I'd argue that rather than vote themselves money, they voted for sharing the exceedingly plentiful (relative to population) natural resources of their country.

But yes, that does seem to be a version of "vote yourself money" that is far less problematic than other instantiations.

That's because there aren't many Norwegians and Norway has a lot of oil. It's one of the few countries where they can afford to do so.

And nobody is voting to give money to oligarchs. We'd just rather not have our country spend itself into the third world.

Ironically the result of all the cuts will likely be a reduction in the size of the economy - which can actually lower the tax take too (a portion of the money flowing around the economy comes back in taxes) so the combination of that will likely be an increase in the US's debt to GDP ratio and reduced living standards for most people.

That is not to say that Governments can spend to excess with no consequences of course, but that these indiscriminate cuts are likely going to have the opposite effect as intended.

> That's because there aren't many Norwegians and Norway has a lot of oil. It's one of the few countries where they can afford to do so.

Sweden probably has as many social programs as Norway, and it has no oil money—though it does seem to have more billionaires per capita than the US:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...