Originally Posted by tblake

I had some friends from norway who were baffled with our hospitals when they had to pay for services. My roomate was also baffled when he had to write a check, he wanted to directly wire the money using some nifty online interface and really thought it was strange he had to sign a funny piece of paper.

Norway is a very different country because it has so much oil. It also has extremely high taxes for all goods and a high income tax.