Norway's government has saved so much money it doesn't know what to do with it all.

The Scandinavian nation's sovereign wealth fund topped $1 trillion this week, or about $191,000 per citizen. The U.S. Congress, meanwhile, has authorized the government to incur more than $19 trillion in debt, putting every American taxpayer in hock for $165,000.

Norway's socialist system has the largest savings account in the world, built from scratch in 1998 from oil and natural gas revenues. The fund now throws off more money from its investments than the country earns from energy.

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Norway created the fund because the electorate voted to save some of the profits from oil and gas for future generations. Norwegians know that oil and gas are limited resources and will eventually run out.

Rather than spend all of the wealth created by those resources on this generation, they decided to invest it so future generations could also reap the benefits. The fund is now 2.5 times the country's gross domestic product.

The government is allowed to spend 3 percent of the fund per year, but if you can believe it, many Norwegians think that's too much.

The fund has also grown so large the government needs to overhaul it and consider new ways to invest the cash. Some Norwegian officials want to invest in new asset classes, including unlisted shares and unlisted infrastructure projects, according to the Reuters news agency.

Yngve Slyngstad, the chief executive officer, said the fund is so big that adding new asset classes would not move the needle.

"Realistically speaking, whether we should invest in infrastructure, private equity or the likes isn't a very important question for the fund," Slyngstad told Bloomberg News.

Compare Norway's natural resource strategy with that of the United States, or even Texas. Here, both federal and state officials are more interested in helping corporations boost profits than to generate savings for future generations.

They spend without regard to revenues, issuing more and more debt to avoid raising taxes. They keep promising that lower tax rates will somehow generate more tax revenues, even though that has never happened and never will.

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Experts will argue that Norway has several advantages that help it save money. The population is small, homogeneous and well-educated. The country also has huge energy resources that belong to the nation, not private individuals.

Most of those factors, though, are by choice. Norway chose to educate the population and provide state-sponsored health care that leads to a smaller, healthier population. The government also chose to own the nation's natural resources on behalf of the population.

Norway's success is not an accident or fate.

Texas is also rich in natural resources, and the United States is one of the wealthiest nations on earth. We are extracting billions of dollars a year from American soil, yet we are burdening future generations with trillions in debt.

Perhaps the U.S. could never achieve what Norway's leaders have, but we can certainly take a lesson from their wisdom.