I could end the deficit in 5 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.

The Government needs to recognise that we live on a planet with finite resources - and start measuring our progress as a society by the quality of our lives, not the expansion of our GDP.

I'm pleased that some economists and sociologists are beginning to talk about, for example, alternative measures of human well-being - alternative, that is, to GDP, on which the world runs.

From 1950 to 2000, the U.S. economy grew at an average rate of 3.5 percent. That generated a massive gain in real GDP per person from $16,000 to over $50,000. A huge win for the middle class.

Qatar is giving 2.8% of our GDP to research. This is something again that is a breakthrough, as nobody was even thinking of research as a tool or component for advancement in this part of the world.

Qatar is giving 2.8% of our GDP to research. This is something again that is a breakthrough, as nobody was even thinking of research as a tool or component for advancement in this part of the world.

Coming to the growth potential in financial services, there is enough data to show that, usually, financial services grow about twice or two and a half times of what the economy, the GDP growth rates.

I'm not worried they're all about the investments we make. I mean, listen, this country - we've got $46,000 or $47,000 of GDP per capita. Now, we've done pretty darn well. We'll do better in the future.

Europe and North America, we are told, are less dependent on energy-intensive heavy industry than in the 1960s and 1970s. It seems we squeeze more GDP out of a barrel of oil than in those benighted days.

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.

The human world lives in a framework called global economics. We live in a system based on GDP, which drives consumption. it causes people to compete with each other through trade in a way that they all grow.

It is this obsession with GDP and FDI growth and a facile belief that this growth in the GDP would trickle down to the poor as well, that has led to the neglect of the genuine concerns of the poor in the country.

Could a government dare to set out with happiness as its goal? Now that there are accepted scientific proofs, it would be easy to audit the progress of national happiness annually, just as we monitor money and GDP.

If we focus our economy on improving human outcomes instead of just a topline GDP that is increasingly going to fewer and fewer people, we can see what Americans can do when they're free to unleash their true potential.

Pat Buchanan attacks me as 'worshipping at the church of GDP.' But in a CNBC 'Kudlow and Company interview', I reminded him that I also worship at the church of Catholic Mass, as do the vast majority of the Mexican immigrants.

Only the work that generates money is allowed to count toward GDP. Little wonder, then, that we have organized education around feeding as many people as possible in bite-size flexible parcels into the employment establishment.

All of our competitors around the world, every country is investing more in infrastructure as a percentage of their GDP than we are. And down the road our children and grandchildren will have to compete with that more and more.

A lot of people abroad know Lula's campaigns against poverty and hunger, but he had a tremendous legacy in education too. He invested 2 percent of GDP, more than other administration, putting the PT's education programs in motion.

The Asia Pacific region within TPP encompasses nearly 40 percent of the world's GDP. Shaping the rules of the road for trade in this region is good for our workers and businesses - and it is good for our national security as well.

If I can save 25 billion dollars in terms of reduction of import, I will be adding one percent to the GDP. By conserving the oil energy by the people, the GDP will become 5.5 percent, and this will change the economy of the country.

Trade is very good for the country. It's very good for the GDP. It's good for wages, but it doesn't mean it's always good for every business. So we should have trade assistance, which is about relocation, re-education, and training.

If you are moving the informal economy into the formal economy, and if the transactions which for years were never reported as part of GDP are now transacted through banking channels, it will only add to the GDP, not reduce the GDP.

I want to tell mayors, county chiefs and heads of big companies: don't just chase GDP growth; don't chase the biggest profits at the expense of our children and grandchildren and at the cost of sacrificing our ecological environment.

If every country committed to spending 0.05 per cent of GDP on researching non-carbon-emitting energy technologies, that would cost $25 billion a year, and it would do a lot more than massive carbon cuts to fight warming and save lives.

Apart from their work and production, households perform other important economic functions. Most CONSUMPTION occurs within the household. ... In developed capitalist economies, private consumption spending accounts for half or more of GDP.

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 9 percent of GDP. That is stimulative as all get out. It's more stimulative than any policy we've followed since World War II.

I live in a working-class community that is struggling at the poverty line, where people who work full-time jobs still at my corner bodega use food stamps. Do you think they care what the stock market's doing today or what the GDP number is? No.

I find Maersk fascinating. It is the Coca-Cola of freight with none of the fame. Its parent company, A. P. Moller-Maersk, is Denmark's largest company, its sales equal to 20 percent of Denmark's GDP; its ships use more oil than the entire nation.

