I lived in Norway for about six months back in the mid-90s with my girlfriend at the time who was Norwegian. To generalize, the Norwegians are a very disciplined, thoughtful group. I spoke to a lot of people in Norway about The Petroleum Fund and I never met anyone who thought the government wasn’t doing the right thing by managing the oil revenues for the future through this fund. (I interviewed for a job with the fund – they didn’t hire me.) I think there are several factors that allow for this fund to exist: (1) Norwegians are highly educated – even at the median – and generally think long-term, (2) they haven’t had many government scandals, so they generally trust government more than a lot of other countries, and (3) Norway has a very small, fairly homogenous population where the average person is maybe only two degrees of separation between most everyone else in the country, so there’s a lot of solidarity among the population. Norway feels like a very large family.

Now, contrast these three factors with the U.S. This sort of thing would never fly here. As a people, we’re culturally incapable of supporting it.