Downward Mobility

Who comes up with this stuff? How did it get to be accepted into our everyday language? And when did we decide it is something to be applauded? Climbing the corporate ladder. We know what it means. We assume it’s the thing to do. We believe it will garner all kinds of good, desirable stuff like wealth and prestige. The higher we can go, the better! We dream of all that will result from our efforts, believing that as we climb, we expand. We can buy a bigger house and acquire more possessions. We can pay others to do the things we’d rather not do so we can do what we want to do. We can travel. We can sit in the best seats. All this and more! So up we go! If the ladder holds and doesn’t break us while we rise, we’ll keep our sights set upward. It’s the only way to go, isn’t it?

No one chooses downward mobility, right? No one dreams of going small. No one hopes for less. No one strives to be treated like an expendable pawn. That’s just backwards, we believe. It’s just wrong, according to our way of thinking. We are fed a steady diet of overachieving competitiveness seasoned with envious greed from the get-go. And so, we go and go and go in order to get and get and get.

I’m being harsh, of course. But a quick glance at the numbers is mind-boggling. In an online MSN article posted at the beginning of the year, here are the statistics:

The global billionaire population expanded by 4% in 2023, to 3,323 individuals., and their collective net worth is now worth over $12 trillion, according to the Altrata Billionaire Census 2024 report, which uses the Wealth-X Database, an extensive collection of research and information on the wealthy. There are 18 people in the very top tier of billionaire wealth, each with a fortune in excess of $50 billion. The total net worth of these 18 individuals amounted to $2 trillion — an average fortune of just over $100 billion.

Can you imagine being at the top of that ladder? How have we who reside on this planet allowed this inequity to happen? Perhaps it is time to advocate for downward mobility and think in terms of going smaller and having less, sharing more generously and supporting wider circles of people suffering in poverty. The view from the top of the ladder is vastly different from what we see when we kneel beside a neighbor in need. What’s keeping us from heading in that direction?