Darren New wrote:
> 
>>   And do you even know how much gasoline/diesel costs here? An American
>> would drop his jaw into the ground if he saw it. Translated to the US
>> units, gasoline is about 9.5 dollars/gallon, and diesel is 8.3.
> 
> But you have good public transit, yes?  When I've been on vacation in 
> Europe for weeks at a time, I never rent a car.  In the USA, it's really 
> difficult to live most places without a car, except maybe in the middle 
> of a big city.

Yes, on few of the "big" cities (Finnish cities are nowhere to claim to 
be big - none of them has even near of million citizens, but in Finnish 
scale they (100+k citizens) are big). You can manage well with public 
transportation on a vacation, but try to work and live a bit off from 
the major courses. My trip to work every morning would take something 
like 9 hours(!), because there is no bus line from my place to the 
motorway (one could assume I'd walk that 7km - with laptop, possibly 
other hardware etc...).

>>   Not only that, you have to pay mandatory annual car insurance (good
>> thing, I suppose) as well as a mandatory annual car tax (you receive
>> nothing in return, it's a *pure* tax for simply *owning* a car, without
>> any benefits).
> 
> Same here. Well, I mean, the taxes go towards upkeep of the roads and 
> such, but it's not like you directly see the money come back to your 
> pocket. California car taxes are exceptionally high because we're so 
> "progressive" here. :-)

I don't remember the exact numbers, but in Finland the country collects 
much more taxes from the traffic than returns there.

> Oh, and we have "gift tax."  Someone gives you a million dollars as a 
> present? Please give half to the government, thanks.

So do we, after some limit (gifts between 0-limit are taxless), but I 
can't remember how much it is.

> And your government doesn't seem to treat citizens like the enemy, as 
> well. :-)

At least as long as you agree with them.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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