It seems to me that a wealthy society will tend to be an egalitarian one. The reason runs through technology. For a society to be wealthy, it needs sophisticated technology. Sophisticated technology implies specialized knowledge. To keep the society running, individuals need to be able to come together to bring their individual knowledge and intelligence to bear on solving problems. For these conversations to be productive, each individual needs to be able to take a role that is commensurate with their level of knowledge, not with their position in a hierarchy.
Malcom Gladwell, in one of his books, told the story of how a Korean airplane was flown into a mountain because the rules of conversation in Korea is that the people lower in the hierarchy could not correct the superior -- so the person who knew there was a problem could only hint to the lead pilot about it. This is a pretty graphic example of why the opposite of an egalitarian society doesn't work well in a high tech environment.
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