Gabe Newell applies for NZ residency
tvnz.co.nz
tvnz.co.nz
But the residency starts at $3M NZ if you're a recurring visitor https://www.newzealandnow.govt.nz/investing-in-nz/visas/inve...
Basically, New Zealand has turned into a real estate operation that sells milk on the side. Despite record highs all parties have made it their explicit goal to keep housing prices high. Having rich people come buy real estate is really considered a great idea. I'm shocked but that's the way it works here.
The Immigration Minister can give out exceptions to the citizenship process but the point is they're not going to be giving out any more exceptions as extreme as the one they gave to Thiel, because noone was happy the Minister did that.
That's different from the above-board process for easing the path to permanent residency/citizenship with investment money, (residency visas for investors and entrepreneurs) which is considered a good idea.
Also how can you claim "all parties" want to keep selling real estate to rich foreigners when Labour outlawed it last term, and made a very big fuss about doing so? But other parties clearly want to be in that business.
I do largely agree with your real estate operation zinger. Since Europeans came here, it has always been thus. The New Zealand Company was set up as a flip scheme -- buy land from Māori at low price and sell high to settlers. The New Zealand Wars were fought to free up land for more such enterprise. If you're curious about the New Zealand Company, I can recommend Patricia Burns's "Fatal Success: a History of the New Zealand Company". (And, in general for NZ history, the "Black Sheep" podcast)
The Detail had a really good piece on the current state of NZ immigration, fwiw: <https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/the-detail/300122700/the-de...> I believe one of their interviewees made the point that previous governments have used immigration to prop up/grow the economy. I can see why: it's one of the few straightforward levers they have. (Which policy settings will create a Google in NZ? Dunno. Which policy settings create more domestic commerce and thus boost GDP? Easy!)
And once you're a citizen, you enjoy unlimited social and health benefits indefinitely?
Can someone from NZ tell me why this shouldn't be my retirement plan?
Clearly! House prices here are very high already. See e.g. https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/money/2017/03/new-zealand-hou..., https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/83750475/nz-tops-imfs...
https://www.stats.govt.nz/topics/housing https://www.hud.govt.nz/news-and-resources/statistics-and-re... https://www.imf.org/external/research/housing/index.htm
Edit: Well maybe not alot, but when I lived in NZ 15 years ago, it was enough that Australia would complain about it.
Alot of kiwis were coming to Australia and going on the dole right away. So alot of the benefits only kick in after residing in the country for minimum 1 year. But the benefits still exist.
I was referring to those who were rejected for residency in Australia, gain citizenship in New Zealand, then move to Australia to live/work.
I believe if you were born in New Zealand, its still (relatively) easy to get Citizenship in Australia, but if you weren't born in NZ and have NZ citizenship, it's much harder.
(Source: Kiwi friend who was trying to get citizenship for himself and his kids who were born here)
What benefits? I'm not aware of any benefits Kiwi's arriving post 2001 get, apart from some reciprocal medical care, and some allowances to buy property and so forth. Actual money-for-nothing benefits, not so much.
> I believe if you were born in New Zealand, its still (relatively) easy to get Citizenship in Australia, but if you weren't born in NZ and have NZ citizenship, it's much harder.
Assuming we're talking about the Skilled Independent visa (subclass 189) New Zealand stream [0], then it's easier than for people coming from other countries, but I wouldn't say easy. It's also about AUD$4000 per person.
[0] https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/getting-a-visa/visa-li...
We also can get the baby bonus. My sister got it when her son was born. That was only 2012 I think. Well after 2001...
We don’t pay for hospital. And Medicare can only be applied for if you stay for 6 months without leaving for any reason.
IIRC $2M is enough to "buy" a Swiss citizenship too, so that kind of money really enables you to live basically anywhere in the world and you need a specific retirement plan only if you want to spend a lot of cash regularly for the rest of your life. Personally I would not even think about working to get paid anymore if I had even $1M, but ofc that's just me and my modest living standards.
It's kind of interesting to dig into. The residency requirements are quite low - 7 days in the first year, 14 days for subsequent 2 year period). So by the 5 year mark, you'd only need to spend 35 days in country.
There are even companies that will find real estate for you, rent it out and guarantee 100% return of capital after 5 years. Turn key solution to EU residency! [1]
[1]https://www.artoncapital.com/global-citizen-programs/portuga...
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/business/dealbook/malta-o...
There are even some service that'll offer to "loan" you a property by buying at back for the price you bought it for after you got your residency.
Unsurprisingly, house prices in Lisbon and Porto have become unaffordable for the locals.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/15/why-silicon-val...
That article spends an inordinately long time speculating that there's an "everything proof" structure been built on it but (as far as I saw skim reading) provides no evidence for that at all. You'd be hard pressed keeping that sort of construction quiet in NZ, everyone knows everyone.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1931_Hawke's_Bay_earthquake#/m...
Otherwise it's sponsorship, marriage, or family.
Residency (not citizenship) needs to be applied to while outside the country, and the application can take up to a year to be processed (you get a dedicated case worker, you need medical checks, xrays and all kinds of evidence - I needed to submit photos of my wife and I to prove our relationship was legit as well as a bunch of tax records and existing residency proof - it was a lot - also, very expensive!), citizenship requires several years of actual residency.
The NZ passport is like the UK one and they can compel you to relinquish existing citizenship if you naturalise.
I don't think that will happen with Gaben, Covid has stranded many temporary visa holders here without work or without access to benefits so there's a large policy question about what to do with those that are stranded.
