This is the current human mentality: no lower boundary for sanity. Any nonsense may be considered correct if it has support from stereotypes or prejudices.

To me using income as social scale is insane. It would give a very high position to cartel bosses, and these guys should be on the bottom.

If you'd need a social scale for some l practical reason, I suppose the only workable one is education level. it ids not fair to everyone but I think it is the last horrible.