Specifically, New Zealand, Australia, United Kingdom and The United States
🔗 Kevin Drum linking to the cheapest and most expensive places to live.
In New Zealand there is a lot of handwringing that translates to countless LinkedIN posts talking about ‘jump starting’ the economy and what do they have to do to grow their GDP which inevitably leads to attracting the ‘brightest and the best’. I’ve even weighed into a few of the debates myself …
Of course it doesn’t help when one of the leading Kiwi journalists writes NZ now frozen, listless, mean & hopeless
Here is one slice of that data from the Worlddata link above.
United States 14
Australia 17
New Zealand 18
United Kingdom 19
.. but check out the average monthly income which in turn drives the purchasing power index.
United States 100
Australia 81.4
United Kingdom 63.8
New Zealand 63.5
I’ll let the UK number sit for you to absorb. I am more interested in the two antipodean counties … turns out Australia has a little more than 30% MORE purchasing power than New Zealand.
No more handwringing needed. I don’t know the exact ins and outs of the rules of NZ and OZ - BUT to all intents and purposes, citizens of each country can jump to the other almost on a whim much as someone in the US can move to a different state. It’s not exactly the same - but for a while now there has been a steady exodus of NZ nationals to OZ for a long time - but its getting a lot more problematic - through to September(ish) of 2024 - an average of 200 Kiwi nationals per day left New Zealand to settle in Australia. When you look at that discrepancy - is there any wonder?
(Side Note - 200 per day for 365 days is 7,300 people - that is 0.14% of the country!)
Of course - there’s more to life than the cost of living - there is also the 🔗Quality of Life - and delighted to report that New Zealand - despite its poor showing on the cost of living scale delivers a satisfying 9th in the world for Quality of Life - nestling right between Japan and Spain. So at least they have that. BUT … to borrow a phrase from Aoteraoa …
“Yeah … No”.
Turns out OZ is the number one destination in the world for Quality of Life.
Me? For all of that handwringing that goes on … I think the powers are solving the wrong problem really well.
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