of how people decide to use/accumulate their assets, not whether one has greater spending power and/or opportunities in one place over the other...

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Finally, the report is released by Timbro, which has a political agenda of liberalizing the market in Sweden.

As opposed to? ... perhaps... KPMG or the Danish Ministry of Finance... :P EDIT: speaking of which, I can't seem to find the Danish report referred to in the original article... being a Dane, perhaps you'd have better luck (as it may not he available in English)

Zig: not sure why the link isn't working for you, try trancaholics link...

40 buks for a swedish pizza? damit, im going there in january for international exchange, guess i can check out pizza as one of my staples