Gas in Olso, Norway is $6.62 according to CNN, BUT

[SoCalDem]

they stop short in reporting it.,.

Oslo residents probably don't pay thousands a month for medical insurance premiums
and maybe the cars offered for sale there get better mileage
and maybe they even have public transportation
and maybe they don;t have to drive so far to get to work..(is there suburban sprawl there too now?)


Most european/scandinavian countries have safety nets that many here would love to have. The fact that gas is high there is only one piece of the puzzle

[Delphinus]

1. All very valid points,

which means that CNN wouldn't think of reporting to include this.

[brmdp3123]

14. Yes, those points are all valid.

They do make it easier on the consumer, but they have nothing to do with the price of gasoline.

[dsc]

20. yes they do

a huge portion of that price in Oslo is the taxes that pay for the health care and public transportaion. In other words they pay about what we do for gas and the rest goes to make their lives better.

[3waygeek]

22. Today on HuffPo

there was an excellent post about what Norway does with its oil revenue.

[marmar]

2. And a car just isn't a necessity in Oslo or any other big Euro city...

They're usually centralized and compact, and even in a big sprawling one like Berlin, the public transit is so good that a car is usually the least attractive option anyway.

[LostinVA]

7. I wish I could live without a car, or with only one car

[Inland]

3. And its gov is sitting on 181.5 BILLION FRICKEN BUCKS in surpluses!

"the Government Petroleum Fund, which is currently valued at US$181.5 billion and is dedicated to care for future generations, the Norwegian state has used its surplus to develop a system of social services, including education, medical care, child care and elder care, that has placed the country high on global indices in those areas. Norway ranks first on the overall Human Development Index and on Save the Children's index of quality of child care. Like other modern Scandinavian states, Norway scores high on transparency, and it ranks first on Reporters Without Borders' Press Freedom Index. Despite the large role of the state sector in its economy, Norway scores above the eightieth percentile on indices of economic freedom and above the ninetieth percentile on indices of global economic competitiveness."
http://www.pinr.com/report.php?ac=view_printable&report_id=369&language_id=

Not bad for under five million people.

[xray s]

15. THAT DOES IT!

I'm moving to Norway. How do you like your herring?

[Initech]

24. Fuck it, I'm moving to Norway too!

I'll gladly put up with the freezing cold temperatures!

[mwooldri]

25. I like my herring smoked.

Norway is certainly a nice idea of a place to live, except yep... it's cold. But I hear they have pretty people (men and women) there, they have some European benefits (free trade, openish borders, etc) but Norway isn't part of the EU (yet). Oh, and enough gas and oil.

Being English I'm partial to England. It's not doing too bad but yep... Norway has a higher standard of living than most of Britain these days.

Mark.

[Left Is Write]

29. My people came from there. I might as well go back.

[high density]

28. Yes but they don't have lots of bombs and weapons to kill people with...

They must live in a lot of fear, unlike us, since we have such a great military complex that protects us against everything! :crazy:

[enid602]

4. Norwegian gas prices

I would think that the difference between what they pay and what we pay probably consists of taxes paid to the government. Typically, most European countries have no sovereign debt, of which the US has trillions. Not a bad trade-off.

[MSgt213]

5. The specific reason gas is so high is because it limits consumption

"Societies adjust over decades to higher fuel prices," says Jos Dings, head of Transport and Energy, a coalition of European environmental NGOs. "They find many mechanisms."

Chief among them, say experts, is the habit of driving smaller and more fuel-efficient cars. While the average light duty vehicle on US highways gets 21.6 miles per gallon (m.p.g.), according to a study by the Paris based International Energy Agency (IEA), in Paris, its European counterpart manages 32.1 m.p.g.

"European consumers are very sensitive to fuel economy and sophisticated about engine options," says Lew Fulton, a transport analyst with the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). "European car magazines are full of comparisons of fuel costs over the life of a vehicle."

Europe's cars: 40 percent are diesel

That approach has given a special boost to diesel cars, which make up more than 40 percent of European car sales, compared with just 4 percent in the US.

Just ahead of Colombier in the line at the gas station Thursday was Nicole Marie, a high school teacher, who was using her husband's diesel Audi, rather than her own gasoline-powered car, to take her daughter to Normandy for a final week of vacation by the sea.

More at link:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0826/p01s03-woeu.html

EDIT:COPYRIGHT: PLEASE POST ONLY 4 OR FIVE
PARAGRAPHS FROM THE COPYRIGHTED NEWS SOURCE
PER DU RULES.

[liberal N proud]

6. They probably don't live far from work in Norway either

It is not thousands of miles from one end of Norway to the other.
What size cars do they drive, if at all?

[pa28]

8. The same thing happened after Katrina.

Apologists in the media got busy convincing the public what a great deal $4.00 gas was and how people around the world actually paid more. And how gas at $3.75 a gallon is cheaper than milk! What a great deal!

You'd have to be a complete tool to buy that and very few did. That won't stop CNN/Fox/MSNBC from trying again though.

