For those wondering why she's wearing wool and gloves indoors - New Zealanders typically can't afford electric heating, and wear woolen clothing in doors to to make up for this, when they can't burn firewood or coal.
For those wondering why she's wearing wool and gloves indoors - New Zealanders typically can't afford electric heating, and wear woolen clothing in doors to to make up for this, when they can't burn firewood or coal.
More likely a second hand book store in Newtown is an old and draughty building. Running a heater in there would be the same as running one outdoors.
Or she just gets cold. My daughter wears those kind of gloves all winter regardless of how warm we heat the house.
What percentage of New Zealanders do you think live somehwere that isn't cold and draughty?
Jacinda Ardern and her family.
Because she’s so reviled by New Zealanders she left NZ.
Fairly opinionated framing given:
Jacinda Ardern living and working in Australia after move from US - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/26/jacinda-ardern...New Zealand has always been a place people with talent leave (and often return to upon retirement or making a fortune).
eg: Ernest left in his post grad years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Rutherford
Often kiwis can afford it but just choose not to. My own parents are well off and yet still have an absolutely freezing house all winter, it drives me crazy. Just put on a sweater, and another one over that, and a blanket....
Electricity was several times more expensive than in the US when we were there, and houses not insulated well. Sock hats and fingerless wool gloves it is.
Imagine thinking that wearing a sweater in wintertime means you're poor. Couldn't be me.
The gloves are a special kind made of thermal material for people with Raynaud's disease, where narrowing of the blood vessels reduces circulation in cold temperatures.
I went to school 3 minutes walk from that bookshop. I know what those draughty sashcord windowed shitbox houses are like.
That’s a funny callback to last weeks RNZ article https://www.rnz.co.nz/life/wellbeing/cosy-ways-to-keep-warm-...
Lol but seriously 4th highest median wealth per capita. The median NZ citizen has 3x the wealth of the median us citizen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...
Of course they have very low wealth inequality so they don’t have trillionaires at all which some people may see as a problem. In fact remarkably despite the median wealth of NZ being so much higher than the USA they have a lower average wealth per capita.
They just spread the wealth around making the middle class 3x richer.
Wikipedia's (UBS') US figure ($69k) is probably wrong? US median household wealth is ~$193k[1]. I don't think there's a way to square claimed median individual wealth of $69k with that? Even taking into account children (22% population) and assuming 2 adults/household (more favorable to the math than the real 1.2-1.4 figure). I can't find anything on UBS' methodology, just the short 1.5 page paper.
[1]: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm
> US median household wealth is ~$193k
Emphasis mine. US median household is 2.53 persons [1]. 193/2.53 = 76k, which is within spitting distance of the 69k per person listed. The wikipedia is median wealth per capita
[1] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/HCN010222*
I don't have an explanation for this but I did note that the 2023 UBS report had US Median Wealth per adult at $107K[1].
I wonder if there is a per adult vs per person vs per working person difference in the measurement or something like that?
Edit: I've dug into this more, and the closest thing I can come up with for an explanation is that UBS changed its model for 2026 to "normalize household debt" in order to make it more comparable across countries. There doesn't seem to be sufficient information to explain how that change caused such a radical change.
[1]https://web.archive.org/web/20230815103944/https://www.ubs.c...
That wealthy is all tied up in draughty houses. It's not real.