Ten-thousandaire

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).