[Jim Warren]

11. Bingo

Steady drumbeat of blather.

Supply Issues to Blame for Prices
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.asp?feed=AP&Date=20060421&ID=5660830

What does gasoline cost in other countries?
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12452503/

[Inland]

26. Well, even so,

some thought that the price spike was temporary after Katrina. But now, everyone is thinking longer term. It'll go up and down but long term trend is up up up.

[oscar111]

9. Less Poverty, so better income with which to buy gas

IIRC, the ratio of top to bottom incomes is far better in all Scandanavia than here.

Puzzle: Norway has big oil sources of its own. How can oil cost a lot?

[Melsky]

10. I stopped driving, I gave up my liscense

I'm lucky enough to be able to live in Toronto where it's quite easy to get around without a car. I do not miss driving.

It's really sad that being able to not have a car and still function has become kind of a luxury.

[Jigarotta]

12. and free or heavily subsidized education

if I recall correctly, from a Norwegian on another forum a couple years ago.

He said they certainly weren't rich, on average, and had to pay attention to budgets but they had EVERYTHING THEY NEEDED.

what a thought. goddamn socialists :sarcasm:

[SammyWinstonJack]

13. Well we can't have 'Mericans knowing what the "Yurpeans" get

for their gas taxes/prices, now can we? The Corporate owned media is trying to make us feel better by relating that "Yurpeans" pay more for gas then we do. Why should we complain, right? It's all propaganda by those who aren't effected by higher prices at the pump, ie, the corporate mediawhores.

[oscar111]

16. Free College, free doctors, month long vacations yearly, fat pensions

IIRC, these are basic in most of europe... Pensions fat by comparison to us. Not fat compared to wage-earning years, but fat compared to the peniless level over here. "SS was never intended to be the complete basis of a pension, " as they keep telling us.

Unions are strong there.. that is why they have, and we "have not".

Our unions chopped in half since the peak, '52.

Wages now lower than in '80. Adjusted for inflation.

EXPAND AAR, by having union LOCALS buy radio stations for one sixty thousand dollars.. see my Journal, Rhodes's site details copied in my Journal.

[SammyWinstonJack]

17. Yes I know and I think Europe is great. We could be too, if it weren't

for our greedy corporations.

[oscar111]

18. RECOMMEND AND KICK.. DU needs to learn about NORWAY

zzz

[Yollam]

19. Yep.

Gas is near $5 per gallon here in Japan, but most cars get much better than 30 mpg city. Most people take transit to work and use their car only on the weekend, and when they do drive, the distances are much shorter since Japan is small and there is no endless suburban sprawl to go through just to get out of the city.

It's nice to have a car, but it's even nicer to not NEED a car.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

32. And the cars and even trucks that exist are smaller than ours

On my last trip to Kyoto, I sat in a coffee shop at a busy intersection just watching the traffic. Most cars and even trucks were small, and there were a lot more scooters than we're used to seeing. (I don't like sharing the sidewalk with bicycles, though.)

[LuCifer]

21. "OH BUT THAT'S COMMUNISM..."

That one wingnut that called Thom Hartmann today going on and on and on about how socialized medicine will lead to COMMUNISM and all this CRAP, but Thom shot this wankerspanker down "36 out of 37 industrialized countries have health care for all their people, that's 36 to 1, that's pretty good odds that it WORKS!"

Lu Cifer, even *I* have a higher approval than 32%!!!!!!!!

[area51]

23. Great point.

I'm glad you brought that up :thumbsup: , and it shows once again how our media is not liberal, b/c they're leaving out the most important part of the story.

[Roland99]

27. Oh stop diluting the 'truth' with facts!

[corporate_mike]

30. Map of Gas Prices (gasbuddy.com)

[Odin2005]

31. "they stop short in reporting it"

Of course, the corporate elites can't let let the sheeple know that the US ain't the most well off country in the world, the sheeple might ask for better treatment. I think this is the reason people know jack about geography, the corporate elities want to keep people ignorant about Europe. It's like Soviet propaganda trying to get Russians to think they were better of then people in the West.

[magellan]

33. Wages are higher in Norway as well

An agricultural worker can expect to make a minimum wage of 83.15 NOK/hour, which is currently the equivalent of $13.11/hour.

The minimum wage in Engineering is 110.59 NOK or $17.44/hour, and in Building it's 125.00 NOK or $19.71/hour.

Wages in Norway are still seeing a modest increase (roughly 3% last year) while those in the US are at best stagnant. Of course, like here, it depends on who you are. Salaried managers in Norway get heftier increases than the peasantry does.

Anyway, CNN is being very disingenuous because you can't draw a meaninful parallel between gas prices just by converting the currency into US dollars. You have to look at the whole economy, what people are earning, what other things they're paying for and how much they get in return (like universal healthcare, etc).

Simply saying "Hey, the Norwegians pay $6.62 per gallon so quit bellyaching about $4.00" is like saying "Hey, Bush** paid $187,000 in taxes this year, so quit bitching about whatever you had to pay." It's false comfort!