An excellent post. You make some fantastic points.

Instead voters in general can be expected to vote based on a very superficial consideration of the most promenant policy promises, and go for the set with the highest psychic gain: the promises that makes them feel good.

I think you summed up the biggest problem in a nutshell here. These promises are also the ones that almost always get broken too. Yet people fall for it every time.

Just look at the UK Brexit promises.

They got dismantled by the Pro Brexiters themselves as soon as they knew they had won.

It is a trick that is manipulated by politicians to get votes.

Special interest groups lobby governments to enact policies that favour the group.

We just had that yesterday in the UK when the government brought in their new plans on childhood obesity which seemed to have been watered down (particularly in regards to advertising junk food to kids) as a direct result of lobbying by the major food companies.

So the temptation will always be for those in power to adopt the hair of the dog approach, suppressing symptoms of economic problems by deferring the pain until later,

I heard someone call this "pass the buck syndrome". It seems to plague all democratic systems because nobody is in power long enough to see the fruits of anything beyond a few years.

To a career politician (which most are these days) it seems irrelevant working to make things better in 20 years time.

They want things that get them praise and votes now - screw the future - that is someone else's problem.