In my opinion:

A particular society is only as good* as it's bottom rung.

* Good needs definition here, I figured something along the lines of:

Good meaning the degree of success in the achievment of utopian ideals. (these ideals may differ from society to society, but for simplicity lets just say the absolute minimum of pain, injustice, intolerance, etc.)

I think of this phrase everytime I see a homeless person on the edge of an offramp holding a "Please Give, Anything Will Help, God Bless" type sign. So it occurs to me that even with all of our success as a society (compare modern America to the Middle Ages, or any historical society) we haven't achieved as much as we pat ourselves on the back for. The elimination of poverty may be currently impossible, but ignoring that truism, we haven't made nearly adequate attempts at helping these people and raising the bottom bar for our society.

Is this phrase true at all, and if so is it true in all cases?

How does the advancement of the upper crust change the overall societal progress (i. e. modern day massive wealth imbalance)?

Fact of life is some people will always be bottom rung. Not to sound elitist, cause some of them have wads of cash.
Some are motivated some are not.
Some have drive and ambition and some just do enough to skate by and sadly there are those who never will even try and blame everyone else.
How does the advancement of the upper crust change the overall societal progress (i. e. modern day massive wealth imbalance)?

This divide has always been there. It is nothing new. Probably were Cavemen who were excellent hunters and therefore probably got more advantages. tribesman enjoyed more prestige that I'm sure other tribesman were jealous of.
We just have so much free time now we can sit and gripe about it. You could try and force everyone to be completely equal and people would still conjure up perceived differences, slights and jealousies.
(( use a sarcastic homer simpson voice) He thinks he's so special cause he's so ordinary. Look at him not flaunting anything. OOH Don't look at me cause I'm Blending in. Thinks he's not better than anyone else that one does.)



Utopias are impossible. Never will be accomplished. For a interesting view on Utopias try some Orwell http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/site/work/essays/fun.html


To make it any easier here in the states you'd have to assign people servants.

Your absolutely right, utopias are impossible and people will always be inherently hierchical. However striving towards utopian ideals and working to level the playing field is possible. Note that leveling the playing the field doesn't mean giving hand-ups, much more importantly it means preventing push-downs from the elites who have set the system to automatically benefit themselves.
Its kinda like the whole good and evil thing, evil will and must always exist in some form, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't devote our time to getting rid of it.

I saw F-9/11 again last night, and it ends with a quote attributed to Orwell (don't know the exact wording):

If this is true, than striving to eliminate poverty and striving to eliminate ignorance are the closest things we have to utopian ideals. Our world will never be free of hierarchy or authority.

I think it's obvious that the current system hasn't made any attempt to undo itself, and the victims of poverty and ignorance haven't noticed enough to care. Speaking of the proletariat:
(or something like that either orwell or marx, don't remember)

To answer my own question, I think the statement is true, that the best measure of a society's progress is it's losers. I also believe that measuring from the elite is ineffective since they generally create the circumstance that both they live in, as well as the rest of society.