> There are more American millionaires than you imagine.
Mainly because the word means less-and-less wealth over time, due to inflation. The millionaires of 1959 were easily 6 times wealthier than the millionaires of 2019.
Whoops, I think I intended to write ~1969 to get it to 50 years (and was using a different estimator) but regardless of exact measure, the trend is clear: "Millionaire" has been undergoing continual debasement ever since it was coined around the 1820s, and means objectively different things within different generations.
Mainly because the word means less-and-less wealth over time, due to inflation. The millionaires of 1959 were easily 6 times wealthier than the millionaires of 2019.