the weakest link

The old adage of a chain only being as strong as its weakest link plays directly into how a society copes with poverty or rather a working class. A strong, well cared for working class allows for a strong, well cared for class of idle rich. Just like an expensive chandelier the weight of the rich is supported and saved from imminent demise by the chain of oppressed working class.

If this working class is fed regularly on the American Dream (tales of how relentless hard work allows for social and economic mobility) then the chain will continue supporting the ever more cumbersome and gaudy chandelier but as the chandelier becomes neglectful of its support structure small cracks will form in arrangement.

Like Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution, the lower class starved of food, health care, and opportunity and burdened by the ever growing economic weight of the idle rich and . . . well like I said a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. It only takes one link sloughing off the burden of its oppressors to send the whole structure crashing to the ground.