Thursday, May 25, 2023

All cities are not created equal

...but some are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, and among these are Life, Liberty, and the ability to attract the Wealthy. My apologies to Thomas Jefferson.

At the end of the preceding post, I included the factoid that New York City has more millionaires than any other place on earth. According to the site where I found that bit of information, the top 20 places of concentrated wealth on our planet are:

Rank City Millionaires Billionaires
#1 New York City, USA 345,600 59
#2 Tokyo, Japan 304,900 12
#3 San Francisco, USA 276,400 62
#4 London, England 272,400 38
#5 Singapore 249,800 26
#6 Los Angeles, USA 192,400 34
#7 Chicago, USA 160,100 28
#8 Houston, USA 132,600 25
#9 Beijing, China 131,500 44
#10 Shanghai, China 130,100 42
#11 Sydney, Australia 129,500 16
#12 Hong Kong, China 125,100 28
#13 Frankfurt, Germany 117,400 14
#14 Toronto, Canada 116,100 17
#15 Zurich, Switzerland 105,100 12
#16 Seoul, South Korea 102,100 25
#17 Melbourne, Australia 97,300 12
#18 Dallas, USA 92,300 18
#19 Geneva, Switzerland 90,300 16
#20 Paris, France 88,600 15

In summary, the 20 cities above are home to 3,259,600 millionaires and 543 billionaires. Any way you slice it, the group represents a lot of moolah.

Other websites have put together other lists that mention other cities, so I suppose the jury is still out. In New York City's case, 345,600 millionaires is a formidable number but it is actually only four per cent (4%) of the city's 8,500,000 inhabitants. Still, if that same percentage of millionaires to population had existed in the little Texas town of 1,000 where I grew up, there would have been 40 millionaires among my neighbors.

I have one thing to say about that.

No way, José.

Speaking of millionaires, today's closing factoid is that former Atlanta Braves baseball player Chipper Jones has downsized. Earlier this month he sold his 23,000 sq.ft. house on 38 acres for $11,750,000 and later the same day paid $5,700,000 for a 9,100 sq.ft. house on 10 acres. Even the ultra-wealthy need to tighten their belts occasionally. And since both properties are right here in Cherokee County he is tecnically a neighbor of mine.

4 comments:

  1. Remember when being a millionaire was out of reach for most people? I suppose it still is but less so than back then. I don't really wonder what it means I suppose.

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    1. Thank you for commenting, Emma. The sheer number of ultra-rich individuals there are nowadays (the top 1%, maybe?) is what I find astounding. I do apologize for my delay in replying -- we went out of state for a grandson's wedding and I have had no access to a computer until this morning. And to make matters worse, my smart phone won't let me create comments on my own blog or anyone else's. All of these technological advances still leave a little to be desired. Always good to hear from you.

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  2. I'm sure that most of us, at one time or another, have wished to be madly wealthy. Other than owning a newer vehicle and being able to buy anything I wanted at Costco, I can't really think why I'd want to be rich. Seems like an awful huge responsibility. I'd rather be in my garden encouraging my peas to bloom and the robins to leave my barely even pink strawberries alone! (Hi Bob! Sorry I haven't stopped in very often to say hello...If it's not raining, I'm outside playing!)

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    Replies
    1. Hilltophomesteader (Pam), thank you for commenting! I'm glad you still read my blog in your spare moments between the pea encouraging and the robin shooing! At this stage in my life, if I came into money I would be dividing it among my children and setting up trust funds for my grandchildren, I think. Carwise, we are happy with our 2018 Toyota RAV4 XLE that has amassed not quite 34,000 miles to date. Our last vehicle was a Toyota Camry that carried us around for 325,000 miles so I think we are set for life at this point. So good to hear from you.

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<b>My new favorite poem</b>

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