With the dot-com heyday behind us, a slower economy upon us, and the dreams of many optionaires and aspirants squelched, how will the power play between labor and management take shape?
1980 — Celeste MacLeod, Horatio Alger, Farewell: The End of the American Dream, Seaview Books (1980), →ISBN, page 144:
A new word, "optionaires," makes this distinction. Optionaires are defined as people who grew up in the affluent society — that is, the upper third of the nation — and have options in life and privileges in society as a result of their upbringing.
1992 — Joseph L. Grady, The Power of the Middle Class: It's[sic] Birth, Growth, and Apparent Demise, Erin Go Braugh Books (1992), →ISBN, page 308:
But when times turned, those whose rebellion began on the campuses, and the halls and homes of the upper class, still possessed the benefits of their optionaire status and survived quite well, while the children of the rapidly expanding lower class hit bottom and became the permanent core of jobless and underemployed that are still with us, but with a new identification, the homeless.