Kevinp, I'm going out on a limb here. Tone is notoriously difficult to read in Internet discussions, but the lack of smileys in your post make me interpret yours as a mixture of irony and bitterness. And I'm going to counter with a bit of seriousness, and you're not going to like it: Yes, average Norwegians has more money than average Americans. I am a very average Norwegiean. Together with my wife I have a yearly income of around $120 000. A regular income for an industrial worker is $60 000. And the reason for that is that we live in what especially Republicans call a socialist state, but what we call a social democratic state. Because the average CEO salary in a large Norwegian company is around $200 000, not ten times that like in the USA. The differences are very small compared to the US in all walks of life. Yes, we have the odd stock broker making millions of dollars, but I would guess that you could count them on your fingers and toes. The unions are basically more powerful than any CEO.
We also pay more tax than you (and yes, Sweetpea, more for beer!
) but all education and necessary medical expenses (which covers just about everything except for plastic surgery just to look good if there isn't a medical condition that makes it necessary) are free. And we have a much stricter control over the financial sector something again especially your Republicans say is counter productive. Maybe, but that means that we were almost unaffected by the financial crisis. The unemployment rate in Norway is higher than usuall at the moment, but only slight. And "higher than usual" here means around 3.5 %, which also means that the average Norwegian has more money. Housing is cheaper in Norway, but one thing is a lot more expensive: Cars and gasoline. Again because of the social democratic leadership, because they want to keep emissions down, so we pay around 8 dollars per gallon, drive as little as possible and most people drive around in ten year old cars. Which would probably lead to a bloody revolt in the US, especially in the southern states.
Oh yes, finally we have oil, but the US isn't short on natural resources either. It's just that your wise, free enterprise loving leadership have decided to spend billions of dollars on wars to stop imaginary weapons of mass destructions (I actually think that Afghanistan was necessary - Norway is there with a contingent of special forces, including Norwegian version of Navy SEALS that actually are considered one of the best special forces in the world, but Iraq was a joke where your previous monkey brained president was lead by big business and a war mongering vice president) and lots of idiotic counter terrorism measures that doesn't really work but erodes privacy (even though MacDonald's kill a thousand times more people in the US then al-Quaida will ever manage to) and propping up a failing state in the Middle East (Israel would probably make peace with the palestinians within two months if the US could break free of the christian right and other lobby groups and just stop paying them money) and so on, and so on.
And if you from this tirade are deducing that I am a left extremist, you're wrong. I'm very much in the conservative camp here in Norway, but conservative in Norway means a bit to the left of the liberal Democrats camp in the US. I would elect John Stewart for president if I could! Don't get me wrong, I've been to the US several times, I drive a Chevy Suburban (converted to LPG because that's 1/3 of the gasoline price since it pollutes a lot less) and have an Oldsmobile Starfire '78 (which I'm working on getting a Buick V6 Turbo engine into - bought on eBay from Michigan). But I do think that big business is running too much in the US, and you have seen what that leads to.
OK, I'm going to put my flameproof PJ's on now, I'm sure I will need it. I hope I will not be chased from the forum with a stick, though...