Here’s a short-film produced by General Motors in 1939 called “Round & Round”. It’s a brief look at the free market system. It feels like it was produced for first-graders:
This is a factory. This is a machine in the factory. This is the workman who tends the machine in the factory. And this is what the workman makes on his machine in the factory. This is a widget.
Inside the widget factory, there are lots of widget-making machines, and the skilled workmen who run these machines turn out the finest widgets you’ve ever seen. They’re as modern, attractive, and efficient as careful design and fine craftsmanship can possibly make them. People will certainly want to buy these widgets because they are so fine and up-to-date.
Don’t get me wrong — I come from a family filled with entrepreneurs — I just think this vastly oversimplifies things. Still, I love these old educational films. They’re like time capsules into a world rapidly fading from memory. I’ll be disappointed when my secret stash of these runs out.
Here are similar films I’ve shared in the past:
- Your Thrift Habits, which features budgeting lessons from 1948
- Working Dollars offers investing lessons from 1957
- Using the Bank demonstrates state-of-the-art personal finance from 1947
- Better Use of Leisure Time provides self-improvement tips from 1950
- The Wise Use of Credit gives money lessons from 1960
If you find more of these, please send them to me.
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This article is about Basics, Economics, Funny Money
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This link lists all the Prelinger films on the Internet Archive.
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For a quick way to search for videos like this, go to http://www.open-video.org/ and search/browse. It will help you find videos not only from the Internet Archive, but many other places with licensing similar to open source software, i.e. free, that you can download.
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This was a great video, thank you! I’m going to take it to work to share with a lot of other manufacturing engineers (we work for Ford, not GM, but it’s close enough) — I know they’ll get as much of a kick out of it as I did. If only our factory was that clean!!!
GM and Jam Handy made a lot of films together, but this is one of the most amusing that I’ve seen
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Hey, let’s not bash Capitalism. At least capitalism allows us to choose whether to spend or save. Under every other economic system, the government (or junta) just takes your money and gives it to somebody else… or themselves.
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Poor Jack in “Your Thrift Habits,” having to buy a new pen which came out of his school supply budget. I’m not sure what would be harder to explain to the kids at work a) why did Jack not whip out his Visa and buy one? b) What is a fountain pen? c) Why did it cost so much.
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Too bad the cycle of the Widgets has been destroyed by NAFTA and the internationalization of the marketplace. Widget makers in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and even Mexico. How did it all go wrong when initially it all seemed so sane? Could it be the attitude that came with the competition with other ideologies, our system is better than yours, that’s to blame?
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