Can democracy work when 1% of the world population owns 80% of the world's wealth?

In any democracy, power should fall in the hands of franchised citizens,. This notion is based on the fundamental principle that ,when citizens are informed and educated, they are capable of voting to fulfill their own interests. Who better to represent the interests of the people than the people themselves? Still, ideals are great, but the ineludible reality of what America is today arouses questions that instigate doubt as to whether this principle can function in practice. Although in a democracy, suffrage is theoretically converted into power, power in it's final conversion is wealth. So can democracy truly function in a country where 1% of its population holds 33.4% of all privately held wealth? In a world where 1% percent of the global population owns 80% of the world's wealth? And how can people be manipulated into voting against their own economic interests?

Answer:
!% of the population own 40% of the wealth not 80%.see
http://money.guardian.co.uk/news_/story/...
The point you make however is still true. If too much of the wealth is controled by a few people they have too much power over the government as in the days of the "robber barons" in the US. South American Countries have always had this problem and for the most part have not established stable democratic governments. The irony is that they also put in place policies that protect their wealth and hinder growth, so it is not good for the economy either.

The US is the only rich country with a high degree of income inequality and that has developed over the last 30 years. see http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/2006...

In the early days of democracy in the US and the UK, the rich were concerned about giving every person the right to vote. The rich were concerned that the poor might use their majority in voting to redistribute income and wealth from the rich to the poor. For example, the President of the US was not elected by popular vote but by a collection of wise men called the Electoral College to make certain that the poor would not select one of their own. In fact, the rich have been able to protect themselves because money is almost as important as votes in determining government policies. Over time in both the US and the UK, eventually everyone was given the right to vote including the poor, minorities like African Americans, and women.

wealth can be held by 1% of the world but wealth alone does not generate new wealth. wealh is from new ideas, the invention of the computer brought new wealth into the world. personal computers, labtop, websites, programming languages, thus have been because of the invention of the computers and the invention of the world wide web. I dont believe 80% of the worlds wealth is owned by 1% of the population because theres 7 billion people. that would mean 7 million people controls all the money supply and simply add up all their money and they hardly add up to 1 trillion dollars. 1 trillion dollars circulate the planet daily so thats 365 trillion dollars annually. so 1 trillion over 365 trillion, is a joke to me. most of the money is held by corporations.

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Can democracy work when 1% of the world population owns 80% of the world's wealth?

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