Who rules the land? A deeper and truer version of this question is:
What rules the land? Is it the money (the aristocracy), or is it the people (the public,
the residents on that land)? (For the interest of paleoconservatives, the issue of residents' citizenship will come later here, as "immigrants" instead of as "citizenship"; but our basic focus is not ethnicity/nationality; it's class: the money, versus the voters; not the natives, versus the foreigners.)
In a democracy, the public rule - the people do - and it's on authentically a one-person-one-vote basis, and anyone who is a resident in that land can easily vote, just like anyone else who lives there, because only the residents there, during the specific time-period of the voting, are the ultimate decision-makers, over that land, and over its laws. This is what a democracy is: it's one-person-one-vote, and, in the political sense, it's total equality-of-rights and total equality-of-obligations - real and total equality-by-law: equal rights, and equal obligations,
for all residents. A democracy applies the same requirements to
everyone.
This does not mean that individuals are equal in their abilities and in their needs, and so it's not a statement about the economy; it is purely a statement about the government - a political question. The economy is a separate matter, though it's highly dependent upon the government - the laws that are in place and enforced.
Many people confuse these two fields, and mistakenly think that the economy is basic to the government.
So: the economy is dependent upon the government; the government determines the economy, which, in any land, is highly dependent upon the laws that are in place and that are enforced - the government.
Comment: See also: The epidemic of junk science in tobacco smoking research