On Halloween, children throughout the United States go trick-or-treating. If it is a school day, children have to wait until evening to knock on doors and exclaim, "Trick or treat!" If like this year Oct. 31 falls on a weekend, then children have all day to run around town going door-to-door for sweets.

"Trick or treat!" originally meant "give me a treat or I will play a trick on you!" One such trick might be throwing a raw egg on the wall of a house or side of a car. Treats can be anything from candy to chocolates to raisins (more on that later).

These days, the meaning has become "give me a treat because American culture says you should!" Ah, that American sense of entitlement.

This is not to say that adults do not want to give treats to children. My parents always bought bags of snack-size treats that in case the trick-or-treaters were not as numerous my sister and I (mostly me) would want to eat. Hence, kid-tested, the treats my parents handed out were usually popular with the Halloween crowd.

However, there are always those who, for whatever reason, choose not to participate. I remember trick-or-treating with my sister in Queens, New York, when I was around 6, and less than half of the tenants in our apartment building would open their doors when we rang. One time, as soon as the door opened and we said the magic words, the scary man standing in the doorway just ignored us and closed the door (but I could be imagining this).

Perhaps that same day, we trick-or-treated along a commercial street, going into shops, me wearing a pirate mask, my sister a skeleton one. Along the way, we received raisins from a fashion retailer. To this day, it is the best Halloween treat we ever got.

This door-to-door activity is fun for children. Halloween must make a lot of young Americans want to be door-to-door salesmen. The treats just outweigh the slight brushes with rejection.

As adults, the rejections are harder to take and we don't seem so sure about entitlement.

As adults, entitlement programs no longer mean treats for children dressed up on the last day of October, the day before All Saints' Day; there are no sweets to savor for days on end to the delight of dentists across America.

Social security, Medicare and now debate over a national health insurance system in the United States are what adults call entitlement.

In Japan, every month deductions are made from salaries for pension, health insurance and other costs, adjusted yearly depending on income.

In the United States, deductions are made for social security and some other costs, but health insurance is paid out of pocket, sometimes by the company. The more you pay, the better the coverage, especially if you want dental insurance (from eating too many sweets every Halloween).

For most of the developed world, it is appalling that the United States, the world's richest country, is the only major nation without universal health care.

But in the case of Japan's humongous public debt, the money deducted monthly does not suffice for expected pension and health insurance costs as the population ages.

For some in the United States, as on Halloween, they would rather want the choice to buy into the system to support those without or not participate and save their money for another purpose.

Halloween was fun as a child and giving treats as an adult has its good moments. But being forced to participate in a type of Halloween every day will make every child (and dentist) happy — entitled — to have cavities. Unless you give them raisins.

E-mail: yung@ml.japantimes.co.jp