Concrete
it is a ladder.
The rungs of a ladder are the steps. Unless it is a step ladder, then they are just steps.
The Last Rung on the Ladder was created in 1978.
I've seen them called Jacob's Ladders.
A rung is a level on a ladder, but in a social sense, this word is usually used to say someone is on the "bottom rung", meaning, the bottom of the social ladder, lowest of the low. Someone who does not matter at all.
Society was a caste-like system with poor whites at the bottom of the white social ladder.
The slave social ladder: look at the caste systems in India
Causes of the Venezuelan Revolution included that the Venezuelans did not want to pay the taxes imposed upon them by the French, they were opposed to Napoleon's rule in Spain, they didn't approve of the social ladder. The social ladder placed the French at the top and the Venezuelan people at the very bottom.
9.2
The Spanish social ladder is very specific. It goes in the order peninsulares at the top and down to white Mexicans, Criolles, Mestizos, Amerindians, and all others being at the very bottom.
A hungry, helpless society. Pretty much at the bottom of the ladder.
on the bottom step of the ladder!
Concrete
Rabindranath Tagore, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, was among the lowest on the social ladder as a poet from India.
top
He looked up from the bottom of the ladder to see where he had to climb to.