"Norway is extremely wealthy though. Your benefits don't apply to citizens of Greece or other countries in the EU so it's not clear that it's a scalable solutio

"Norway is extremely wealthy though. Your benefits don't apply to citizens of Greece or other countries in the EU so it's not clear that it's a scalable solution." That very much depends on your immigration status, honestly. I'm American and my spouse is Norwegian: I'm eligible for most of these benefits. The same is true for my friend who is British married to a Norwegian woman - and their child gets all benefits. And again, the same is true for the friend from Poland who is here raising her Norwegian son (father has died). Most folks that are here for work aren't as eligible for certain things. Levels depend on where they are from, but there are ways to earn similar rights as well, if you go through immigration. Of course these won't apply to folks living in other countries. "The US is very large..." Sure, but they also aren't poor overall and this is just an excuse. If it is a constitutional issue about federal government powers, well, that document was meant to be changed. The instructions on changing it are in the document itself, after all. Canada is very large and manages to have healthcare. There isn't a good reason why government agencies in different states cannot have an easy-to-navigate system for a safety net that actually works while meeting basic threshholds set up by the national government. Norway itself has municipalities administer many of the benefits, such as language courses for immigrants and adult education. This way the folks up north can meet the needs of its people, which can differ from the needs of folks down south.