Walking around barefoot is just a New Zealand culture thing. I make a decent software engineer salary and own shoes and I still walk around barefoot in public a lot because I like it more and it's socially acceptable. Someone got kicked out of a mall for being barefoot a few years ago and it was BIG NEWS https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/108772902/barefoot-woman-or...

95% of people in small rural NZ towns might heat their homes with wood fires, but that's not the norm in most parts of the country - heat pumps are very common (and required by new rental standards: https://www.tenancy.govt.nz/about-tenancy-services/news/heal...).

I'm not saying you're being intentionally dishonest, but if you've only ever lived in a small rural town here your perspective of the country is probably a bit warped. (And I imagine small rural towns in America are probably not actually much different).