[pas]

Redistribution coupled with corruption (cronyism) results in new oligarchs.

This is a classic trade-off, just like surveillance and security. If you estimate that the chance of abuse is sufficiently low, then yes, those are great things to have.

If not. Holy shit, you know the drill.

So, the problem is not income inequality (lack of redistribution, or the network effects (the compounding) of capital), but the rationality of decision making. The stability of the utility function of those who make the decisions. Which is the aggregate of the whole power structure.

Do we see a stable trend in good governance?

I'd say that the US could use some internal redistribution. Less spending on war on things and more on education and social safety stuff. (It'd be probably much better for the US to stop funding the useless manpower-hungry parts of agencies - like the TSA and all the terror chasers - and send those guys that would get unemployed over to work as social workers, or even just pay them to get a degree and do something useful.)