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I'm Norwegian, I used to live in Oslo, now live in London and was considering moving to California.

The tax difference is much lower than Norwegians like to think (what would Norwegians do if there was no excuse for complaining about high taxes). I calculated my Norwegian tax, UK tax and what I'd pay in California including VAT / sales tax, and while Norway came up on top, on my - way above average salary - total tax came out at about 39% for Oslo, and about 34% for California, and about 36% or so in the UK, before taking into consideration things like difference in health care coverage.

There are places in the US where the tax gap compared to Norway is large, but California isn't it.

It's hard to end up paying around 50% tax in Norway even including what you pay in VAT, unless you make a huge multiple of average salaries. You could of course add in employers payroll taxes ("arbeidsgiveravgift"; but in that case, don't forget to do that for California as well), but if so, you're considering it part of your income and need to adjust gross salary up accordingly too - I see people try to add in payroll taxes to inflate the tax number, but nobody takes the payroll taxes into consideration when comparing salaries, or when negotiating them.

The marginal income tax band is capped below 50% (when you add in state income tax, federal income tax and local taxes, the marginal tax rates in some US locations is not that far away either), and unless your salary is way above average and you spend it all, even with the 25% VAT adds up to much less because most people simply don't spend that much of their salary on buying top rated goods. On top of that, deductions reduce the gap. Of course if you live in the cheapest place possible and spend all your remaining money on highly taxed goods like alcohol and cigarettes and warm your house with petroleum, then, yes, you may manage to end up paying 50% or more to the government.

That said, overall you'd probably come out better in SF on the same salary due to the cost of goods and services. But the "we pay so much tax" thing from fellow Norwegians is a pet peeve of mine, after I moved to the UK, and, surprise, didn't actually pay much less tax.

You're probably in the right ballpark with the numbers. My point wasn't to whine about getting taxed (I am very happy with the services I get for my money), rather to point out that they are a factor. The 5% tax difference you cite between California and Norway does make a difference when making a cost-of-living comparison, considering that the jobs we are looking at would have health care included.

I've always found these cost of living calculators to be enormously useless. I've used them for every city move I've made, and the results have never been close to reality.

This is particularly true for housing, since there's more to finding a place to live than the median price of a rental. The "median" apartment in SF is likely a studio in the Tenderloin (e.g., stabby stabby!). It doesn't take into account what is being rented, nor where it is, nor transportation, nor any other crucial factors. The metric "average price of a rental apartment" is pretty much as useless as can be.

Take this for example, I moved from Seattle to SF not too long ago:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=moving+from+San+Fransis...

According to Wolfram, housing in Seattle is about half of SF. Except, if you actually shop in both markets, you will find that in Seattle you'll find a big 1BR in a nice part of town, with a doorman, elevators, probably nice shared facilities like gyms, hot tubs, BBQs, and saunas.

For 2x that in SF you'll find a 1BR in a crappy part of town, not close to mass transit, built at the turn of the century, comes with a book full of asbestos and lead-paint warnings, and forget about the gym, you probably won't even have your own damn washing machine in the flat.

So yeah, apples to oranges really. Cost of living calculators can go burn in hell.

I visit northern California between 2 and 4 times a year for work, have done for the past 4 years or so, but I live in London.

The most noticeable thing is that the lowest end of the economy seems to run on cheap Hispanic labour; food especially. Fuel and general goods are cheaper, from probable combination of lower taxes, more competition and scale from the large market.

Major roads are in surprisingly poor surface condition; back roads in the Santa Cruz mountains are frequently narrow and dangerously uneven. The whole place generally has a feel of being hastily put together in a few years; which it has, more or less, from the combination of earthquakes and its American youth.

Consider the lack of density outside of central San Francisco - how spread out everything is - and it seems clear that infrastructure investment is thinned out over the larger area.

It's a nice place to live if you like being outdoors, but if you don't have a lot of money you'll need private transport to get to a decent bit of that outdoors.

On careful consideration, I prefer London. I end up with a lower salary, a similar cost of accommodation, I'm a lot lower in the social and financial "pecking order" owing to finance industry etc., but I have a lot more choice of things to do.

Lets trade places. Seriously though SV is decent but America is not exactly the top place to be living anymore in comparison to a place like Norway despite all the 'USA, USA' chanting we do. I'd gladly pay a boatload in taxes if it would genuinely get us out of our current messes.

I don't know... Norway might do everything perfectly for all I know, but it's way too cold and wet for my tastes!

Someone downvoted you, but you're right about the climate. Cold, wet, dark and somewhat hard to make new friends. Lower salaries and status for highly-trained professionals. Otherwise good. Generally great health care, employment benefits, work-life-balance, workers' rights, justice system etc. If you can get an operative oil job, you'll make great amounts of money.

[Edit: To the GP, I'm not sure I would want to trade places. Work-life balance is very important to me, and is something that is worth quite a bit of money to me. It seems like most Americans work very long hours with few holidays, although you do seem to get paid a lot. I wouldn't want to settle down in the US, but it might be nice to try for a couple of years.]

Feel free to come on over. There's a shortage of good engineers in Norway just as there is everywhere else. You could even work for a US company, as I do. http://jobs.yahoo.no/page/work/jobopenings

Good luck getting citizenship in Norway.

It's hardly impossible. You'll need to hold down a job (which provides a work visa) for seven years, don't be convicted of a criminal offence, and attend 300 hours of tuition in the Norwegian language or have documented sufficient skills in Norwegian or Saami. Only 20% of applications are rejected, and most were rejected for failing to meet those conditions.

How hard is getting the work permit (or whatever gets you in in the first place)?

It looks like you'll have an easier time if you're in an EU country (even though Norway isn't), due to the EEE.

From an outsider point of view, USA is good, if you want to live there for a several years, save some money and return to your home country. On the other hand, Norway (or any similar "kind-of-socialist" country in Europe) is good if you want to live there permanently.