As economic concepts, the notions of income and wealth are not to be conflated. While income is used to denote a sum of money received regularly within a specific period, wealth means net worth (Fuller et al., 2020). From a democratic perspective, social equality requires equal distribution of capital, which leads to the question of whether economic equality should be defined by the equality of income or that wealth. Since equality suggests equal chances to exert power within society, the level of wealth appears to be the primary factor, defining wealth to a significant extent, the income also plays a major role in building democracy.
When viewing democracy as the opportunity for all citizens to participate in shaping state policies and gaining political influence, one could connect wealth to democracy. Indeed, given the fact that wealth as a long-term asset defines the extent of one’s political influence within a community, equal distribution of wealth implies the promotion of democracy (Mijs, 2021). However, one could argue that building equal wealth is impossible without equal income. Namely, as long as income inequality remains an issue, poverty and, thus, drastic wealth inequality will remain a social concern (Le et al., 2019). Therefore, it could be argued that democracy requires equality of wealth, which, in turn, is based on the equality of income.
While wealth equality as the presence of equivalent opportunities to exert political power appears to be the essential factor in establishing democracy, income equality as the opportunity to build wealth is also a factor. Therefore, though wealth equality seems to be the crucial factor in creating an egalitarian community, both concepts play a notably large role in promoting the principles of democracy within a community. Consequently, both income equality as a short-term chance at acquiring power and wealth equality as a long-term option for retaining it must be regulated accordingly.