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As someone who's lived nearly my whole life in NZ and considers myself a large part Kiwi, I think they're overdoing this a bit. - Auckland is not walkable. It'

As someone who's lived nearly my whole life in NZ and considers myself a large part Kiwi, I think they're overdoing this a bit. - Auckland is not walkable. It's very spread out, and the public transport is awful, so it's not practical to visit many places without a car. It probably helped that they had friends with an apartment overlooking Herne Bay, but that's a pretty expensive neighbourhood; most of us couldn't afford to live there. - They didn't see a Target or Gap because we don't have them, but NZ certainly does have McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, Subway and a few other multinational fast food joints. They must have been amazingly lucky to avoid them - I'd think it'd be a pretty hard trick to plot a journey that didn't run into any of them. - You can actually get tomatoes at any time of the year. A lot of the reasons I left were work-related, which they wouldn't see from a ten-day holiday. Even in Auckland, interesting IT jobs are rarer than you'd like; 99% of the jobs I saw advertised looked to be soulless C++/Java/C# forms-based applications for some internal business thing. Money's not great either; despite paying a lot more on rent in London now, I'm financially better off than I was in Auckland. Salaries are higher to counter the rent, and most of the rest of the cost of living is not a lot different. Some things are much cheaper; books, for example, cost a fortune in NZ (weirdly, milk as well, despite all the dairy farming). The nightlife is okay in Auckland but a big pain in the ass to get to/from, unless you can afford to live nearby. The lack of public transport really bites here. I like the place overall, and I'll always have a soft spot for it, but there's another side to this story that I think they're missing.

melloclello 14y ago
You can actually get tomatoes at any time of the year. I dunno man I paid like $5 for two watery hydroponic tomatoes at New World the other day.
sien 14y ago
There are an estimated 460 000 New Zealanders living overseas or 14% of the population. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealanders http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealanders By comparison, there are 6 million Americans, or ~2% of Americans living overseas. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emigration_from_the_United_States#Overseas_US_populations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emigration_from_the_United_Stat... If NZ is as great as the author thinks it is he might want to ponder why so many people have left.
- slackson 14y ago
  There are other factors involved. There's really easy migration to Australia which has a stronger economy, it's common for people to have other passports so it's easier to move elsewhere because of that too, there's less of a belief that we're the greatest country in the world that could bias American emigration. America is also a big place, so people can move around within the country fairly easily if conditions for any particular group of workers in any particular place is bad, which isn't the case here. It's not quite as simplistic as you make it seem.
  - vacri 14y ago
    In addition to this, some folks get Australian citizenship by getting the easier NZ citizenship first, as it's easier for NZ citizens to become Australian citizens. This would add a little bit to the 'percentage overseas' issue.
    - incompatible 14y ago
      This is outdated, I believe. These days there is no easy way for NZ citizens to become Australian citizens. However they can still live and work in Australia, but remain second class in various ways, such as not having access to many types of social welfare benefits and not being able to vote.
  - yummyfajitas 14y ago
    There is also the fact that it's very good to be a skilled worker in the US. If someone wants to leave the US and move elsewhere, they need to be a skilled worker to make it happen. Poor Americans tend to be a net drain on society, so other countries don't usually want them. But if you are a skilled worker, the economics make it a lot better to live in the US. I recently considered moving to London, but the economics just made it ridiculous [1]. I would have taken a 30-40% nominal pay cut relative to the US (i.e., convert my salary from GBP to USD, it's 30-40% less). The UK was also far more expensive when I visited - compare a 1-2 zone Oyster card (112GBP unlimited monthly) to an unlimited metrocard (104 USD), or the price of brunch (10GBP vs 10USD). [1] I would have been willing to take a moderate pay cut just to live somewhere different, but the cost of living in London was just too high.
benburton 14y ago
Milk in New Zealand is traded internationally. From what I gather, countries that New Zealand exports milk to are willing to pay a higher price than what they get selling it back home. Note: These are just some vague memories when I drunkenly discussed the problem with some Fonterra execs.
- archangel_one 14y ago
  I've heard a similar thing - that explains why we pay an apparently high price in NZ, but it doesn't explain to me why it's significantly cheaper in the UK. I can't see why the price here doesn't raise to this alleged international price as well.
  - sitharus 14y ago
    In most countries milk production is heavily subsidised or price controlled as it produces measurable health benefits to children. In New Zealand this is not the case - farmers don't get direct subsidies, though they do have a novel tax system around stock management. Even with this they can produce milk significantly cheaper than we pay, but Fonterra's essentially a monopoly and isn't strongly regulated, so we end up paying a lot more than other countries.

melloclello 14y ago

You can actually get tomatoes at any time of the year. I dunno man I paid like $5 for two watery hydroponic tomatoes at New World the other day.

sien 14y ago

There are an estimated 460 000 New Zealanders living overseas or 14% of the population. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealanders http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealanders By comparison, there are 6 million Americans, or ~2% of Americans living overseas. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emigration_from_the_United_States#Overseas_US_populations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emigration_from_the_United_Stat... If NZ is as great as the author thinks it is he might want to ponder why so many people have left.

slackson 14y ago
There are other factors involved. There's really easy migration to Australia which has a stronger economy, it's common for people to have other passports so it's easier to move elsewhere because of that too, there's less of a belief that we're the greatest country in the world that could bias American emigration. America is also a big place, so people can move around within the country fairly easily if conditions for any particular group of workers in any particular place is bad, which isn't the case here. It's not quite as simplistic as you make it seem.
- vacri 14y ago
  In addition to this, some folks get Australian citizenship by getting the easier NZ citizenship first, as it's easier for NZ citizens to become Australian citizens. This would add a little bit to the 'percentage overseas' issue.
  - incompatible 14y ago
    This is outdated, I believe. These days there is no easy way for NZ citizens to become Australian citizens. However they can still live and work in Australia, but remain second class in various ways, such as not having access to many types of social welfare benefits and not being able to vote.
- yummyfajitas 14y ago
  There is also the fact that it's very good to be a skilled worker in the US. If someone wants to leave the US and move elsewhere, they need to be a skilled worker to make it happen. Poor Americans tend to be a net drain on society, so other countries don't usually want them. But if you are a skilled worker, the economics make it a lot better to live in the US. I recently considered moving to London, but the economics just made it ridiculous [1]. I would have taken a 30-40% nominal pay cut relative to the US (i.e., convert my salary from GBP to USD, it's 30-40% less). The UK was also far more expensive when I visited - compare a 1-2 zone Oyster card (112GBP unlimited monthly) to an unlimited metrocard (104 USD), or the price of brunch (10GBP vs 10USD). [1] I would have been willing to take a moderate pay cut just to live somewhere different, but the cost of living in London was just too high.

benburton 14y ago

Milk in New Zealand is traded internationally. From what I gather, countries that New Zealand exports milk to are willing to pay a higher price than what they get selling it back home. Note: These are just some vague memories when I drunkenly discussed the problem with some Fonterra execs.

archangel_one 14y ago
I've heard a similar thing - that explains why we pay an apparently high price in NZ, but it doesn't explain to me why it's significantly cheaper in the UK. I can't see why the price here doesn't raise to this alleged international price as well.
- sitharus 14y ago
  In most countries milk production is heavily subsidised or price controlled as it produces measurable health benefits to children. In New Zealand this is not the case - farmers don't get direct subsidies, though they do have a novel tax system around stock management. Even with this they can produce milk significantly cheaper than we pay, but Fonterra's essentially a monopoly and isn't strongly regulated, so we end up paying a lot more than other countries.