Gary Stevenson

I found that difficult.

Have you got any advice for how people can go about doing that, where they should study, what they should do?

Well, I mean, just for me personally, the work that, you know, you yourself

have done and the work that Thomas Piketty has done was Thomas Piketty, another very well known French economist he's worked a lot with.

It really inspired me.

I think Thomas Piketty's big book Capital came out, I think in 2012, when I was still working as a trader for Citibank.

That's what is in the bookshelf next to Atkinson's Inequality book in that nice cover.

And before I read that book, I didn't know that any economists

We're seriously looking at inequality.

So, you know, the work that he's done and the work that you've done and Emmanuel Sayers, you know, a group of French economists, was really inspirational for me.

So thank you for that.

And send my thanks to Buketi.

I know you speak to him a lot.

But I want to get on to your political work because you've made this...

A big shift, which to me is super interesting because I don't see many, I mean in a sense it's a shift that I've made as well, but I don't see many people who are sort of top level academics who've decided, you know what, and correct me if you don't think this is a correct description of what you've been doing, but it seems to me like you've really decided, I'm going to really shift my focus into not just writing papers and getting prestigious positions on this,

I want to try to do something about, you know, your book is called We Need to Tax Billionaires, which is quite political.

Like, why did you decide, you know, I'm going to, you know, you have a very good record in economics.

You know, you're a professor at a couple of very good universities.

You could very easily have just written a couple of, you know, op-eds in newspapers and had a few rounds of applause.

But from what I've seen of your work, you know, you've got a big presence on social media.