AceNZ
Member
- Joined
- Nov 5, 2007
- Messages
- 1,630
Why I like New Zealand:
-- Very against the Iraq war (even use of an Air NZ jet to just ferry Australian troops to Saudi Arabia caused a huge flap in parliament)
-- Anti-nuclear (they don't allow US warships to dock anywhere in NZ, since the US Navy refuses to certify that don't carry nukes)
-- Simpler tax system (income tax form is like 4 pages long, no death taxes, no capital gains taxes on the sale of your home, extremely low property taxes)
-- A sane legal system that doesn't grant obscene financial awards
-- The country isn't run by lawyers (the contract paperwork to buy a house is like 4 pages long)
-- Of course it's beautiful
-- Only 4M people in a country that's about two-thirds the size of California (only 1M people on the entire south island)
-- English-speaking
-- Low levels of violent crime
-- Gun ownership is legal (although they do have a strict safety-focused licensing system) and there are lots of hunters in the country
-- They understand and appreciate personal liberty, and have been known to demonstrate or riot when the government tries to pass laws that might undermine those rights
-- They have one of the strongest currencies in the world (it's a commodity-oriented currency, like the Australian and Canadian dollars)
-- Their politicians have a reputation of being among the most honest and least corrupt in the world
-- They have run a tax SURPLUS for the last few years
-- No one hates NZ; they're not quite as neutral as Switzerland, but close
-- People here know how to fix things and keep them for a long time; it's not a throw-away consumer society
One way to look at this is to think about what our forefathers did. When the government in England got messed up, they left and found someplace better. When Germany and the rest of Europe went crazy during the World Wars, lots of people left there to come to the US. It's really just the natural flow -- why stay and support a system that's crumbling and that you don't really believe in?
-- Very against the Iraq war (even use of an Air NZ jet to just ferry Australian troops to Saudi Arabia caused a huge flap in parliament)
-- Anti-nuclear (they don't allow US warships to dock anywhere in NZ, since the US Navy refuses to certify that don't carry nukes)
-- Simpler tax system (income tax form is like 4 pages long, no death taxes, no capital gains taxes on the sale of your home, extremely low property taxes)
-- A sane legal system that doesn't grant obscene financial awards
-- The country isn't run by lawyers (the contract paperwork to buy a house is like 4 pages long)
-- Of course it's beautiful
-- Only 4M people in a country that's about two-thirds the size of California (only 1M people on the entire south island)
-- English-speaking
-- Low levels of violent crime
-- Gun ownership is legal (although they do have a strict safety-focused licensing system) and there are lots of hunters in the country
-- They understand and appreciate personal liberty, and have been known to demonstrate or riot when the government tries to pass laws that might undermine those rights
-- They have one of the strongest currencies in the world (it's a commodity-oriented currency, like the Australian and Canadian dollars)
-- Their politicians have a reputation of being among the most honest and least corrupt in the world
-- They have run a tax SURPLUS for the last few years
-- No one hates NZ; they're not quite as neutral as Switzerland, but close
-- People here know how to fix things and keep them for a long time; it's not a throw-away consumer society
One way to look at this is to think about what our forefathers did. When the government in England got messed up, they left and found someplace better. When Germany and the rest of Europe went crazy during the World Wars, lots of people left there to come to the US. It's really just the natural flow -- why stay and support a system that's crumbling and that you don't really believe in?
