I just took a quick look at the site for the grocery store near me in big-city-California-USA: I can get 3-and-a-bit pounds of non-frozen chicken breast for $9.50 right now (2.99/lb). Often frozen is a bit cheaper. Looks like this is equivalent to 4.66nzd/0.45kg or $10.35NZD/kg, so if that "NZD$16-17/kg" is a NZ price, it's over 50% higher than that.

CA minimum wage is $15.50/hr, so that would get me almost 2.36kg of chicken breast an hour.

NZ minimum wage appears to be 21.2NZD/hr, which would get me 2kg of chicken at US prices; and just 1.3ish at that 16-17 price point.

EDIT: Of course, not all of the US has CA's minimum wage. But the wealthy parts of the US are certainly quite wealthy globally, with still-low-globally prices for many things.

Hmm boneless, skinless chicken breast is US$9/kg at Costco San Francisco. At SF’s minimum wage, that’s 31 minutes

First result from Walmart (US) for chicken breast - about 10 NZD/Kg. [0]

First result from Countdown (NZ) - 15 NZD/Kg [1]

[0] https://www.walmart.com/ip/Freshness-Guaranteed-Boneless-Chi...

[1] https://www.countdown.co.nz/shop/productdetails?stockcode=73...

>Groceries are about as expensive, if not more, than new Zealand.

If this were actually true as opposed to nonsense, there wouldn't have been the nationwide excitement over the recent opening of New Zealand's first Costco (complete with a visit from PM Ardern), and endless discussion in the press over how it would hopefully lower grocery prices.

The price of chicken is probably not a good comparison tool at the moment, given that there is a massive global bird flu pandemic going on. Is it impacting New Zealand to the extent that it is impacting North America and Europe?

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/12/pandemic...