Quote

GDP tells you nothing about sustainability

Joseph Stiglitz

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Joseph Stiglitz
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: February 9
Critic
Economist
Non-Fiction Writer
Professor
Science Writer
University Teacher
Writer
Gary
Indiana
Joseph Eugene Stiglitz
Joseph Stiglitz
Sustainability
Tells
Nothing

More quotes by Joseph Stiglitz

Image
The notion that every well educated person would have a mastery of at least the basic elements of the humanities, sciences, and social sciences is a far cry from the specialized education that most students today receive, particularly in the research universities.
Joseph Stiglitz
Image
If you destroy a firm, you can't pull it out of bankruptcy overnight.
Joseph Stiglitz
Image
I think what they've been doing is largely almost in firefighting mode without a good conceptual framework - either at the micro or the macro level. Micro, you would ask: What kind of financial or banking system do we want? Macro, you would say: What are the underlying problems in the structure of our economy?
Joseph Stiglitz
Image
It is trust, more than money, that makes the world go round.
Joseph Stiglitz
Image
These debt obligations will simply erode America's standard of living in the future. Money spent to service the debt is money that we don't have to spend on consumption's goods, or on investment in our future.
Joseph Stiglitz
Image
It is unlikely that others would even demand their money back overnight, for doing so would lead to the value of the dollar plummeting what they would get back with be worth little. But what we are already seeing is an erosion of confidence of the dollar, which is seeing the dollar fall in value.
Joseph Stiglitz
Image
As I noted in my Nobel lecture, an early insight in my work on the economics of information concerned the problem of appropriability - the difficulty that those who pay for information have in getting returns.
Joseph Stiglitz
Image
What you measure affects what you do. If you don't measure the right thing, you don't do the right thing.
Joseph Stiglitz
Image
The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn't seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.
Joseph Stiglitz
Image
I went to public schools, and while Gary was, like most American cities, racially segregated, it was at least socially integrated - a cross section of children from families of all walks of life.
Joseph Stiglitz
Image
There must have been something in the air of Gary that led one into economics: the first Nobel Prize winner, Paul Samuelson, was also from Gary, as were several other distinguished economists.
Joseph Stiglitz
Image
The striking thing about America is - it's historically, extraordinary unusual, I don't of any other instance - is that productivity of workers and wages have not moved in tandem.
Joseph Stiglitz
Image
Similarly, payments for a dead soldier amount to only $500,000, which is far less than standard estimates of the lifetime economic cost of a death. This statistical value of a life in the US amounts to circa $6.5 million.
Joseph Stiglitz
Image
The attempt to minimize cost and maximize profits often interfered with our true mission in Iraq. We should have been working to get jobs for Iraqis, but the contractors found it cheaper to import Nepalese and others. This increased resentment, contributed to unemployment, and to our losing the hearts and minds of the Iraqis.
Joseph Stiglitz
Image
The only surprise about the economic crisis of 2008 was that it came as a surprise to so many.
Joseph Stiglitz
Image
Anybody who knows about capitalism knows that bankruptcy is an essential part of capitalism.
Joseph Stiglitz
Image
For that to happen, growth has to be very strong. To get back to normalcy, we will have to have extended growth of more than 3 percent. That's not in the cards.
Joseph Stiglitz
Image
The problem with NAFTA was with what we wanted. And there, the agenda had been set by our corporations. So what is true is that workers in the United States and workers in the developing countries were often disadvantaged. They were worse off. The big winners were our corporations.
Joseph Stiglitz
Image
Economists often like startling theorems, results which seem to run counter to conventional wisdom.
Joseph Stiglitz
Image
The budgetary cost to the UK of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through 2010 will total more than £18 billion. If we include the social costs the total impact will exceed £20 billion.
Joseph Stiglitz