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Why isn’t New Zealand richer and more productive?

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Re: Why isn’t New Zealand richer and more productive?

#51

Post by gibrown »

cylinder wrote: post #33
JPKab wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good friend of mine studied abroad in Australia, and then met and moved in with a Kiwi and then lived in New Zealand with him for a while. He has now moved to the US with her. Her brother is a good friend of mine, and is incredibly irritated with his lack of drive and motivation. I've hiked with the guy, and I don't think he's lazy at all. He just doesn't value money, and his view on life is that he's going to teac…

If someone is a bit more ambitious but still wants a mix of the aforementioned lifestyle I would recommend Australia. Much bigger population and resources and better opportunities than NZ with a good safety net that doesn't cost the government much and doesn't suffer rampant abuse. I wouldn't recommend NZ for an American, except for perhaps retirement; it would just be too tough, the isolation and small pop. would be…

I lived in NZ (mostly Christchurch) for about a year, and I think your characterization is way too general. NZ has a similar population to Colorado (where I now live) and a similar land area. It is far away from where my family lives (and hence I am not still there), but "crushing" "isolation" it is not.

Kiwis are some of the warmest folks I have ever met. When my wife and I arrived at the airport our friends had forgotten which day we were arriving and had a 3 hour drive to get to us. The random woman who's phone we borrowed proceeded to argue with our friends over the phone about who's house we would stay at that night.

We saw similar hospitality everywhere we went. Its a stark contrast to the US.

Re: Why isn’t New Zealand richer and more productive?

#52

Post by crb »

Living in NZ is, by and large, a lifestyle choice for smart, capable New Zealanders. It's trivial to work in Australia [1], reasonably easy [2] to work in the UK, and NZers have a good enough reputation to go to any other majority English-speaking country with little trouble.

Because the country is so small - and generally without a class system - it's possible, on a relatively small income, to have everything you might want. This has sometimes been reported as the "three Bs" - a boat, a BMW and a beach house [3]. To have those three things in the UK without being born into them, you might have to have a business that employs 100; a decent tradesman working alone in NZ can get those by their early 30s.

I think a short answer is "because it doesn't want to be."

[1] When traveling from Canada to Australia for work on my NZ passport, I was held up for some time explaining why I was traveling, who I worked for in Canada, who I was going to see, etc. If I had instead said "Hello, I want to live in your country forever, and claim benefits", they would have rubber-stamped my passport and allowed me on my merry way.

[2] Changing, even over the last few years, with the whim of the UK government

[3] http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/16/punching-above-their-weight...

Re: Why isn’t New Zealand richer and more productive?

#53

Post by gibrown »

santaclaus wrote: post #43
cylinder wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone is a bit more ambitious but still wants a mix of the aforementioned lifestyle I would recommend Australia. Much bigger population and resources and better opportunities than NZ with a good safety net that doesn't cost the government much and doesn't suffer rampant abuse. I wouldn't recommend NZ for an American, except for perhaps retirement; it would just be too tough, the isolation and small pop. would be…

I don't know if I'd go that far. As an American who lived in NZ for a few years I got a very pacific northwest vibe from the NZ cities. If you like Portland or Seattle, Wellington is sweet as.

props for the phrase "sweet as". Made my day.

Re: Why isn’t New Zealand richer and more productive?

#54

Post by peatmoss »

Lewisham wrote: post #46

Having lived in NZ for a couple of years working at Victoria University of Wellington, the other piece of the puzzle is NZ suffers from crippling brain drain: their best and brightest students immediately head over to Australia where they can make more money and use the exchange rate to pay off their student loan quicker. My read is that kiwis tend to come back when they're ready to start a family, but during those v…

I saw the same thing when I lived in New Zealand (just under 4 years, 4 years ago) and worked at the University of Auckland in a non-academic technical role. Personally, however, I'm a counter example of what you describe. I'm an American who recently started a PhD program in the states, who would quite like an academic position in New Zealand when all is said and done!

Re: Why isn’t New Zealand richer and more productive?

#55

Post by wldlyinaccurate »

Lewisham wrote: post #46

Having lived in NZ for a couple of years working at Victoria University of Wellington, the other piece of the puzzle is NZ suffers from crippling brain drain: their best and brightest students immediately head over to Australia where they can make more money and use the exchange rate to pay off their student loan quicker. My read is that kiwis tend to come back when they're ready to start a family, but during those v…

As a kiwi, the brain drain is something that always bothered me. Right from the beginning of high school I knew that I would end up working overseas for several years, regardless of whether I really wanted to or not. And that's exactly what I'm doing right now -- I live in London, saving twice as much as I could in NZ. I don't enjoy the lifestyle here at all, and I want to go back to NZ as soon as possible to start a family, but the opportunities available in Europe (and the rest of the world) simply dwarf those available in NZ.

