Subject: Re: Doh! From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 1998/12/27 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3123739366484880@naggum.no> * David Steuber <trashcan@david-steuber.com> | So, do you drive a Volvo, and what do you do when someone cuts you off? | :-) Off course, this question is predicated on you driving a car rather | than using public transit which seems to be more advanced in Europe than | in the US. I would also be very surprised if the majority of Norwegians | drove Volvos when it is so obvious that SAABs are better <eg>. no, I don't drive a car in Norway. I don't think anybody should. (pet peeve alert!) they should instead go on strike (as I have done) against the oppressive taxes levied on car owners and users. if you want a nice new car, 85% of the retail price is taxes paid to the government. (which is OK, really, compared to the 92% taxes paid on 60% Koskenkorva (vodka), which retails at NOK 294 for 500 ml, or USD 39.50 for 17 fl oz.) when I had already decided against wasting USD 2,500 - USD 3,000 on a driver's license when it could be spent on computers, discovering what a racket the Government was running on car owners and users, no way I would help finance them. Norway, being a pretty solid oil-producing country, also has _really_ expensive gasoline, most of it due to heavy taxation. we'll top NOK 8.00 per liter come next year because the blessed religious-block government raised taxes even more. that's more than USD 4.75 a gallon. oh, and the sales tax is 23%. yeah, Norwegians put up with it. I guess we're a _really_ stupid, gullible people. so when public transport is quite reasonable and taxi charges are so low there's a noticeable shortage of drivers _and_ business-related use is tax deductible, which using your own car effectively isn't (because they assume you use it more privately), I'd have to spend more than USD 17,000 a year on car-substitute activities (taxi, home delivery of various goods and food, etc) to even defend the acquisition, but it's easy to cut down on such variable costs if you want something else that's really expensive (which I do a lot), but if you _have_ a nice car, you're basically locked in to using it and being happy with it. I know I couldn't trade all my other desires in for a stupid vehicle, so I decided against it. (most people have car loans, of course, so they pay for it twice, even though they buy a used car, so we have Europe's oldest car fleet.) whereas cars give people freedom in most reasonable places on earth, _not_ having a car gives you freedom in Norway. yeah, it's sick. Norway, it's a great country to visit. (bring your own bottle.) #:Erik, who's trying to figure out which topic this could be "on"