48 Quotes About Gdp

Upper-middle income and high-income nations – countries over the threshold of $10,000 per capita – could in theory deliver flourishing lives for all, achieving real progress in human development, without needing any additional growth in order to do so. We know exactly what works: reduce inequality, invest in universal public goods, and distribute income and opportunity more fairly.

The problem with gross domestic product is the gross bit. There are no deductions involved: all economic activity is accounted as if it were of positive value. Social harm is added to, not subtracted from, social good. A train crash which generates £1bn worth of track repairs, medical bills and funeral costs is deemed by this measure as beneficial as an uninterrupted service which generates £1bn in ticket sales.

Just like how most if not all poor boys look up to and aspire to someday be rich men, most if not all underdeveloped and developing countries look up to and aspire to someday be developed countries.

It’s not growth itself that matters – what matters is how income is distributed, and the extent to which it is invested in public services. And past a certain point, more GDP isn’t necessary for improving human welfare at all.

From the perspective of human welfare, the high levels of GDP that characterise the United States, Britain and other higher-income countries turn out to be vastly in excess of what they actually need.

[For the past forty years], guided by the dogmas of neoliberalism, governments have privatised public services, slashed social spending, cut wages and labour protections, handed tax cuts to the richest and sent inequality soaring. In an age of climate breakdown, we need to be doing exactly the opposite.

Entrepreneurship is, to most entrepreneurs, the art of using things such as the need for job creation as veils to hide the desire to make way more money than is needed.

Creativity is key to productivity and prosperity.

I could end the deficit in five minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP all sitting members of congress are ineligible for reelection.