But anyone hoping to just emigrate over here because we seem to have our shit together (we don't) is delusional.
A big reason that they are so careful about handing out permanent residency is that permanent residents (not temporary visa holders), can vote in parliamentary elections. Which is awesome - no taxation without representation - but gets the local right riled up because any govt can boost their voter count by opening immigration up, which means in general, there's downward pressure on immigration from all sides.
Just seems really strange when one considers the stories of the obscenely rich. How much do those folks pay to have public mapping companies "hide" their apocalypse projects?
edit: just as an example: https://i.imgur.com/jg5dqji.jpg
Since clouds form so regularly, mapping providers have a lot of difficulty getting a shot of the whole area in daylight with no clouds, so they end up using algorithms to stitch together the best image they can get from cloud-free parts.
In areas with snow, the problem is even worse, because an algorithm to separate snow and cloud is even harder.
However there are plenty of instances near disputed areas where resolution is lost, images are outdated etc, and it starts to become a pattern separate from what you're describing.
I mean just as the most obvious example of manipulation, look at the lack of 3D imaging in parts of Washington D.C.
It's not indicative of ill-will, and is obviously in support of operational security, but it's still clearly a decision made with non-scientific reasons.
0.75m aerial imagery from 2005-2011: https://data.linz.govt.nz/layer/51934-southland-075m-rural-a...
I'm not sure what you think you're seeing in that picture, but it sounds like you've been listening to too many conspiracy nuts. Not many people live in or go to Stewart Island, so the demand for satellite/aerial imagery is pretty low. It's hardly surprising it's not as recent or accurate as, say, this 7.5cm imagery of Auckland: https://data.linz.govt.nz/layer/95497-auckland-0075m-urban-a...
"This is a visual product only. The data has been downsampled from 12-bits to 8-bits, and the original values of the images have been modified for visualisation purposes."
If you zoom into the cities, buildings are nothing more than white blotches. Not really relevant supporting references.
As an aside, people should be able to make casual observations about patterns without the folks who don't see the patterns comparing them to the mentally ill.
The resolution of that one is 10 metres per pixel, so of course buildings are blotches. 12 bit to 8 bit doesn't affect the resolution or hide anything significant, it just makes the brightness a bit more quantised, and the brightness will have already been adjusted to equalise between adjacent sections photographed at different times anyway (that's the "modified" bit). They also have the 12-bit data available.
I never mentioned any mental illness (I doubt most conspiracy theorists have one), and it's nothing to do with patterns, it's "apocalypse projects" that is conspiracy nonsense.
The mental illness you seem to have not realized you referred to is when you said "you've been listening to too many conspiracy nuts."
Now saying "conspiracy nonsense" is way more inline with reality. It's very much just idle thinking on my part with brief injections of conspiracy editorial provided by any of the articles found by doing a search for "billionaire apocalypse homes".
"Conspiracy nut" is a noun, slang for "conspiracy theorist". If I had said they or you were "nuts", the adjective, then yes, that would mean "crazy" and imply comparison to mental illness; I didn't say that. I also said "it sounds like you've been listening to ...", so not a comparison to your mental state anyway.
They have effectively eradicated COVID, have you seen videos from their elections?
While a full on nuclear winter would eventually have global effects, not everywhere would be impacted equally in terms of severity or duration. The most severe effects would be felt in the north. For a more limited exchange with regional or continental wide effects, there are few regions in the north not at risk of such a conflict. With a pattern of impact driven by latitudinal or regional weather patterns, the impact on the southern hemisphere of any regional northern conflict are likely to be minimal.
And easy to (mostly - except for satellite connections) cut off from internet, since there exist only few sea cables to NZ that have to be cut:
For a country with few ultra-rich, we have a really hot ultra-high-end property market catering to overseas billionaires.
Stranded implies he can't return, and also portrays a billionaire as a victim.
(I hope this works ;) )
Not if all the billionaires are in New Zealand.
https://www.newzealandnow.govt.nz/investing-in-nz/visas/inve...
There's a little tech sector here but it is certainly not a major part of the economy. Everything is still based on the real estate ponzi scheme and resources... and a naive political class.
The solution is to dilute it with tech entrepreneurs and investors from outside NZ and recreate the landscape.
I live in Wellington and the tech scene here, although small, is quite vibrant.
There is no reason why we can't accommodate those companies and workers who want to move out of SF. The govt will need to give heavy tax incentives and easy route to residency for those entrepreneurs who move their company here.
It's like trying to run startups only in Ohio.
> I'd love to see a some economic data from StatsNZ that supports your case.
The case/point was that the tech sector in NZ should be supported to grow further. You didn't make an argument that that policy is wrong.
[1] https://techblog.nz/2080-Digital-overtakes-wine-exports [2] https://statisticsnz.shinyapps.io/trade_dashboard/
SF residents should be locked into the place and made deal with the mess they've made. Actually, you could probably expand that to Californians as a whole.
I feel utterly awful for the areas who are absorbing the brunt of the outward migration from that state.
Not super popular in the Northwest; WA is expensive enough, and open complaining about it in Boise and MT.
but yeah sure. very pretty with pleasant people.
No idea if that's true, but if it is, that attitude strikes me as left-libertarian.
https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/apps/valve/Valve_NewEmployee...
That’s a ton, and worse than most companies. I have to imagine this management/work culture is at least partly to blame.
I mean... that's the dream for everyone responsible for overseeing workers and/or managers in more normally structured organizations, or am I wrong in that assumption?
Also, Valve can afford this "organization" because their money most likely isn't going to run out from a few failed projects over the years.