That might be true, except for the "voting" part. It's more like "buying," and it's not the majority of the voting populace that's doing it. It's the banks, defense contractors and international corporations--- the people who fund the electoral campaigns. The voters get squat nine times out of ten. Just look as
HSBC, the international banking corporation, which just THIS MONTH was written off scott-free for violating the Trading With The Enemy Act, among other federal and international laws, making billions off of drug deals, money laundering and direct funding of foreign terrorist activity. This is what the Department of Justice said in their official statement, explaining why they won't prosecute:
And not long before that, we had Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, who
lost billions (estimates are between 2 and 5 billion) in risky gambling, dealt a huge blow to the economy, and
is still sitting Chair of the Board of Federal Reserve because he is
defended as "the best banker they've got."
These people pay NO price for their mistakes and crimes. How many years in prison do you think a normal citizen would get if they were found to be part of an international drug ring and money laundering scandal? Or if they were found to be funding foreign terrorists against the US? Or if they were trading with the enemy in violation of international law? Or if they lost 2-5 BILLION dollars of investors' money? It's ridiculous to say that the citizenry has any real say in the decisions which most drastically affect our economy; we have influence, but it's slow and clumsy, and it works from the bottom up (from the local level to the federal level); banks and major corporations/contractors can influence elections directly by using massive amounts of capital to sway officials who are *already elected* (and thus beyond the people's immediate influence), or even influence candidates as they're running by threatening to overfund their opponent's campaign if they don't take the "right side."
A prime example of this is the Obama/Biden campaign --- Biden can be quoted from the debates, just a month prior to election day, as saying, "Mark my words: we will NOT TOUCH Social Security and Medicare!" And yet, look what's happening: not only are they trying to cut Social Security, but this plan was
proposed by Obama. If you vote for a candidate in principle, there's no guarantee that you will actually get what you voted for because, as soon as he or she takes office, he or she can just flip-flop and do whatever his or her donors want. To ascribe responsibility to the people alone for this deception is just dishonest; the people can do more to monitor and learn the true views of their elected officials, but they can only do so much --- there comes a point where politicians need to be taken to task for their betrayal of trust.
This meme of "the people voting themselves benefits" is nothing more than a PR scam by libertarians and Tea Party Republicans, to try to detract blame from the
real flaws in this system, which is that money --- not the people --- control the system in the ways that matter the most --- and instead convince the people who are being cheated the most to blame each other for petty differences.