Gross National Product Quotes

“Macroeconomics”

“Gross Domestic Product”

“Gross national happiness”

“It's crazy that America gives such a paltry percentage of its GNP to the starving nations.”

“The dominant role played by... exporters’ and importers’ GNP and distance in explaining trade flows.”

“Wikipedia: Gross National Product”

“Even if we can never quantify [satisfaction or happiness]... as precisely as we currently quantify GNP,... perhaps it is better to be vaguely right than precisely wrong.”

“Macroeconomics deals with national aggregates like gross national product, employment, price levels, consumption and investment, money supply and demand, balance of payments, and so on.”

“(Archie and Mike are talking about the benefits of the USA)
Archie: They got the greatest country in the world here. The highest standard of living. The grossest national product.”

“(re an antique book on his desk) Oliver, would you mind leaving that alone? It's not mine, and it's worth half the gross national product.
(on Guillam's Porsche) What a perfectly revolting little car! How ever will we all fit in?”

“The computer field is intoxicated with change. We have seen galloping growth over a period of four decades and it still does not seem to be slowing down. The field is not mature yet and already it accounts for a significant percentage of the Gross National Product.”

“Veronica: Another thing girls love are Jimmy Choos, Dolce & Gabbana, and convertibles that cost more than the gross national product of Sri Lanka.”

“Britain, with the most completely socialized health system in the West, now spends the lowest fraction of GNP on health care of any major nation. There are frequent complaints of excessive waits for elective surgery and other inconveniences, but British citizens live slightly longer than Americans, on average, and our overall health conditions are comparable.”

“Jule [to Hardenberg during a conversation at table]: The First World could cancel the Third World's debts. That's only 0.01% of the GNP!
Hardenberg: That would collapse the world's financial system.
Jule: You want them poor! It's the way to control them. Make them sell their raw goods at dirt cheap prices...”

“The GNP by itself is no mark of our national achievement. For it includes smokestacks that pollute, drugs that destroy, and ambulances which clear our highways of human wreckage. It includes a mugger's knife, a rioter's bomb, and Oswald's rifle, but if the GNP tells us all this, there is much that it does not tell us. It says nothing about the health of our families, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play.”

“For the logic of Saint-Simon is that the only legitimate social functions are those of production, and those of the scholarship which aids production. It is no accident that this corporatist utopia is today defended by western labour movements, for it exhausts the contemporary utopic vision of citizenship - good citizens are those who either boost Gross National Product or who conduct Wissenschaft as part of that process.”

“Dorian Tyrell: Okay, Twinkle-Toes, I want to know where my money is and I want to know right now!
The Mask: Okay. [puts on a green eyeshade and pulls out an accounting machine] You've got 17.5% in T-bills amortized over the fiscal year. 8% in stocks and bonds. Carry the nine, divide by the gross national product. Fortunately, funeral bouquets are deductible!
Dorian Tyrell: [to Orlando] Ice this deadbeat!”

“The Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”

“These examples confuse effort with result, one of the most common mistakes of this kind is designing systems around the wrong goal. Maybe the worst mistake this kind has been the adoption of the GNP as the measure of national economic success. [...] If you define the goal of a society as GNP, that society will do its best to produce GNP. It will not produce welfare, equity, justice, or efficiency unless you define a goal and regularly measure and report the state of welfare, equity, justice, or efficiency.”

“Simon Kuznets is best known for his studies of national income and its components. Prior to World War I, measures of GNP were rough guesses, at best. No government agency collected data to compute GNP, and no private economic researcher did so systematically, either. Kuznets changed all that. With work that began in the 1930s and stretched over decades, Kuznets computed national income back to 1869. He broke it down by industry, by final product, and by use. He also measured the distribution of income between rich and poor.”