Honestly I have never failed to meet people complaining about prices anywhere and as far as weather goes even the Russians and Lithuanians seem to do that.

That being said I wish I was a Finnish taxi driver in Norway instead of a Finnish taxi driver in Finland. ;(

Slightly (or completely) off-topic but you really are a taxi driver? I'm curious why you read HN and how you found it.

I'm a presenter on an FM radio station and I read HN daily.

My work is in a medium many people here would consider to be irrelevant, or even dying.

I'm interested in the world outside my current narrow field of work, I'm interested in how the concepts and ideas discussed here can help my medium stay relevant in this age, and I'm interested in the careers of the future.

My current work won't last forever, I know that, and the more I know now, the better-prepared I'll be.

For the same reason that pizza delivery drivers (ahem) do. The Internet is wide open, and even aspirational hackers and wantrapreneurs can benefit from lessons learned. I read pg's essays starting in 2006.

I try to convert everyone I know to some of the topics found here, it's indeed very useful mainly in times like these where a job is something not available for everyone. I really like seeing all these different people reading HN.

My taxi driver two weeks ago turned out to be a retired IT manager, who liked to have something to do outside of the house, so had three shifts/week lined up.

I was surprised too!

I meant to vote you up and hit the wrong arrow. Sorry :(

I see this a fair bit and wonder if moving the arrows further apart (formally by PG or using GreaseMonkey in the interim) has been discussed?

I don't have any down arrows, otherwise I would post code instead of just a suggestion.

I absolutely would love to see the arrows resized when viewing using a mobile device.

The solution is not "make it harder to make a mistake" but rather make it possible to change your vote (like Reddit).

Hah, I've even heard people complaining about the weather here in the Silicon Valley. That and real estate prices, but the latter complaints are warranted.

I lived in San Diego before I moved to Mountain View, and I can confirm that the weather here is indeed horrid. :)

Are you expressing surprise that Russians complain about Russian weather, that Russians complain about Finnish weather or that Russians complain about Norwegian weather?

None of those seems surprising since all those countries are, at least in part, cold, gloomy and snowy.

Cote d'Azur, in South France, is arguably the most marvelous place in the world, for its cuisine, its weather, its landscape, etc. (I guess many of the most wealthy people on Earth live there.) I had some local friends there and spent some days with them: They did complain a lot about the weather, and would not go out of the house if the wind was slightly stronger than adequate, or if there was one slight possibility of a thin cloud veiling the sun for some minute in the afternoon.

I once flew from Dali, Yunnan to Chengdu, Sichuan. From the plane's window we saw the moment we entered the enormous, province-sized sea of gray clouds over the Sichuan basin, leaving behind us blue sky and sunny hills. At the airport, the Sichuanese people said weather was really much better here. They actually prefer year-long heavy gray sky!

No kidding.

People complaining about their weather is not related at all to the quality of their local weather, which is not easy to define anyway. It is more a consequence of their way to see things. (Currently reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, it resonates...)

I have to ask, how hard would it be for an American to get a job in Norway (lets say at Opera) and move their family there?

Probably not that hard. However you'd probably be going down a lot in salary, the top 95th percentile for people with masters in technical subjects is around 800 000 NOK or 138 000 usd, but the average is around 550 000.

Considering a cheap apartment with 2 bedrooms costs minimum 2 000 000 nok.

A bus ticket starts at 28 nok about 5 usd.

You might also want to consider the 35 days of payed holiday that you get, the generous parenting leaves and healthcare and pension packages, as well as the higher tax :)

It's only 25 days, or 4 weeks and 1 day. The payment part is just a percentage of what you earned the previous year. So the first year I start working after college I will not get paid during my holidays.

Parenting leaves are very important since it is assumed that women should work and not stay home with the children. We also have subsidized kindergartens.

Healthcare is fair. However we have pretty much no dental and you only get subsidized medication if you need medication for more than 3 months.

Pension is ok, however it's just an economical model where you deduct peoples salaries and force them to save money.

