Meet King Joe (1949)

[jeffrey_X]

Interesting to watch this now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbw8DFwoqJ0


Thoughts?

[evlbstrd]

1. Corporatist propaganda.

This is the stuff that was seen everywhere even into the mid 60s. They're much more sophisticated these days.

[On the Road]

2. It's Not Bad at Expressing a Certain Point of View in a Sample Way

but obviously there's more behind it.

The cartoon says that a US blue collar worker is supported by $20,000 of investment, while the Chinese worker has the benefit of virtually no investment. That may have been true at the time, but it has changed. It's the result of Europe recovering from a ruined post-war economy and the rest of the world rising from third world status.

The same thing is true of US dominance in consumer items. Americans may have owned 72% of the world's automobiles at that point, but there's a limit to how many cars people want. As the rest of the world recovered and developed, that was bound to come down.

It was, of course, a kind of propaganda. Not against WTO-style globalization or offshoring, since that was wasn't on the political agenda in the late 40s. I suspect it was a message of "appreciate what you have, work hard, and don't go on strike so much." That and "USA! USA! USA!"