Implicit Values? Books and Beer

As I flush my buffers (and my Ecto cache) from my European holiday, there was one meme that I didn't want to fall through the cracks.

When I was in Helsinki in 1999, I went to a local bookshop and purchase some new travel-reading material.  I settled on a large paperback edition of The Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas.  At the time, I thought my mathematical faculties were failing me, as my exchange rate calculations stated that I paid around three US dollars for the thirteen-hundred-page book.  Good value.

I then ambled to the closest pub and sat down outside in the sun to enjoy Edmund Dantes' trials with a pint of the local lager.  I was stunned to discover that the pint of beer was four times the cost of the very large paperback book.

This occured to me again last week in Norway, while grocery shopping in the quaint hamlet of Solvorn. The fresh bread, milk and the like were very inexpensive, given the remote location of the village.  What was pricey was a simple can of Tuborg beer.  Very pricey.

When is the last time you sat down in a restaurant in the US with your $10 paperback from Barnes and Noble or Amazon, and received your pint of beer with a bill for $40?

Is this some sort of implicit value statement from Finland and Norway?  Do they subsidize books, and heavily tax beer?  Do they have a vice-tax, like on cigarettes in the United States, where beer is surcharged 300%?

If this is a broader reflection of their societal values, I'll bet long on the success of those countries that incent literacy and nutrition and not alcohol consumption.  Not that I encourage government to dabble in the daily affairs of men, but if they do have to dabble.........