Robert F. Kennedy on wealth as a false measure of life

GNP includes the bad things but few of the good things

Robert F. Kennedy might well have won the presidency in 1968 were he not murdered while campaigning for the California primary. The former Attorney General, elected a senator from New York in 1964, had become increasingly an anti-war and pro civil rights leader. This is taken from a campaign speech given at the University of Kansas on 17 or 18 March 1968, quoted in Thurston Clark’s The Last Campaign.

Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product, now, is over eight hundred billion dollars a year, but the GNP — if we should judge America by that — counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.

It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead . . . and the televison programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.

It measures neither our wit nor our courage. . . . It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

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