Meaning of ten-thousandaire | Babel Free

Definitions

A person whose net worth is at or greater than ten thousand units of the local currency.

Examples

“I have only one good quality—overwhelming belief in the brains and hearts of our nation, our state, our town. It’s so strong that sometimes I do have a tiny effect on the haughty ten-thousandaires. I shake ’em up and make ’em believe in ideals—yes, in themselves.”

“The “swollen fortune” is a fact in our economic development. There may be but one billionaire but there are any number of millionares, thousands of hundred-thousandaires and hundreds of thousands ten-thousandaires. From the point of view of the man who has nothing, an American farmer with ten thousand has a “swollen fortune,” and it is swollen far beyond the farmer’s pro rata share of the country’s wealth. The “swollen fortune” is not a thing of absolute magnitude, but entirely a matter of comparative size.”

“Seriously speaking, it is a very real question whether social discontent can be allayed by heavy taxes on large fortunes and incomes. Millionaires are a fact, and far from a wholly pleasing one; but how about the hundred-thousandaires and the hundreds of thousands of ten-thousandaires? To the migratory laborer with fifty dollars, or the wobbly with no dollars, there is just as much injustice in a skilled workman having two thousand dollars invested in a house or a savings bank as there is in a manufacturer having one million.”

“After this interjection, however, the stage is turned back over to the young woman, and she ends her story a few lines later on a utopian note: “We’ve been ten-thousandaires for three years running now, so going to Shenzhen is nothing; it wouldn’t even be a big deal for us to go to America . . . Passport or no passport, we’re poor and lower middle peasants; we’ve got thousands and thousands of dollars and we can go any old place we please” (89/137).”

CEFR level