The taxes are a bit high but have a lot of benefits of living in Belgium. But it is true that you have to make some compromises/sacrifices if you want to make your disposable income stretch.
The lowest power "x86" server I have found runs at about 30W, that is equivalent to about 8 RasPis (typically about 4W each, the PiDP-11 is an outlier at 8W) in the current configuration, and the RasPis are fairly distributed around my lab which would have to be done with wiring otherwise.