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.
It's easy to find out why, even in the context of the article. You see what the rest of the world has, and want to take part. Want to work on building a Boeing 777? You can't do it in New Zealand. Sure, you can work at small companies building small planes, but if you want to be working "world scale", you have to be where all the people are.
To relate back to HN, there are a few small startups, but the market is different in New Zealand. As a nation of small businesses, about 95% of the population work for a company with 50 or fewer staff. If your business involves selling to other businesses at scale, there are comparatively far fewer opportunities to do this.
NZ would be a great place to put a remote team (Mozilla have one in Auckland) and Kiwis love the idea a company will pay to fly them around the world every now and then. Even better, if you pay them in USD or GBP, it generally works out favourably for both sides.
Seriously America is huge you could adventure around the states seeing a bunch of different lifestyles, and environments without ever having to get a passport. In that sense perspectives are very, very different between the US and NZ. You've really got to compare it to, moving out of state. How many people in the US move around states for jobs/lifestyles etc ?
When you grow up in New Zealand, it's almost a rite of passage to do your "OE" - overseas experience. It's part of the culture to go and explore the world. And of course young 20 somethings travelling meet other foreign young 20 somethings and it's pretty easy to see where that stat comes from. "Your country or mine? (the girl usually wins)"
I grew up in a small town, lived in Auckland, now live in Toronto, Canada. The Greater Toronto area is the same population as all of New Zealand. Is it any better or worse ? No. It's just different. It all depends on what floats your boat. Are you an adventure sports junkie ? New Zealand is pretty much heaven on earth (I'm guessing Colorado would be awesome if you dug winter and summer sports together). Do you like bustling metropolis ? Well Toronto kinda rocks - Canadian and Kiwi philosophies are very close (although BC is far closer in life style to New Zealand, than over in Ontario)
There is so many factors for what's good in a country - a lot are dependent on the invididual. What will be one persons heaven could be another persons "meh", quality of living, friendships, relationships, career choices, sports, food quality, environment yadda yadda.
As a New Zealander living overseas, in my case, the pull to go home is very strong and ever present. And I will say this when I finally move home, I will never, ever complain that it's freezing in winter.
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.
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.
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.
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.
New Zealanders travel. The majority of those people will return. This statement is based on experience, not data. Everyone seems to leave, and all seem to return.
Edit: It sounded like I was disagreeing with your figures, I wasn't.
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.
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.
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.
- 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.