Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5
Is food really less expensive in Kiwi country? I'm assuming the bulk of taxation is payroll taxes if you're not paying through the nose for various insurances and you're retired or something?
As much of a fan of efficiency as I am, I might be even more interested in legally gaming a system that has exploitable advantages.
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Seasonal vegetables are less expensive. For large parts of the year, for example, avocados are around 30 US cents each, and you can get a large head of lettuce for 75 cents, cauliflower for a dollar, and tomatoes for buck twenty five a pound. When they're out of season they're 3-5x that. Fortunately, the growing season is basically year round on the north island, so the seasons for things are staggered. Meat is generally comparable or a little more than in the US, but I'm near enough to a vegan, and the alternatives (and beans) are very inexpensive. I'm certain one could eat in a way here as to make it more expensive, but it would need to be a predominantly processed food / meat / dairy diet.
Car insurance is unnecessary because medical is universal. A large chunk of US car insurance costs are medical. Liability on my car would be around $8US per month
Payroll taxes are lower than in the US until you get to the very top brackets, at which point they're only (a little) higher than US states without a state income tax. The bottom brackets are around 10%. Making 100,000nzd per year (around 65k US depending on the exchange rate), my effective tax rate is around 24%. There's no separate social security or medicare payment, that's all rolled in to general taxes. With this tax rate, and covering a lot more services than you get in the US, the government runs a large surplus every year, and NZ generally has no national debt - though they will need around 2-3 years to hit a positive balance again after covid borrowing.
I think the biggest thing going on here is wealth distribution. Consider - the average American is twice as wealthy as the average Kiwi, but the median Kiwi is twice as wealthy as the median American.