Hehe, one more clarification from the Finnish point of view. We used to have a welfare state which wasn't that much based on handing benefits to individual families. Of course, we have that kind of system, too, but if you ask me, that is just one minor branch of the whole system. And some aspects of that branch never worked as they were intended to do, but that is not my major concern.

We have had a system where there is a universally free high quality education available for everyone. And free basic health care for everyone. OK, now one could still argue that such systems make certain people lazy, just leeching on the system. But still, people have to work for their money to pay for housing, food, hobbies etc. The free education and health-care is there just to even out the equality of opportunities. If you are a smart kid from a poor lower-paid working class family, just entering the school system you can end up having a university degree and an international career (I know couple of such people). Now, I'm not trying to tell that all the other countries should adopt this kind of system, too. And I do admit that the system had some faults in it, and it could have been working better, and was in need of improvement.

But, I say "we had" and "there was", because over couple of decades our government has been slowly ruining the core of that system, piece by piece, step by step. And, to me it seems that they are doing that mostly because of ideological reasons, not guided by well-founded empirical evidence.

So, this is my cultural background. I'm personally one of the persons who would have just fallen into non-productive misery, if there wasn't a (nearly) free professional health-care available. I've enjoyed two years of tax-payer sponsored psychotherapy, which I couldn't have otherwise afforded, since my depression was so severe that it seriously affected my ability to work. But the therapy greatly helped me to get back on the track, and since that I've been contributing back to the society.