text: cont. 
  
  ... future needs that I'm likely to have - and if I happen to have a bit of bad luck, won't immediately assume that the State ought to take away Mr. Dalton's property or income in order to bail me out.
  
  The reference to Norway in my post was a gentle reminder that the Nanny State functions best in rich societies (e.g., in Norway, where 4 million people get to divvy up a sovereign wealth fund of $800 billion or so).  Government can't give you or me a "free" benefit unless it shifts the costs to someone else - or, like Norway, rules over a lucrative export market.  :-/  Any society which fails to produce surplus wealth won't have anything to redistribute, and the end result is only an 'egalitarianism of misery'.  (See Venezuela or Cuba.)
  
  Question:  Do you think that the proper role of government is to relieve us of all adult responsibility for our own upkeep?