For the gross national product includes air pollution and advertising for
cigarettes, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special
locks for our doors, and jails for the people who break them. The gross national
product includes the destruction of redwoods and the death of Lake Superior.
It grows with the production of napalm and missiles and nuclear warheads, and
even includes research on the improved dissemination of bubonic plague. The
gross national product swells with the equipment for the police to put down
the riots in our cities; and although it is not diminished by the damage these
riots do, still it goes up as slums are rebuilt on their ashes. It includes
Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the broadcasting of television programs
which glorify violence and sell goods to our children.
—Robert F. Kennedy