Are Democracy and economic equality fundamentally incompatible?

[freedquaker]

I am an economics Professor, and I only have this to say :

Democracy has nothing to do with economic equality. Democracy is not an economic system, so the question is flawed to begin with. However, if you would change the question to ;

"Is capitalism incompatible with economic equality?"

Then the theoretical answer would be yes, they are incompatible. However, an economic system creating a perfect income equality is neither possible nor desirable. So this "incompatibility" does not automatically render capitalism wrong. But what kind of economic system do people want? This is where capitalism conflicts a social democracy (with more of a humanitarian view) :

Social Democracy wants :
a) Equal fundamental access & opportunities to broadly defined rights, regardless of income or status
b) Equally distributed or proportional public responsibilities and rights
c) Active State reflecting the social conscious
d) Heavily regulated market system
e) Earnings based on "worth", and "social value" etc...
etc...

Capitalistic Economy wants
a) Equal capability for entrepreneurship, market and funding access,
b) Self correcting and operating efficient market system
c) Non-disturbing and low level of taxation
d) Near complete private ownership, with state serving only as a regulatory body
e) Free floating and deregulated market system
f) Earnings based on "demand & supply"
etc...

Both of those systems are inherently utopia. Neither of them produces perfect equality or inequality. Social democracy is not socialism because there are well functioning markets with a large but minority share of state operating. The equality will also be much smaller in a social democracy.

The question is, "Is pure capitalism really possible?"... Current experiences disagree. Kuznets famous inverse U shape inequality patterns are not observed and inequality in US (one of the last bastions of pure capitalism) has been increasing tremendously; especially the wealth inequality (Gini > 80%). This is basically unsustainable.

So there you have it. Capitalism in its pure form is incompatible with democracy, just like socialism was an unnatural unsustainable regime. However, democracy with "domesticated" social capitalistic policies seem to be not only very much possible but also lucrative and sustainable.