At many Japanese megacorps, the company's salary schedule is widely distributed in the company. At my company, the engineering track so closely followed the monopsony engineering employer in this region (cough I wonder what large automobile manufacturer that could be cough) that there is literally no middle class adult within 400 miles who could not guess my salary within 2% for each of the last seven years.
In fact I just looked up an old high school classmate and was initially surprised at how much she was making - until I realized 280,000 Kronor is only about 50,000 USD.
FYI: 280.000 is a pretty poor salary in Norway. Gasoline here just topped $10/gal, if that gives you an idea of the cost-of-living-adjustment necessary. In other words, your friend is not living the life that a $50k salary in the US would buy (in terms of disposible income.) On the other hand, she gets 5 weeks of paid vacation a year, full health care, and a year's paid maternity leave with each child.
Gasoline prices aren't a good indicator of cost of living. They are a factor to be sure, but their prices are too overwhelmed by political policy (ie gasoline taxes) compared with other expenses, which introduces too much noise into the data.
