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Why isn’t New Zealand richer and more productive?

marginalrevolution.com

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

#71

Post by ronaldx »

pcrh wrote: post #59
ronaldx wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 outlie…

>However, one is not permitted to cherry-pick data, so the "outliers" have to be left in.

I respect why you think this, but I don't agree. Identifying points on the graph which don't fit with the pattern of the rest of the data is a reasonable way to identify outliers. Even if you choose not to exclude those, there's a greater problem:

Correlation is not robust if it depends on 2 or 3 points being in just the right place. And, robustness is one of the things you really ought to check for if you calculate Pearson's r. If you get different results with outliers in and out, that's a problem for your results.

In my opinion, any significant result here is just statistical noise.

See Wikipedia for further discussion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearson_product-moment_correla...

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

#72

Post by bronson »

thesimpsons1022 wrote: post #70
shadowfox wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Think of the starving artists, musicians, olympic athletes, working class poor, the startup set, etc Maybe you are right and I am just cynical. But I have felt that some of these groups (with the exception of working class poor) are tolerated because of their success potential than for their status as individuals. And even with that a large number of people appear to disdainful of unsuccessful people in these field…

the other person is wrong, the poor are definitely hated in america. they are villianized as lazy welfare queens. remember the 47 percent thing with Romney? turn on fox news for 10 minutes, John Stossel even villianizes the homeless. they also try to get rid of school lunches/food assistance for the poor.

Fox News does not represent America.

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

#73

Post by ChuckMcM »

thesimpsons1022 wrote: post #70
shadowfox wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Think of the starving artists, musicians, olympic athletes, working class poor, the startup set, etc Maybe you are right and I am just cynical. But I have felt that some of these groups (with the exception of working class poor) are tolerated because of their success potential than for their status as individuals. And even with that a large number of people appear to disdainful of unsuccessful people in these field…

the other person is wrong, the poor are definitely hated in america. they are villianized as lazy welfare queens. remember the 47 percent thing with Romney? turn on fox news for 10 minutes, John Stossel even villianizes the homeless. they also try to get rid of school lunches/food assistance for the poor.

Be careful with the dissonance between the television narrative and reality.

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

#74

Post by jacques_chester »

ekianjo wrote: post #11
jacques_chester wrote: post #3

Because, as the article says, it's isolated and has a small population. Tasmania, in Australia, is not as wealthy as the mainland -- it's small and isolated. There are dozens of similar examples. Meanwhile, Singapore is small, but sits athwart what has been, for hundreds of years, one of the busiest trading lanes on the planet.

> Meanwhile, Singapore is small, but sits athwart what has been, for hundreds of years, one of the busiest trading lanes on the planet. You might want to revise that sentence. Singapore was nothing 100 years ago. Wikipedia: Singapore ceased to be part of the British Empire when it merged with Malaysia in 1963. Singapore lost its hinterland and was no longer the administrative or economic capital of the Malay Peninsul…

> Singapore was nothing 100 years ago.

Singapore was colonised by Raffles in 1819 and within six years had a population of 10,000.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founding_of_modern_Singapore#Ea...

In 1756, the French colonised what would become the Seychelles Republic. Today it has a population of about 90,000.

Location matters.

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

#75

Post by ScottBurson »

JPKab wrote: post #24
TallGuyShort wrote: post #13

It's refreshing to click on a headline in the form of a question and have the article explain why it's the right question to be asking, and not just following Betteridge's Law. I lived in New Zealand for about 5 or 6 years, and I saw huge numbers of people just living on welfare because they could - that's probably got a lot to do with low GDP. Normally, I would see that as a bad thing, but I think New Zealand's rela…

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…

Fuck your family. Make money for your own reasons, or don't. It has to come from you or you'll never feel successful.

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

#76

Post by reshambabble »

Singapore is also a tiny island with a limited population that has to import most everything. Over 40 years they've somehow created a culture of hard-working over-achievers and have one of the highest GDPs per capita in the world (they're currently #3). Being dependent on imported goods doesn't seem to be much of a problem here, so perhaps the secret lies in their carefully planned cultural shift. (But if it were me, I'd much rather be a Kiwi with a lower income and laid back lifestyle than a Singaporean with high expectations and a life of hard work).

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

#77

Post by gcv »

crb wrote: post #52

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 mi…

That sounds amazing.

Are boats and beach houses that much cheaper in NZ? In the US, you have to be quite wealthy, or quite an avid sailor, to own anything more substantial than a dinghy. Houses anywhere near a semi-desirable beach community cost >$1M. Even successful people in their 30s don't often buy second homes in that price range.

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

#78

Post by Varcht »

shadowfox wrote: post #66
Varcht wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would disagree that "poor are decidedly disliked" here as a rule. There are plenty of "poor" that are accepted, liked and even esteemed. Think of the starving artists, musicians, olympic athletes, working class poor, the startup set, etc. There is dislike for the poor that resort to crime, thuggery, drugs etc. At least this is how I see it from my middle class perspective.

> Think of the starving artists, musicians, olympic athletes, working class poor, the startup set, etc Maybe you are right and I am just cynical. But I have felt that some of these groups (with the exception of working class poor) are tolerated because of their success potential than for their status as individuals. And even with that a large number of people appear to disdainful of unsuccessful people in these field…

Since the days of our founding fathers we have valued hard work and initiative and I'm glad that many of us still do. Personally I respect the working class poor and I feel that most of my peers do also, it gets sticky when efforts are made to artificially raise their positions with handouts rather than hands up. I don't think that the others are tolerated for their potential, rather esteemed for their initiative and dedication.

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

#79

Post by jacques_chester »

collyw wrote: post #27
hyp0 wrote: post #7

Adam Smith noted cities were founded on "navigable rivers", because that's how trade works. Still true today for cargo ships. But today the internet is a river everywhere, for information goods. New Zealand is the most beautiful place in the world, in my travels (circumvented the globe, but not been everywhere). Though I'm biased towards mountains. So, theoretically, beauty+internet makes it a great place for softwar…

We don't have software patents in Europe and seem to be doing ok.

If my lawyer's advice is any guide, Europe has a kind of software patent. It's much more difficult to obtain.

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

#80

Post by jacques_chester »

dimitar wrote: post #23

Economist John Quiggin claims that low NZ performance relative to Australia is because of its central bank being fighting inflation to the point of causing unnecessary recessions. Source: 4th paragraph here: http://johnquiggin.com/2011/05/19/9813/ Edit: Please note that the gravity model of trade is an approximate empirical observation of trade, not economic growth. Australia is just as isolated as is NZ and yet fare…

Australia has a much larger internal market.
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