In these days of the COVID19, people are looking back at the Spanish Influenza of a century ago and drawing real world parallels. Good! History is not the story of the past; it is the study of the future. This year is also the Centennial of the 19th Amendment. Make sure you never forget what your grandmother – or great grandmother if you are a millennial – did for you 100 years ago this August. www.authormasterminds.com/steve-levi
The true value of education is keep you from making a fool of yourself . . . . and your proof reader and your boss and the copy editor and the printer . . . . . www.authormasterminds.com/steve-levi
The basic lesson of history NOT TAUGHT in schools today is events come in cycles. Times of economic stress – like today – come with widespread protest that the lower and middle classes are not making enough money while the ‘rich’ and ‘large companies’ are draining the economy of its wealth. The only way to ‘level the playing field’ is for the rich to pay higher taxes so lower and middle class wages will come up. This is the cover of a radical labor paper in 1916. If this political cartoon appeared today – without the logo advocating violence – it would be as relevant today as a century ago. America does not have racial problems or social problems; it has economic problems. The faster we teach this reality in our classes, the less ‘social stress’ we will have. www.authormasterminds.com/steve-levi
This is not photoshop. These are actual combat soldier during World War II and many of them do not look 20. The single most important function of a society is the education of the young. Because ‘boys’’ this age are going to conquer the world and what they KNOW at the time of the conquering will be the course of the future. If they are not reading, their understanding of the world will be based on the last book they closed in the last class they took before they ran off to war. www.authormasterminds.com/steve-levi
History is not the story of the past; it is the study of the future. 102 years ago America went through another pandemic. It was called the Spanish Flu and it killed 50 million people worldwide – 675,000 of them in the United States. And what did we do then? To quote the CDC:
With no vaccine to protect against influenza infection and no antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections that can be associated with influenza infections, control efforts worldwide were limited to non-pharmaceutical interventions such as isolation, quarantine, good personal hygiene, use of disinfectants, and limitations of public gatherings, which were applied unevenly.
Welcome to the past! www.authormasterminds.com/steve-levi
The real lesson of COVID-19 has yet to learned. The ongoing reduction of income taxes on large businesses that began with the Reagan Administration and culminated in the Trump tax cut has perpetuated the illusion that businesses run America. They do not; people spending money do. Money earned buys cars, gasoline, shirts, trousers, skis, lettuce, beer and everything else on store – and Amazon – shelves. The myth that workers should be paid the “market rate” as companies gradually reduced the “market rate” has dumped millions of working Americans into the one-paycheck-away-from-disaster category. Had the minimum wage kept up with inflation, it would be about $20 an hour today. Now far too many Americans cannot live on a fulltime job. That fiscal reality is coming home to roost as the American economy is and will be taking a horrendous beating because now-homeless workers will not be buying goods and services. Worse, their plight will have to be paid with taxpayer moneys – federal, state and local. If we do not solve the problem of everyone and every company paying “it’s fair share,” the economic disaster of the COVID-19 is going to be back with us, again and again and again.
With the coronavirus upon us, it’s tempting to talk about ‘the good ol’ days’ when what was happening TODAY was not NORMAL. The fact of the matter is that there is no NORMAL, particularly in United States. Our past was never that ‘good’ and the great strength of America has been our rebound. Our TOMORROW has never been the same as TODAY. The next six months are going to excruciatingly difficult, but we are going to come out of this crisis a lot stronger and a lot smarter. The Roman Empire could not make that claim; it was mistake upon error followed by incompetence and – most critical – failure to learn from that past. In six months there will be a serum. In twelve months the pictures of hospital tents in Central Park will be ‘ancient’ as this one of the Colosseum.
www.authormasterminds.com/steve-levi
There is an old Alaska bush pilot adage I take to heart every day of my life: “There are three things you never have to worry about: 1) the air above you, 2) the landing strip behind you, and 3) what happened 1/10th of a second ago.” I/we have to live every second of every day of our lives and many a time that ‘next second’ is going to be very dicey. But who WE really are will be determined how well WE are PREPARED for that “next second” and the grace with which WE live AFTER that “next second.” www.authormasterminds.com/steve-levi.https://bit.ly/2RsZ6N1, https://www.authormasterminds.com/steve-levi
Money does not exist. If you have $500 in your checking account and you ask the bank to show you that $500, the teller will think you are crazy. That $500 does not exist as cash. Now, go back 100 years. This is an actual shot of someone paying for product in gold dust in Alaska. To buy something then you had to have gold and you had to weigh it out every time you made a purchase. If you tripped and fell, you could lose every flake of your fortune to the wind. Next time you sweep your credit card, think of how far we have come in a century.
https://bit.ly/2RsZ6N1, https://www.authormasterminds.com/steve-levi