A quarter is about right (it's 23.4% as of 2009). What's more interesting is the graph of US GDP and world GDP: http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&ctyp

A quarter is about right (it's 23.4% as of 2009). What's more interesting is the graph of US GDP and world GDP: http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&ctype=l&met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country&idim=country:USA&tdim=true&hl=en_US&dl=en http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&ctype=l&m... In the 80s, the US sat at about one-third of the world GDP. Something happened in 2002, and since then the world GDP has been skyrocketing relative to the US.