Alexia Russell

So why are we so obsessed with it?

They do keep saying GDP.

Let's have a look at this report that came out last week.

The headline, a good life for the 99% isn't a pipe dream.

It can be done.

Here's how.

Now, these are, I guess we'd have to say, you know, left-leaning economists.

And it has sort of cynically been described as impossible to achieve utopia, what they've said out here.

But are there aspects of this report that we should be sitting up and taking notice of?

And do you think it's possible for us to, as they suggest, 90% of the world's population doubles their income but works half the hours that we work today?

What else is in this report from your scanning of it that is something that we should perhaps take notice of, that we should talk about as a society and think about, could we work towards this?

It also talks about Donald Trump and all the little Trumps and sees that as a problem that nobody really is in the mindset to redistribute the resources that we have and the power that we have because the people who have those resources and power are quite happy to hold on to them.

I mean, is that ever a problem that we're going to solve?

How embedded is that in government here, though?

And a bit vague?

That's Thomas Piketty, the French big thinker behind this report.

And here's Max Rashbrook, who's one of the contributors to the book, The Piketty Phenomenon, New Zealand Perspectives.

And he also wrote a book titled Inequality, A New Zealand Crisis.

So, Max, how significant is this report and how close to pie in the sky is it?

Like, who's going to listen?