I met a middle-aged couple from Denmark yesterday, and I had the opportunity to ask them about their country’s perennial standing in the top five of the World Happiness Rankings.
Me: Why do you think this is the case?
The man: We pay a bit more tax than you, but we get a great deal of value for it. Your top tax rate is 37%, plus whatever state tax may apply, for example, 10% if you live in California. Our top rate is 50%, but all healthcare and education is free. In fact, we have two sons in university who are being paid by the government to stay in school and graduate.
We have almost no crime, no homelessness, and no government corruption.
The woman: And no guns. Even our police don’t have them. Our children are safe from getting gunned down.
I see.
There’s not enough land in Spain to support rooftop and ground-mounted solar at a fraction of the cost.
LOL.
It’s possible that right now, there are other civilizations observing the human race, studying us from afar, and noticing our decline into savagery and eventual extinction by turning billionaires into trillionaires.
People say that the principal weakness of human beings is that we can’t plan for the future as a species. Dogs are arguably even worse, though they aren’t consumed with greed. They don’t plot the starvation of millions of other dogs so they themselves can have enough food to last a billion years.
As an elderly man, I’ll be leaving this planet soon, but I won’t cease pondering this until my heart stops beating.
The drawing here reminds me of a conversation I had with my mother in the early days of 2GreenEnergy when she saw that my focus had become an ongoing effort to improve the wellbeing of all the planet’s inhabitants–now and into the future.
She asked me, “Why don’t you just live your life?”
I explained, “This is my life.”
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