Thanks to a post-bubble hangover, America's recovery has been the slowest in modern times: annual GDP growth has averaged 2.7%, compared with 4.7% during the first two years of the previous eight recoveries.
But coal can't power cars and airplanes and the vast variety of industrial engines needed in a modern industrial society whose GDP, at $104 billion in 2002, is between that of Portugal and Malaysia in size.
Whether they sought the glory and riches of empire or pursued hegemony, security, stability, and GDP within the modern international system, their efforts culminated in lines on a map--and the enormous real-life consequences those lines represent and enforce. Provided by publisher.
But in the modern British economy over 80% of the GDP comes from the service sector and it is here, in shops, bars and restaurants, that zero-hours contracts are used by more than half of all firms.
And Mr Osborne should not have accepted inherited plans to trim capital spending by as much as 1.5% of GDP; a growing economy needs modern roads, railways and the like.But there are bigger difficulties.
Greece has lost more than a quarter of its GDP, the worst slump in modern times, as a result of consecutive waves of budget cuts and tax rises enforced at the behest of creditors.
To understand the modern economy, it's essential to realize GDP can't capture many of the free online services, phone apps and the countless other technological innovations that are elevating our quality of life.
… [F]ederal spending as a share of GDP is zooming from its modern norm of 20% to an unacknowledged level somewhere far beyond.
In a country with seemingly no modern historical record of indigence, and per-capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) nearly 18% higher than the average of all OECD nations [ 3], the notion of working poverty is somewhat of a phenomenon.
And what about electronic data becoming a huge part of the modern economy, but still very unrepresented in the GDP calculation?
