Centimillionaires: Elites with Investable Assets of More Than $100M

https://www.investopedia.com/new-class-of-global-elite-have-emerged-8357556

by DoreenMichele • 3 years ago

34 45 3 years ago

serevi• 3 years ago

The person who wrote this thought they'd be clever by using the SI prefix "centi", not realizing that it means one one-hundredth (as in "centimeter"). They should have used the prefix "hecto", which means one hundred.

Detrytus2• 3 years ago

I always admired how simple, yet clever the SI prefix scheme is: use Roman numerals for sub-units (centi-, mili-), and Greek numerals for multiplies (deka-, hecto-, kilo-). Although I guess a century ago average well educated person was much more familiar with Latin and Greek languages.

Brian_K_White• 3 years ago

And in the same breath, century is not 1/100th of a year.

Someone2• 3 years ago

If only. Deci- is from Latin, too, and both mega- and micro- derive from Greek.

pradn• 3 years ago

Huh, I had no idea about this distinction - quite clever.

mensetmanusman• 3 years ago

Phew, you helped me realize I have won at life and am also a centi-millionaire.

xwdv• 3 years ago

Sadly, there are many who cannot say the same because of their low net worth.

zzzeek• 3 years ago

then explain centipedes

alpark3• 3 years ago

1/100th of a pede

mdp20212• 3 years ago

It is because you are confusing an etymology (in 'centenary', 'centennial', 'centigrade'...) with a prefixing (in 'centimeter', 'centigram', 'centiliter'...).

karmakaze• 3 years ago

Also confusingly juxtaposed with milli* like it's 1/100th of 1/1000th.

montalbano2• 3 years ago

It can be used either way, e.g. the word "century" means 100 years.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/centi-

Update: looked into this more and the "centi" part of the SI system comes from the Latin word "centum" which means 100, not 1/100. Definitely seems either usage is acceptable.

https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/centimeter

Scoundreller• 3 years ago

Maybe, but in Europe, you'll finish off your 33 or 50 centilitre beer in a sitting and possibly a few more.

Someone2• 3 years ago

Yes, Latin centum means 100; hence century, and the prefix centi was invented during the French Revolution, meaning 1/100 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centi-). For hecto-, they took inspiration from the free ἑκατόν (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hecto-)

(They did the same for 1000 and 1/1000, deriving milli from Latin millum and kilo from Greek χίλιοι, but used Latin for both deca- and deci-, and used Greek for both giga- and micro. So far for consistency)

I don’t see how it follows that either usage is acceptable.

WrongAssumption2• 3 years ago

That’s like saying risky and riskless can be used interchangeably because the both come from the word risk.

Edit: I don’t know why I even reached for an analogy, it’s exactly like saying hundred and hundredth are interchangeable.

jjeaff• 3 years ago

interesting. I always thought a centenarian was someone 100 years or older. now I know it's someone one-one-hundreth of a year old or older.

MichaelZuo• 3 years ago

Not every word in the english language uses SI prefixes.

pavlov• 3 years ago

“Centi” is just Latin for hundred, as in centigrade or centipede, or centurion and century.

It’s a convention of the SI system that Latin prefixes are the fractional units, but that’s not a feature of the Latin words themselves.

wombatpm• 3 years ago

I would have gone with decibillionaire

jasode• 3 years ago

The person who wrote this thought they'd be clever by using the SI prefix "centi", not realizing that it means one one-hundredth (as in "centimeter").

The "centimillionaire" to describe wealth of $100+ million has been used for many years before this thread's article. Here's an old newspaper article about Enron from 2003: https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/09/business/company-man-to-t...

In one year, Mr. Lay has been transformed from a centimillionaire with huge stock holdings to a multimillionaire whose wealth is mostly tied up in hard-to-sell assets.

And some extra trivia... your "correction" and the followup replies is replaying Groundhog Day... e.g. 9 years ago : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8319279

DoreenMichele2• 3 years ago

On the upside, HN was smaller back then, so debate about the word was briefer.

cbsmith2• 3 years ago

I would say the rest of the content follows the quality trend the headline established.

ryanar• 3 years ago

is millionaire also incorrect?

mdp20212• 3 years ago

'Million' is the augmentative of 'mille'. It is a modern adoption, not a classic term.

layer83• 3 years ago

Haikus consist of

17,000 millions

by definition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_(Japanese_prosody)

layer83• 3 years ago

I was about to counter with “centinarian” (is that a newborn?), but that’s actually spelled “centenarian”.

mikewarot2• 3 years ago

My mapper mindset[1] can't let this pass. Corruption of the language like that creeps me out.

I've enjoyed the times I was a milli-millionaire in life, and I was a Centi-millionaire once when we paid for the house, but these days being a micro-millionaire is a treat.

[1] https://wiki.c2.com/?MappersVsPackers

rowbin• 3 years ago

Your house was $10,000-$99,999 and now having $1-$9 is a treat??

mikewarot2• 3 years ago

Yes to both.

A decade ago, we bought the cheapest house in a town with an awesome school district. Since then, prices have inflated. We were lucky.

In that decade our health declined, Long Covid took me out of the workforce. It's a luxury now to have even a few dollars that I don't have to spend on groceries. We're fortunate that we bought the cheapest house, instead of a nice house, or we'd be homeless.

gigatexal2• 3 years ago

As HN articles go this one being here is puzzling. What value does this article provide to the HN audience?

seanp2k2• 3 years ago

Good place for 1%ers to argue with 10%ers while 0.1%ers look on and laugh /s

angrydev• 3 years ago

Bravo honestly

DoreenMichele2• 3 years ago

I'm the person who submitted it. I thought it was interesting in part because it talks about some of the cities with a significant number of such people.

I'm a demographic outlier with zero social connections via HN. No one on HN routinely emails me, chats with me on the social platform formerly known as Twitter, meets me for coffee in person, etc.

So the only feedback I have is upvotes, downvotes, flags and comments and that's frequently difficult to decifer.

I submit things I think are interesting and accept that most of what I submit will be roundly ignored. But then this seems true for most submissions, so it's not a strong signal (shrug).

I have no idea why this got upvoted enough to briefly make the front page.

Which of my submissions does well and which doesn't frequently baffles me. I no longer waste a lot of time trying to figure it out.

gigatexal2• 3 years ago

Fair enough. The wisdom of the crowd has spoken and the article was relevant to enough that it got to the front page for a blip.

lakomen• 3 years ago

... yet another site which displays ads if you hit "reject all" There should be a browser extension to automatically submit gdpr reports for such sites

CodeSgt• 3 years ago

Displaying ads has nothing to do with GDPR. They can still display ads that aren’t targeted, they just can’t save your information for more targeted advertising.

mrlonglong• 3 years ago

Frankly, it's an obscenity that these people can hold so much wealth when there are millions of people who have to live hand to mouth on a daily basis out there. People working for these multimillionaires made all the profit for them. They must pay more in taxes to spread the wealth. Trickledown economics simply doesn't work and increases inequality.

shyn3• 3 years ago

The poor are only poor because the education system makes them dumb. If you read the law in America, you would never have to worry about money but unfortunately people only know what the oxford fictionary teaches

Centimillionaires: Elites with Investable Assets of More Than $100M

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