Motivations for moving to New Zealand

I moved from California (Silicon Valley) to New Zealand in Dec 2006, with my wife and two kids.

NZ is 65% the size of California, but only has 10% of the population. Housing is less expensive, property taxes are 95% lower, there are no death taxes, no capital gains taxes on the sale of your home, and it's beautiful and relatively unpolluted. I'm new to NZ politics, but so far it seems much more under control than in the US. Special interests don't seem to dominate things here.

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They do have socialized medicine -- but there's also a parallel private system that allows you to opt-out of the public one if you want to. Taxes are high -- but at least the tax forms and associated tax law are extremely simple in comparison to the US (the annual tax return is only about 4 pages long). The overall tax rates aren't directly comparable, but I'm sure I'll pay less here overall than I would in the US.

I haven't found the government to be anywhere near as intrusive as in the US. In foreign policy, they have been solidly against the war in the Iraq. Many laws are relatively lax compared to the US -- gambling is legal, the drinking age is 18, minimum age for a driver's license is 15, etc. It's legal to own guns here, although it requires a license. The courts don't allow the type of distorted settlements that happen regularly in the US. Million-dollar awards for "damages" are unheard of. For example, in an auto accident case, the person who was hurt is likely to be awarded lost wages plus a little extra. The result is that insurance costs much less than in the US.

My overall sense of New Zealanders is that they understand and support the idea of personal responsibility -- something that was lost in the US a long time ago.

Native Kiwis, please let me know if I'm off-track, or if any of this resonates with you.

Although I was attracted to NZ, I also felt driven away from the US. Who wants to live in a country that a large part of the rest of the world hates? That's a situation that isn't likely to end well. I don't want my tax dollars to continue to be used to support perpetual wars of aggression. The level of government intrusion and the loss of respect for personal liberty is really crazy.