Originally Posted By: dlundblad
What is minimum wage in Finland? Diesel is definitely cheaper. I was in Eastern Europe about 5 years ago and gasoline was about $8 per gallon IIRC. Almost everybody there had diesel econboxes.
Gasoline went to almost 1.70 eur/liter a few years ago and dollar was weak compared to euro at that time. So, the gasoline price could have been at worst a whopping 9 dollars per gallon
But one must remember that there's a lot of taxes included in that price.
We don't have any minimum wage defined in the law. But we have over a hundred generally binding collective agreements which defines minimum salaries for different tasks. Practically every employee is covered by one of these agreements. So we do have minimum salaries for different jobs, but it wouldn't be an easy task to find "the lowers minimum salary" among those agreements...
In practice, I would estimate that every adult who has a full-time job will get paid at least 9 eur per hour.
Why diesel fuel is cheaper in Finland than gasoline fuel? I think it's because the government wants to support goods transportation done with trucks, delivery vans, busses, taxis, etc. So they tax diesel fuel less than gasoline fuel. However, there is a special "diesel tax" for passenger cars equipped with diesel engines to make sure this tax subvention goes mostly for commercial vehicles. So in practice, if you drive more than, say 30,000 km (20,000 miles) annually it's cheaper to have your passenger car equipped with diesel engine. And if you drive less than that, it's cheaper to have a gasoline engine.
As we don't have huge cities (and thus no smog problems) here in Finland, NOx coming from the tailpipes of diesel engines is not a concern. What we seem to be afraid of in Europe though, is CO2. And when the target is to have cars with lower CO2 emissions, a diesel engine is almost unbeatable.
Over 20% of our passenger cars have diesel engines today and the number is rising.
What is minimum wage in Finland? Diesel is definitely cheaper. I was in Eastern Europe about 5 years ago and gasoline was about $8 per gallon IIRC. Almost everybody there had diesel econboxes.
Gasoline went to almost 1.70 eur/liter a few years ago and dollar was weak compared to euro at that time. So, the gasoline price could have been at worst a whopping 9 dollars per gallon
We don't have any minimum wage defined in the law. But we have over a hundred generally binding collective agreements which defines minimum salaries for different tasks. Practically every employee is covered by one of these agreements. So we do have minimum salaries for different jobs, but it wouldn't be an easy task to find "the lowers minimum salary" among those agreements...
In practice, I would estimate that every adult who has a full-time job will get paid at least 9 eur per hour.
Why diesel fuel is cheaper in Finland than gasoline fuel? I think it's because the government wants to support goods transportation done with trucks, delivery vans, busses, taxis, etc. So they tax diesel fuel less than gasoline fuel. However, there is a special "diesel tax" for passenger cars equipped with diesel engines to make sure this tax subvention goes mostly for commercial vehicles. So in practice, if you drive more than, say 30,000 km (20,000 miles) annually it's cheaper to have your passenger car equipped with diesel engine. And if you drive less than that, it's cheaper to have a gasoline engine.
As we don't have huge cities (and thus no smog problems) here in Finland, NOx coming from the tailpipes of diesel engines is not a concern. What we seem to be afraid of in Europe though, is CO2. And when the target is to have cars with lower CO2 emissions, a diesel engine is almost unbeatable.
Over 20% of our passenger cars have diesel engines today and the number is rising.
