The common bond between each state is the desire to help grow gross domestic product (GDP), create new jobs, connect people, and increase opportunities for its citizens.
Such an increase would raise the wages of 27.8 million workers, and grow gross domestic product by about $22 billion, resulting in the creation of roughly 85,000 net new jobs.
"When agriculture grows, gross domestic product grows," said Diego Arias, an agriculture economist who analyzes Haiti at the World Bank.
"We have grown gross sales and market share across both Waitrose and John Lewis, but our profits are down," he said.
There is typically a lag between a growing gross domestic product and new jobs, said Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody's Economy.com, but the lag may be even longer now, given the severity of the recession.
For example, military leaders (and many Bush administration officials) point to some good news on the economic front: growing gross domestic product, bustle on the streets, creation of small businesses, adequate availability of most household fuels, gradually improving national infrastructure for water and sewage, more children in school, more Internet usage, and lots more telephone service.
Panama has posted 23 consecutive quarters of economic growth, growing gross domestic product by 11.5% in 2007.
Burning another ton of coal is not what grows gross domestic product; it's getting more useful output from that energy.
Scale: While revenues have grown, gross profit has plateaued, indicating the costs associated with increased revenues have not scaled, but grown correspondingly.
In its most recent quarter, Cisco posted record revenues, had double-digit product growth and grew gross margins in a very competitive pricing environment.
Since he joined Zappos full time in 2000 Zappos has grown gross merchandise sales from $1.6M to $840M in 2007 by focusing relentlessly on customer service.
