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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: elmatador who wrote (44206)	12/22/2008 6:30:31 AM
From: dybdahl	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 218383

No, I was in Lübeck in order to attend the Christmas market, and I was going to South-West Denmark, and then it's almost the same distance to go via Germany than to go by the bridges. It was an extra expense of about $100 compared to not going that way, but it was worth it :-) Anyway, it's amazing how many things are extremely cheap in USA, UK and Sweden these days. By your logic, USA, Sweden and UK must be producing stuff, and Germany doesn't. It seems that our local minimum wage of about $34,000/year has something to do with product pricing. If you cannot hire anybody below that wage, it suddenly costs a bit more to get your lawn moved or buy clothes. Denmark basically runs without using unnecessary employees. You can easily find yourself to be the only person in a small shop, because the shop keeper is away for a moment, and in a big home improvement shop it can be very difficult to find somebody to help you find products. On the other hand, you cannot get unemployment benefits without using a PC: We don't want to waste government employee time on entering data into a computer. Another reason for high prices locally, may also be the fact that most women in Denmark are working. The whole society is built that way - very unlike Germany and many other countries. It is basically socially unacceptable to be a home mom in Denmark. Also if you have small children. Children start in the nursery at age 6 months, and most parents have two full time jobs. This means that there is very little time for shopping. Children often start working at 14-15 year age, doing webdesign, shop assistance etc. Less time for shopping means less competition on price. The main reason that our marginal tax is 65%, is that we haven't lowered it, yet. We could easily lower it significantly without losing income to the state - but the (right-wing conservative/liberal) government hasn't yet found it to be a good idea, because lowering taxes could overheat the Danish economy. The current tax level gives a good surplus. However, 2009 may introduce lower taxes, but let's see. Denmark's economy is more like a household compared to the economy of many larger countries. I'm not sure that cars are sold more cheaply to some countries these days - maybe they sell special versions, but the same version may not be sold with different prices in different EU countries, and the car factories may not prevent parallel imports.