Economy
See also: Economy of Arkansas and List of Arkansas companiesOnce a state with a cashless society in the uplands and plantation agriculture in the lowlands, Arkansas's economy has evolved and diversified to meet the needs of today's consumer. The state's gross domestic product (GDP) was $105 billion in 2010. Four Fortune 500 companies are based in Arkansas, including the world's #1 retailer, Walmart. The per capita personal income in 2010 was $36,027, ranking forty-fifth in the nation. The three-year median household income from 2009-11 was $39,806, ranking forty-ninth in the nation. The state's agriculture outputs are poultry and eggs, soybeans, sorghum, cattle, cotton, rice, hogs, and milk. Its industrial outputs are food processing, electric equipment, fabricated metal products, machinery, and paper products. Mines in Arkansas produce natural gas, oil, crushed stone, bromine, and vanadium.
As of July 2012 the state's unemployment rate is 7.3%
Read more about this topic: Arkansas
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“The basis of political economy is non-interference. The only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting meter of demand and supply. Do not legislate. Meddle, and you snap the sinews with your sumptuary laws.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are laws of the Universe. The merchant’s economy is a coarse symbol of the soul’s economy. It is, to spend for power, and not for pleasure.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)