Repealing the estate tax won't create jobs, it won't boost GDP, and it won't add efficiency to the market. Instead, repealing the estate tax will simply add to the debt, hurt our ability to build a stronger economy and worsen economic inequality.

The Obama administration's attempted short-term fixes, even with unprecedented monetary easing by the Federal Reserve, produced average GDP growth of just 2.2% over the past three years, and the consensus outlook appears no better for the year ahead.

Press and Internet freedom correlate against economic and social success, GDP, innovation, number of patents filed, and educational attainment. The more freedom there is, the more information, the more choice, and ultimately, more power for each individual.

Credit is a promise to deliver money. It will produce GDP but you'll create credit... So you reach a certain point that that you can't do that anymore... There are choices. And how do we best support, apportion the money? How much is going to be transferred?

Nations that pay for outcomes and health actually spend a lower percentage of GDP, and they have better outcomes. And so the Affordable Care Act is starting to make that migration, but we've got to keep down that path, and we'll improve outcomes and reduce cost.

We have never in human history seen a run-up in credit of the kind we have just witnessed in advanced economies since 1970, and we have never observed modern finance-capitalist systems operating over a sustained period at this kind of credit-to-GDP leverage ratio.

A lot of our fiscal deficit went to fund consumption and really did not get used to build investment and infrastructure. The trouble is, you can get a spurt in GDP growth, which may not be sustainable. I would much rather build the gradient of a long-term marathon.

I have seen businesses and government come together to provide women entrepreneurs with the training they need to better access markets, take advantage of trade agreements, and in the process grow businesses, jobs, and GDP. These are partnerships that transform lives.

Since environmental and health damage is not factored into reducing GDP - and in fact the resulting health costs and the costs of cleaning up the environment would also inflate GDP, a GDP obsessed government would try and dismantle environmental and health regulations.

Governments don't get elected saying, 'We're going to lower GDP next year,' governments get elected on saying, 'We're going to increase prosperity and the happiness and the wealth of our nations.' But that kind of capitalism will only lead to the destruction of our planet.

I think the main figure that matters to all of us, including people in the media, is: How does GDP per capita grow? And those figures have been very good. There is a huge flux both up and down, so it isn't like we're all static in status. What's important is that pie grows.

If Europe today accounts for just over 7 per cent of the world's population, produces around 25 per cent of global GDP and has to finance 50 per cent of global social spending, then it's obvious that it will have to work very hard to maintain its prosperity and way of life.

We've had a number of economists supporting our legislation. And here's where we are. The American people can judge. Six largest financial institutions in America today have assets of roughly $10 trillion; equivalent to 58 percent of the GDP of the United States of America.

But clearly an economy that's growing and expanding like this one - and it certainly is doing that with high GDP output, employment numbers strong, capacity utilization strong - that's an environment in which the Fed needs to continually be alert to early signs of inflation.

After almost 50 years in which federal spending averaged about 20 percent of GDP, Joe Sestak and Nancy Pelosi took federal spending to 25 percent. You know, that's a 25 percent increase in the size of the government overnight. That's what we - that's what we've got to rein in.

Too much of the income gains go to too few people, even though all of the stakeholders worked together to make their companies successful. By failing to put enough income into more hands, the GDP grows slower and consumers manage to meet their needs by incurring high levels of debt.

And so, inevitably, one returns to the centre of Western culture, Greece, and we have never, in any sense, lost our ties with the architectural concepts that this country's ancient civilization explored and demonstrated, nor with the political and social freedom that lay behind them.

World military spending has now risen to over $1.2 trillion. This incredible sum represents 2.5 per cent of GDP (global gross domestic product). Even if 1 per cent of it were redirected towards development, the world would be much closer to achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

Britain is a textbook case of how growing inequality leads to economic crisis. The years before the crash were marked by a sharp rise in remortgaging and the growth of 0% balance transfer credit cards. By 2008 the UK had the highest ratio of household debt to GDP of any major economy.

Strictly from the perspective of human well-being, the richest-but-warmest world characterized by the A1FI scenario would probably be superior to the poorer-but-cooler worlds at least through 2085, particularly if one considers the numerous ways GDP per capita advances human well-being.

The first thing we should acknowledge is that poverty is hugely expensive. It varies from country to country, but most of the time it's around 3, 4 or 5% of GDP. If you look at what it would cost just to top up the income of all the poor people in a country, it would cost about 1% of GDP.

R&D has been an obsession in Europe for many, many years. There is this magical number which many governments aspire to do, and that is to invest at least three percent of GDP in research and development. When you look at the number, it's a composite of private and public investment in R&D.

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