The good news is that immigration from Asia, India and the Pacific has given the country a significant population of people who culturally are more likely than Europeans to help with population growth. So who knows, maybe in 10-20 years the population will be large enough for the brain drain to sort itself out.

Re: Why isn’t New Zealand richer and more productive?

#56

Post by peatmoss »

santaclaus wrote: post #43
cylinder wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone is a bit more ambitious but still wants a mix of the aforementioned lifestyle I would recommend Australia. Much bigger population and resources and better opportunities than NZ with a good safety net that doesn't cost the government much and doesn't suffer rampant abuse. I wouldn't recommend NZ for an American, except for perhaps retirement; it would just be too tough, the isolation and small pop. would be…

I don't know if I'd go that far. As an American who lived in NZ for a few years I got a very pacific northwest vibe from the NZ cities. If you like Portland or Seattle, Wellington is sweet as.

Former resident of Wellington and Auckland checking in to confirm that Seattle feels very much like a big Auckland.

Re: Why isn’t New Zealand richer and more productive?

#57

Post by gibrown »

Lewisham wrote: post #46

Having lived in NZ for a couple of years working at Victoria University of Wellington, the other piece of the puzzle is NZ suffers from crippling brain drain: their best and brightest students immediately head over to Australia where they can make more money and use the exchange rate to pay off their student loan quicker. My read is that kiwis tend to come back when they're ready to start a family, but during those v…

That was my experience as well. The few folks who managed to work remotely for an overseas company did really well, but pay rates within the country were a lot lower than I expected.

Working at a distributed company, I really wish more Kiwis would apply to my company if only so I could have an excuse to go visit. :)

Re: Why isn’t New Zealand richer and more productive?

#58

Post by chair6 »

santaclaus wrote: post #43
cylinder wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone is a bit more ambitious but still wants a mix of the aforementioned lifestyle I would recommend Australia. Much bigger population and resources and better opportunities than NZ with a good safety net that doesn't cost the government much and doesn't suffer rampant abuse. I wouldn't recommend NZ for an American, except for perhaps retirement; it would just be too tough, the isolation and small pop. would be…

I don't know if I'd go that far. As an American who lived in NZ for a few years I got a very pacific northwest vibe from the NZ cities. If you like Portland or Seattle, Wellington is sweet as.

Hah .. I spent the first 25 years of my life in NZ (10 years in Wellington) and have lived just outside of Seattle since 2007. I tell people that the PNW is the closest to NZ that I've seen in America, both culturally and landscape.

Re: Why isn’t New Zealand richer and more productive?

#59

Post by pcrh »

ronaldx wrote: post #18
danso wrote: post #5

The original PDF is here: http://www.productivity.govt.nz/sites/default/files/internat... Figure 3 in Section 1 was really interesting, but maybe I haven't had enough coffee this morning: http://imgur.com/gvRugtl New Zealand is in the lower-right quadrant, which I'm interpreting to mean that it is predicted to be 20+% above the OECD average, but it is observed to be at 20% below , i.e. -40% below expectations So the…

The graph is claiming that countries should appear on the line - above the line are doing better than average; below the line are doing worse than average. Vertical distance from the line is what you're looking for, so NZL is a crazy distance below. NOR, GRC and IRL are the furthest above the line. However, another way to view this graph is to say that structural policies have no predictive power. If you take out the…

I went to the real source [1], which provides this data: http://i.imgur.com/d46JG8Q.png, and plotted it. The R(square) value for the fit it 0.2. The Pearson r is 0.44 with a p-value of 0.02 i.e. potentially useful. Taking out Greece, Portugal and USA changes the R(square) to 0.002, the Pearson r to 0.05 with a p-value of 0.8, i.e without the outliers there is no correlation between the values.

So, indeed, the outliers are driving the association... However, one is not permitted to cherry-pick data, so the "outliers" have to be left in.

[1]Barnes, S., Bouis, R., Briard, P., Dougherty, S., and Eris, M. (2011).The GDP impact of reform: a simple simulation framework,OECD Economics Department Working Papers, no. 834, Paris, France: OECD.

PDF file: http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/5kgk9qjnhkmt...

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