After moving to New Zealand in Dec 2006, something I hear a lot from my friends in the US is: "why would you move to New Zealand? They're socialist!" No, NZ isn't socialist. That's a common misconception in the US for some reason. They are really a mixed economy, much like the US, though arguably not nearly as bad.
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They do have government subsidized medical care. They are a parliamentary democracy, and members of government have a reputation here of being extremely open and honest, with a very low level of corruption compared to other western countries, including the US. Unemployment and inflation are both low.
They do have high interest rates here (banks currently pay 7.6% for a savings account), partly caused by an attempt by their central bank to tone-down the recent housing boom. They have somewhat high income taxes (19.5% to 39.5%) and a 12.5% goods and services tax (GST), but very few hidden taxes (the US has a million of them), no state taxes, zero capital gains tax on the sale of your home, no inheritance taxes and very very low property taxes. They have a simple tax code: their income tax form is only about 4 pages long. The government raised something like NZ$4B more in taxes than it spent last year. They are very anti-Iraq war (there was a big flap here a few months ago about Air New Zealand being used by the Australians to fly soldiers to Iraq), anti-nuclear and pro-green (members of the Green party have even been able to get elected to parliament).
It's not perfect, of course. I would prefer a totally free-market society, but such a thing doesn't exist. I'm still an American at heart, though. If the politics in the US ever returns to something close to free-market capitalism, I will definitely consider moving back.
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