Steven Pope

By the way, there are more trees today in 2026 than there were 100 years ago.

Did you know that?

So I think we really do as humanity have a reason to be optimistic right now.

Even though there's more people in the world, there's more food than there ever has been.

There's more trees than there ever has been.

There's more energy than there ever has been.

So there's a lot of things that I think we can look forward to and a lot of things that have become successful.

But I also think that there's less happiness today.

What's that about?

How can there be more abundance and less happiness?

How can there be more people wondering why they exist in this fashion?

I don't know if this is true, but this seems to be the way I feel.

Maybe you feel the same way.

I feel like we're taxed more today than any point in history, even in biblical times.

Like they only took 25% of the crops from the Jews and Moses this time.

I might be totally off on that number, but that's what I recall, right?

We pay 40% taxes today, and then we pay taxes just to live and pay it on owning a home and property taxes, and we pay sales tax, we pay life insurance, health insurance.

Those are taxes as well, in a way, just to live.

And mind you, I have enough to pay for all this, and I'm still complaining about it.

Why?