Cooking the Books podcast: Is 'degrowth' the answer to stopping workaholism?

Increasing numbers of people are questioning whether we're focusing on growing the economy, at the expense of wellbeing. Photo / Getty Images

Each week the NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB's Cooking The Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it's whether deliberately shrinking our economy could fix some of society's problems. Hosted by Frances Cook.

Audio from this video podcast is available on podcast apps, one week after its release on Herald Premium. You can subscribe on Apple podcasts app, iHeartRadio, or Spotify, to make sure you never miss an episode.

The idea that growth is good is a core belief in our financial system.

A growing economy means jobs, profits, and food on the table.

But there's an increasing number of people questioning how long this can last for.

We do have just one planet, with a certain number of resources. So surely we can only grow for so long before those run out?

Others link endless growth to the rise of workaholism, with people working longer hours, sometimes in multiple jobs, just to keep up.

You can see this strain of thought in the Government's latest Wellbeing Budget, where they said we needed to look past GDP, to work on the things that actually make a country happier and better off overall.

But at the more extreme end of this, some people talk about degrowth; intentionally shrinking the economy to address these issues.

For the latest Cooking the Books podcast I talked to Shamubeel Eaqub about whether it could it ever work, and how far can we take these ideas before they become harmful.

For the interview, watch the video podcast.

If you have a question about this podcast, or question you'd like answered in the next one, come and talk to me about it. I'm on Facebook here, Instagram here and Twitter here.