11 Classic Cartoons About Free Trade

The Brexit vote has prompted a renewed debate about globalization. Here are 11 of my favorite old cartoons about free trade, especially NAFTA. Looking at these now, I remember that it was nearly impossible to get media outlets to run them.

14 Comments.

  • Free trade has always been about replacing a comfortable worker with a desperate worker.

    Desperate workers make so fewer demands.

    “In 1995, for instance, female employees at a Nabisco plant in Oxnard, Calif., maker of A-1 steak sauce and the world’s supplier of Grey Poupon mustard, complained in a lawsuit that line supervisors had consistently prevented them from going to the bathroom. Instructed to urinate into their clothes or face three days’ suspension for unauthorized expeditions to the toilet, the workers opted for adult diapers.”

    http://coreyrobin.com/2012/03/08/lavatory-and-liberty-the-secret-history-of-the-bathroom-break/

    • But … but … that’s like stealing from the company! They’re taking the silver spoons right out of the VIPs’ kids’ mouths!

      At least male workers have the option of urinating on the supervisor.

      Foreign workers are even better. They don’t have all these silly notions about their “rights.”

      • “At least male workers have the option of urinating on the supervisor.”

        I once came into work a few minutes late and wasn’t in on the secret that had everyone suppressing laughter. Someone had urinated into a manager’s working file cabinet.

        It was most likely one of the males, but upon inspection of the file cabinet, it was not impossible that one of the women could have perched there momentarily.

        Given adequate “incentive”, who is to say?

        I did work at a Nabisco plant where women, who were a large majority of employees, were told on Friday night that they had to be there on Saturday or be fired.

        So, every single mother would either have to find someone to leave her children with or not be able to care financially for her children for lack of a job.

        Needless to say, tears were flowing everywhere.

        Life in America, where a free people are free to choose among terrible options, like between Democrat or Republican.

      • I suggest that urinating or defecating in a supervisor’s cabinet is probably not the way to go, at least if one wishes to avoid legal consequences. Both these actions leave residues which are easy to identify as coming from specific individuals….

        I may be old-fashioned, but organisation and collective action strike me as better and more effective ways to go, if not as easy or as much fun as pissing on someone or his or her things….

        Henri

      • hmm….

        Punching your stuporvisor in the face is illegal, no matter how richly he deserves it. But I read somewhere that of spitting in someone’s face has been ruled to be an act of free speech.

        Is pissing on my stuporvisor’s hand-stitched Italian loafers so very different? Urine is sterile – unlike spit. That’s better, right?

        And if he should commit an illegal act of assault soon thereafter, punching him in the face would be self defense.

        Come Tuesday morning, maybe I’ll drink a lot of coffee and go talk to him …

      • «Urine is sterile – unlike spit.» You know how much I hate to be a pedant and a party pooper, CrazyH, but the notion that the urine of healthy people is sterile – even the notion that it is sterile in the bladder, i e, before being ejected to the urethra – seems to a misconception due to the fact that the bacterial contamination found there is not detected by routine urinalysis…..

        So by all means piss on your supervisor’s loafers if you feel so inclined, but don’t defend yourself in court with the claim that your urine is sterile and that therewith your action was therewith not a tort…. 😉

        (Say, instead, that you are a dear friend of Ms Clinton and hope that her legal impunity can thus somehow be transferred to you….)

        Henri

      • “My* urine has miraculous healing properties. It’s made the blind hear and the deaf walk. It ain’t braggin’ if you can do it.

      • «“My* urine has miraculous healing properties. It’s made the blind hear and the deaf walk. It ain’t braggin’ if you can do it.» Or if the president does it ? At any rate, CrazyH, my abject apologies – I stand corrected…. 😉

        Henri

      • > I stand corrected…. ?

        No, you don’t. You’re sitting.

      • «You’re sitting.» Ah, but that you don’t know, CrazyH – I might have one of those height adjustable desks which are all the rage these days…. 😉

        Henri

      • No, you don’t.

      • «No, you don’t.» No matter what your NSA buddies responsible for surveillance of us dastardly foreigners tell you, CrazyH, they don’t know everything…. 😉

        Henri

      • Yes, they do.

      • «Yes, they do.» Then I suppose I’ll have to sit corrected….

        Henri

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