Maybe a slightly bigger house is tolerable, but if my neighbor is making 10 times more than me and is able to buy his way out of legal trouble while I have to a

Maybe a slightly bigger house is tolerable, but if my neighbor is making 10 times more than me and is able to buy his way out of legal trouble while I have to abide by the rule of law, I'm one of three things: lazy, inferior, or getting screwed. To maintain my faith in capitalist democracy in the face of large wealth inequality you have to convince me that one of these three options is acceptable. Most poor people I know wouldn't consider themselves lazy, so that one is out. With some serious social engineering and propaganda you may be able to convince the poor that they are inherently inferior, but the trend in most of the world seems to be against this sticking. So in most cases wealth disparity means that the poor people feel like they are getting screwed, i.e. they feel entitled to a better life, and they feel that their institutions have failed them. Look at any country with a high Gini Coefficient and you can see what this leads to. The rich end up corralled into compounds surrounded by razor wire and electric fences, kidnapping runs rampant, political corruption is the rule. With no reason to believe that the government is working for the underclass, you can't really expect the underclass to abide by the government's laws.