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Choosing New Zealand

2. Government and Economy

New Zealand is a stable, liberal democracy where a high value for social services is balanced by a desire to maintain a thriving economy.

With the limit of English language, the list is considerably shortened. In fact, most of our choices were now confined to the British Commonwealth or related nations. There were just a few other options, such as the Philippines or Ireland, where a large percentage of locals are English fluent. So, income and taxes became a distinguishing factor. We, again, knew we might need to find jobs, and therefore wanted an economy where we wouldn’t be competing with a huge unemployed population. And on the other hand, we needed to ensure that our investment and work income mainly remained ours and wasn’t consumed by a government with outrageous tax rates. Being British Commonwealth would be a bonus factor since our long-term vision includes the possibility of retiring in the Mediterranean, which could be aided by having Commonwealth citizenship.

The socialized economy was another major consideration. With the abysmal state of the US Social Security and Medicare systems, we definitely wanted to trade up in this area. While we were wary of nations so heavily socialized that taxes would be unbearable, we still hoped to find somewhere that basic medical care was a right for all residents and that the elderly were also cared for. Free public education and affordable higher education were similar criteria; maybe we don’t have kids but we still prefer a society that invests in them. Not only did we want to be sure that we wouldn’t be bankrupted by a major illness, we were also looking for some level of institutionalized sharing of these major responsibilities.

Politics are sort of like culture and sort of like economy. We needed to be able to fit in a little with the local political views, at least some wing. And also we wanted to ensure a certain political stability; this was going to be a long-term enough commitment that we couldn’t settle where we would have no idea what the future might bring. We didn’t particularly want to lose everything we’ve saved to war or riots.

While political stability leads to a certain security, crime and safety were another factor. By an international standard, we are fantastically wealthy- in the top few percent  in the world in fact. We didn’t stand out in the US where most people are in the top percentiles, but once you leave you at least have to consider how local people will react to your wealth.

3. Lifestyle

New Zealand is a modern Green nation that’s fully hip to 21st century technology with a keen interest in the outdoors.

In the area of lifestyle, transportation is a top consideration for us in two key ways. First, though you might not believe that access to our families was important since we moved to the other side of the globe, our reasoning was that as long as we had decent access to an international airport, we could get home in a day or two if needed. Second, we wanted a place where cars were less dominant and alternate transportation modes such as walking, biking and public transit were reasonably safe and common. As we get older, this will be even more important since we hope to stop driving before we become a threat to ourselves and others.

We also wanted to ensure access to modern, relatively affordable telecommunications and internet services. This is almost a given in English speaking countries, but still we needed to maintain some minimal version of our digital lifestyle. We wanted to ensure we had good and email and phone connections to friends and family that we could afford to use regularly. With a dream of building this website, high speed internet was also part of our ideal.

Assuming we would be successful in establishing a flexible mode of earning, we would then hopefully have time for pursuing our outdoors passions. We were seeking lots of national parks and public open spaces for hiking, biking, photography, etc.

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This article was written on Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007 and is filed under Lifestyle. For more articles about: Living Abroad (5), New Zealand (10)

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