Thanks to the subversive and radical elements at the University of Colorado, I had a political awakening back in the mid 1980s. By the time I graduated in 1991, I was seriously thinking about emigrating. I was finally able to do so in 1997, when I moved to New Zealand.
In 2001, I became a dual US/NZ citizen. New Zealand has the kind of political system that I dreamt about when I was in the US: an MMP Parliament with public campaign financing (the NZ Right still tries to game the finance system). National health care was a huge bonus that I had not even thought about.
We have a turnout of 80-90% in our elections. With MMP (Mixed-Multimember-Proportional), you can vote Green and NOT have your vote go to waste. Your vote is only wasted if your party does not get at least 5% of the total vote or it does not win ONE of the electorates (like a congressional district). Minor parties often fail to reach the 5% threshold, but still gain seats in parliament because one of their MPs won an electorate seat and the other MPs ride the coattails into Parliament. Your party takes the same % of seats in Parliament as the % of votes it received in the party vote (we have two votes: on for our local electorate representative, one for our prefered party).
In spite of the fact that the wingnuts over here say we are 'overtaxed', New Zealand has a BOOMING economy: unemployment is about 3% (that's OVERALL unemployment, not the "cooking the books" unemployment used in the US). Inflation is about 3%. The NZ Government is running a HUGE budget surplus (approximately equivalent to the US running a $500 billion surplus) and investing some of it into the "Super(annuation) Fund". The "Super Fund" is going to help finance the Kiwi equivalent of Social Security when the Boomers start retiring. Oh...yeah, there isn't any regressive Social Security or Medicare tax here, it all comes out of general tax revenues.
Unfortunately, we do have a rather steep national sales tax 12.5% (GST: Goods and Services Tax). But that is really the only significant sales tax we have. Unlike the US, almost all the prices you see for goods and services have GST included...so the price you see is the price you pay (Kiwis HATE it when they buy things in the US and the tax is added at the end of the sale).
If all that sounds good to you and you want to move here, you'll need a job; with demand as high as it is, now is the best time to do it, too.
http://www.immigration.govt.nz/
So, I'm curious about how many Kossacks have taken concrete steps to leave the USA? How many are going to start the process?
Cheers,
XYNZ