# Gross Domestic Product

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the market value of all officially recognized final goods and services produced within a country in a year, or over a given period of time. GDP per capita is often used as an indicator of a country's material standard of living. GDP measures recessions by two negative quarters of growth.
    CONTENT : A - F , G - L , M - R , S - Z , See also , External links

## Quotes

    Quotes are arranged alphabetically by author

### A - F

* But, but I mean, we've used up a lot of bullets. And we talk about stimulus. But the truth is, we're running a federal deficit that's nine percent of GDP. That is stimulative as all get out. I mean, that is more stimulative than any policy we've followed since World War II.
** Warren Buffett, in Alex Crippen Warren Buffett to CNBC: U.S. Capitalism's 'Regenerative Capacity' More Important Than Government Stimulus, CNBC , 23 September 2010
* I just think that - when a country needs more income and we do, we're only taking in 15 percent of GDP, I mean, that - that - when a country needs more income, they should get it from the people that have it.
** Warren Buffett, in Alex Crippen Warren Buffett to CNBC: Country Should Get Needed Income from the 'People Who Have It', CNBC, 23 September 2010
* I define it, I think we're in a recession until real per capita GDP gets back up to where it was before. That is not the way the National Bureau of Economic Research measures it. But I will tell you that to any, on any common sense definition, the average American is below where he was before, or his family, in terms of real income, GDP. We're still in a recession. And, and we're not gonna be out of it for awhile, but we will get out of it.
** Warren Buffett, on the issue of recession in the US, in Alex Crippen Warren Buffett to CNBC: "We're Still In a Recession", CNBC , 23 September 2010

### G - L

* Basically, GDP is a concept of value added. It is the sum of gross value added of all resident producer units (institutional sectors or, alternatively, industries) plus that part (possibly the total) of taxes, less subsidies, on products which is not included in the valuation of output. Gross value added is the difference between output and intermediate consumption.
** International Monetary Fund (1993) [http://books.google.com/books?id=4VenznvjTcwC&pg=PA41 System of National Accounts 1993) (EPub), p. 41
* Of the proportion, which the product of any region bears to the people, an estimate is commonly made according to the pecuniary price of the necessities of life; which is never certain, because it supposes what is far from truth, that the value of money is always the same, and so measures an unknown quantity by an uncertain standard. It is competent enough when the markets of the same country, at different times, and those times not too distant, are to be compared; but of very little use for the purpose of making one nation acquainted with the state of another.
** Samuel Johnson, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775) pp. 366-367
* The way in which economists incorporate inequality into their analyses can have a significant impact on their policy recommendations. If all costs are evaluated in dollars, a loss of, say, 10% of GDP in a poor country is likely to be much less than a loss of 3% of GDP in a rich country. Thus the damages from climate change in poor countries, which may be large as a percentage of GDP, would receive relatively little weight because the losses are relatively small in dollar terms... Stern estimates that, without the effects of inequity, the costs of a BAU scenario will be 11-14% of global GDP. Weighing the impacts on the world’s poor more heavily gives a cost estimate of 20% of global GDP.
** Jonathan M. Harris and Brian Roach, in The Economics of Global Climate Change, p. 19
* It costs governments money to keep fuel prices low. Oil-rich Yemen, for instance, devotes 9 percent of its GDP to making sure its people don't riot when oil prices rise. But the problem with cheap, subsidized fuel is that it creates more demand, and thus costs the governments more money. Countries like Iran, Yemen, Colombia, and Nigeria could go broke if they keep providing cheap gas to keep people happy.
** Robert Kiyosaki, in Welcome to Turbulent Times, 26 November 2007

### M - R

* India needs to be liberated both from the 'high GDP growth hedgehogs' and the 'conservation at all costs hedgehogs.'
** Jairam Ramesh, in India needs a smooth fox, not a hedgehog, says Jairam Ramesh, The Times Of India, 4 May 2011,
* We are misery-making machines! Homo sapiens has perfected the art of causing suffering. Pain is humankind's collective GDP.
** Henry Rollins, in Henry Rollins: Pain and Gain, LA Weekly, 6 March 2014
* Government [the US] is taking 40 percent of the GDP. And that's at the state, local and federal level. President Obama has taken government spending at the federal level from 20 percent to 25 percent. Look, at some point, you cease being a free economy, and you become a government economy. And we've got to stop that.
** Mitt Romney, in Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney's Plant to Get Economy Back on Track, Hannity, 2 June 2011

### S - Z

* For 60 years Gross Domestic Product, or GDP for short, has been the yardstick by which the world has measured and understood economic and social progress. However, it has failed to capture some of the factors that make a difference in people’s lives and contribute to their happiness, such as security, leisure,income distribution and a clean environment–including the kinds of factors which growth itself needs to be sustainable.
** Joseph Stiglitz, in Beyond GDP: Measuring the impact of Operational Programmes in relation to economic growth and sustainable development at a local/regional level., QeC-ERAN
* We are consuming the past, present, and future of this biosphere, our only home, in an unthinking rush for profits and GDP that we call 'progress', belying our species name homo sapiens.
** Pavan Sukhdev in foreword to Bankrupting Nature: Denying Our Planetary Boundaries by Anders Wijkman and Johan Rockström (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2012), p. xi.
* Economics also succeeded in grafting onto the countries of the third world impressive theories and isolated important concepts such as gross national product, gross domestic product, and income per capita. These concepts served as building blocks with which economics constructed elaborate and impressive theories of development, including formula for predicting the rate of economic development of a given nation. According to economics, gross national product (GNP) is the total value of goods and services produced by a given country during a specified time period, such as a year. Gross domestic product (GDP), on the other hand, is gross national product minus the net income the nation earned abroad.
** Denis Chima E. Ugwuegbu (2011) Social Psychology and Social Change in Nigeria, p. 32
* Creative destruction can apply to economic concepts as well. And this downturn offers an excellent opportunity to get rid of one that has long outlived its usefulness: gross domestic product. G.D.P. is one measure of national income, of how much wealth Americans make, and it’s a deeply foolish indicator of how the economy is doing. It ought to join buggy.
** Eric Zencey, in G.D.P. R.I.P., The New York Times, 9 August 9, 2009
* To begin with, Gross Domestic Product excludes a great deal of production that has economic value. Neither volunteer work nor unpaid domestic services (housework, child rearing, do-it-yourself home improvement) make it into the accounts, and our standard of living, our general level of economic well-being, benefits mightily from both. Nor does it include the huge economic benefit that we get directly, outside of any market, from nature. A mundane example: If you let the sun dry your clothes, the service is free and doesn’t show up in our domestic product; if you throw your laundry in the dryer, you burn fossil fuel, increase your carbon footprint, make the economy more unsustainable — and give G.D.P. a bit of a bump.
** Eric Zencey, in "G.D.P. R.I.P.
* Several alternatives to Gross Domestic Product have been proposed, and each tackles the central problem of placing a value on goods and services that never had a dollar price. The alternatives are controversial, because that kind of valuation creates room for subjectivity – for the expression of personal values, of ideology and political belief....It’s admittedly difficult to set a dollar price on such things – but this is no reason to set that price at zero, as gross domestic product currently does
** Eric Zencey, in "G.D.P. R.I.P.

## See also

* Gross national happiness
* Gross National Product
* Macroeconomics