Better inequality than socialism.
High levels of equality = Everyone in your country is equally destitute.
When everybody is poor, there is not much inequality. This is not a good measuring tool.
Equality in ANYTHING is a vastly overrated virtue, and may not even be a virtue at all. Equality is nothing like the same thing as equalization, where balancing factors are considered in assigning relative value to each of two sets of circumstances.
The best that can be afforded in any viable society, that depends on persuasion and not force of arms to support their social contract, is only supplying the OPPORTUNITY, not the outcome.
Oppression and tyranny have been the lot of the great majority of mankind, from time immemorial, and brief bouts of democratic rule have been repeatedly driven out of existence, until the principle of equalization, not equality, was put forth in the name of a representation of various voices through elected leaders of the republic.
The United States of America, in a strict sense, is NOT a democracy, which relies on equality of all (in which some are much more equal than others), but a representative republic, as there may be several opinions expressed without being trampled by mob rule, each to be given as much or as little support as can be logically assigned by the consensus of the time.