The best indicator of a Banana Republic is the loss of the rule of law, which we see every day.
Income inequality has no bearing on anyone's quality of life. Income and wealth inequality is a liberal play thing and has no relevance in the real world.
The only thing worse than the junk science and selective data to create a false correlation between income and wealth inequality and quality of life and social ills, are the incoherent and ideological based proliferation of the junk science and selective data by liberal/socialist apologists.
Income inequality has no bearing or definition on living conditions or the ability for opportunity of the lower quintiles of the economic food chain. The actual purchasing power has increased in the lower quintiles with the rise of the oft maligned Walmart and other similar retailers, and has increased substantially in the past 40 years. The cheap imports from China etc., if burdened with tariffs and if Walmart et al. are forced to pay a wage over what the market will bear, then these morons of the left will actually kick the lower economic quintiles off the bottom of the scale.
Liberals, especially those lacking in a formal education in economics--or any education for that matter, cannot differentiate between nominal and real economic scenarios. What the same dollar bought in 1980 and buys in 2013 escapes them. Rather than being stagnant or drifting backwards, the lower quintile has seen an increase of 10.5% in the past 30 years in real purchasing power, but this increase did see a setback during the Obama administration as he and the Democrat policies have decimated the percentage of wages to GDP to a historic level of 43%.
It is not the role of our government to make the wealth distribution more equal. It is not anyone's role to make wealth distribution more equal. That is a benefit of a free market society. There will be winners and there will be losers. The losers will always want what the winners have, and if a political party can take from the winners and give to the losers, then they can always count on the loser's votes. That is harsh, but that is reality.