Oslo most expensive (Norway)

Norway's capital has done it again, winning the dubious honor of being the most expensive city in the world, according to the latest report from Swiss bank UBS.

The annual UBS Prices and Earnings survey ranks Oslo, Copenhagen and Tokyo as the three most expensive cities, but London would have pushed Oslo down to the number two spot if rents had been factored into the equation.

Earnings are also top in the Scandinavian region to compensate for high costs, but with taxes and social security contributions also hefty in Scandinavia, Oslo and Copenhagen have moved down in the overall ranking of net wages.

A weakening US dollar has accounted for many of the major changes on the UBS list, with net purchasing power now strongest in Swiss cities and Luxembourg, Los Angeles and Miami.

Oslo workers need to work 18 minutes to pay for a local Big Mac, while on the other end of the scale Nairobi employees need to put in 181 minutes to enjoy the same imported junk-food meal."On a global comparison, people now have to work one or two minutes less on average than in 2003 to earn a Big Mac or a kilo of rice or bread," the UBS report said.

News from the pocket-book front of our allies in the War against Terror, Norway.

You know, one of the most significant ways in which the world has changed the past fifty years is that less and less of income is spent for food.

According to statistics I've seen (from almanacs, newspapers), fifty years ago much of the world spent two-thirds to three-quarters of its income for food.

In the United States, during the 1960s, consumers spent circa 30% of their income for groceries (a tabulation which at the time did not include dining out).

Now the American "average" is less than 10%, and that statistic includes money spent on dining out, not just groceries.

If one wonders where the money went, well, everything else just got more expensive during the same time.

Once several years ago I was watching C-SPAN, and caught a speech by Congressman Jerald Nadler (D-New York), in which he commented that the "arts" were more important to America than agriculture, because (or so he alleged), while agriculture contributed only 6% to the national economy, the "arts" contributed three or four percentage points more.

For some reason, one got the impression that Nadler's personal budget went more for chow, than for arts.

I saw things like that in Ukraine more so than any other place I've been; I rather suspect that most third-world countries remain mired in poverty because they disdain their native cuisine for "modern" food, which costs more.

National diets do not come out of thin air; they evolve for a reason, principally that of "survival" in the time and place of the individual.

Diabetes, which during Soviet times was unknown in Ukraine other than among the wealthy commissars, now seems to be the plague of Ukraine, as more and more of them abandon their centuries-old food for some of the imported (and much more expensive) junk they eat.

I have found Oslo to actually have less expensive housing than where I live (the San Francisco metro) but all other things are much, much more expensive. Of course, this is based on having friends in Holmokollen (sp?) - e.g. near the big ski jump. Maybe that's not the most expensive real estate in Oslo, but it must be somewhat expensive for the area, because it looks to be quite similar to Palo Alto or Burlingame.

I am always somewhat suspicious of these "cost of living" statistics, especially when they are compiled by, of all people, bankers.

We know how bankers live, and I suspect they rank things based upon their own standard of life, rather more than the standard of life "average" for an area.

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