Thing about social democratic bureaucracy is that it tends to end up being extremely rigid with politicians who are particularly entrenched in this rigid system of rules. So in these states, things like ‘not hurting long term goals too much’ matters because going at cross purposes with legally stated aims in any way is more than good enough reason to not do it at all. You don’t get to interpret your way around the law in states like Norway.

Add to this that the same politicians also have entirely forgotten what social democracy is supposed to be - maintaining a capitalistic market economy while leveraging state power to counteract its negative social effects and ensure the social security of the people - in favour of some idea that it’s actually just a set of basic institutions that were invented one to two hundred years ago that don’t need any kind of updating outside of just the bare minimum of maintenance, and… well, you end up with states that run relatively well but increasingly keep creaking at the seams, everything increasingly underfunded, with politicians who seem convinced they can’t actually do anything apart from tinkering at the edges.

This breeds discontent and political distrust. And in such conditions, it doesn’t really matter if the vast majority would want us to support good causes abroad, people will still be angry about it because it feels like they are getting stepped on in favour of someone else. They couldn’t tell you exactly why they feel that way, so they grab on to the nearest idea - cognitively speaking - that they can spin an understandable narrative about. Immigrants is the obvious one. Political elites playing their games the obvious next one. Then comes the common misunderstandings about economics, especially where inflation is relevant.

Basically our politicians have put themselves in a corner they are unequipped to get themselves out of, and everything they do ends up producing backlash one way or another.