And yes, taxes are very high:

25% VAT

High income tax

Wealth tax and also housing tax

25 days is the legal minimum. My employer gives 30 days paid vacation. Some companies also handle holiday pay slightly differently (while still complying with the law), so it's possible to get paid while you are on vacation - I did.

You have to have a lot of money before the wealth tax hits you, and it's quite low anyway (if you have enough money that the wealth tax will hit you, you can earn more in interest having the money sitting in a bank account than you will be paying).

IT workers are in demand in Norway, so if you're skilled, it's generally not too hard to get a job here. And the pay is decent - sure you might find some jobs that pay more in the States, but you're not going to starve here. My pay actually jumped by about 50% when I moved here.

Things are more expensive here, of course, but not everything is a lot more expensive - renting an apartment here is similar to prices you'd expect in New York. I've never had a problem with healthcare, but off hand I don't know any company that provides dental coverage or vision plans.

The hardest part is the language. --Everyone can speak English here, but, like anywhere, the more of the local language you speak, the easier it is.

Opera does have a few Americans working there, including at least one who moved his entire family there (even his dogs, I believe).

Yes, you'd might go down in salary, as hmottestad mentions, so there are pros and cons. People do live fine here on their salaries, so I don't think it would be a problem.

All of your negative points remind me of Finland. Perhaps all of us Nordic folk suffer from some von Trier-ish ailment, where we focus on what's wrong instead of how good we have it here.

Oddly, from what I can tell, von Trier's native Denmark doesn't seem to suffer from it: it seems to always top lists of people happy with their country's situation, and talking in person to Danes, it is nearly impossible to get anyone to admit that there's anything non-great about Denmark...

It is very common for people to complain in Denmark. I left the country, but if you want I can still complain about it ;)

Hmm, maybe I get a different view because I'm a foreigner living in Denmark, but the Danes I know seem strangely patriotic! Not necessarily in a nationalist way, but in a way that's sort of civic-minded and non-cynical: proud to be Danish and think that the way things are done in Denmark is generally a good way to do them. Very different than most people I knew in U.S. universities, who were very cynical about the U.S. society/government.

Imposing a nation-wide "fat tax" is definitely something Denmark does wrong. Folks who regularly consume foods high in saturated fats will be penalized -- presumably based off fat-phobic, bunk science.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2096185,00.htm...

You write "civic-minded" and "non-cynical", I read "nationalist" and "naive" ;) But perhaps I am cynical. Are the Danes you know students?

Among the minority in Denmark that works full time in the private sector, there is discontent with how the system works.

Hi, I'm Klaus from Denmark. We have obviously not met. ;)

Though not important to the essence of your post, I would like to point out that beer is sold until 20:00 on weekdays and 18:00 on Saturdays, not the other way around.

Why do you complain about people in welfare?

(I think it's a good thing that a country provides welfare to its people like Norway does.)

I've lived in a country with good social services and one with less good social services. They both have their ups and downs. The problem with social services as a system, is the same problem as with any system: people game it.

I assume in Norway it's no different. Employed feel that the [some] of the unemployed are lazy and taking advantage of the system.

It's worth a mention that this is a common complaint in the UK. We've even had a few government ads run railing against "benefits fraud."

The bad behaviours it encourages: having another child to receive state support, don't look for jobs if you expect to be paid less than the what the govt pays unemployed folks, etc.

Some people take advantage of it. People who don't use it might feel like they're paying for lazy bums. Personally I like to think most people aren't on welfare voluntarily.

I recently read somewhere that Norwegians are some of the most gullible people in the world though. YMMV.

You're probably justified in your complaints about prices; Norway has higher prices than almost anywhere in Europe.

Norway, and Oslo in particular, is one of the most expensive places in the world, and prices are often discussed in the media. However, I read recently that although we like to complain about food prices, they are not very high when compared to our income.

Of course, the Big Mac index clearly shows that food can be very expensive. In general, all fast food is expensive. This is probably in part because there's no such thing as cheap labor here.

Only Europe?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index#Figures