Temporarily Embarrassed Millionaires

One-line definition: The (Steinbeck-attributed) idea that many Americans see themselves not as exploited workers but as future-rich people whose success is a question of when, not if.

How sources describe it

• In the published essay The Hardening Of The Great Softening: “Ambitious people often see themselves as ‘temporarily embarrassed millionaires.’ Success is not a question of if, but when.” Kyle ties the erosion of that belief — among people who see less success for themselves or those like them — to the “softening” of ambition.

Where it shows up

• The Hardening Of The Great Softening - Research
• The Hardening Of The Great Softening

Related concepts

• The American Dream — Stop Calling it Capitalism — frames the self-image of future riches as the operative American Dream myth Kyle interrogates.
• The American Dream — the belief in upward mobility that this concept embodies (success as a question of when, not if).
• Ambition — the trait whose “softening” Kyle ties to the erosion of the “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” self-perception.
• Capitalism — the economic order under which workers see themselves as future-rich rather than exploited.
• The Hardening Of The Great Softening — the essay that introduces the term and links its decline to softening ambition.

From Roam

• “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” Ronald Wright