December 16, 2024
I had a thought the other day while walking down the street in Manhattan. How rich are the people walking past me? Did I just pass like a super rich important person? I mean, NYC has some of the richest, most influential people in the USA. Surely, I've walked past some staggeringly rich people in all my time here, or maybe even on any given walk? Let's do some back-of-the-napkin math to see!
Hol' up a sec. How many people do I even walk past in a given walk in Manhattan? I mean, this obviously depends on where you're walking. If I'm walking in Times Square I'd wager I'd encounter a few more people than at 113th and 7th. Plus, what counts as walking past? Does it count if they're across the street? What if I'm in a park and they're on the other side. Well, let's just get a quick estimate. Thankfully, my lazy ass doesn't have to do any work for this since someone else (bless his soul) already did it! Andrew Zuckerman (https://andzuck.com/blog/nyc/) wanted to figure out the odds of running into someone you know while walking in NYC. I'll be using his formulae and just substituting people you know with millionaires, billionaires, etc.
The formula is: 1 - (1 - number_of_rich_people / population_of_nyc) ^ number_of_people_passed
For our purposes, we will be using the latest census data for the population of NYC. That gives us population_of_nyc = 8,258,035.
For number_of_people_passed, true to my word, I will just be stealing that information from ol' Zuck. His actual counts varied wildly by a number of factors: speed walked, area of the city, time of day. He uses a fairly conservative estimate of 30 people / min, but I think that works fine as some walks will be super busy, where others will be dead. So, number_of_people_passed = 30 * time_walked_in_minutes. I'm just gonna assume we walk for a little over an hour in a given weekday and say we pass ~1,000 people. number_of_people_passed = 1,000. What about a weekend? Let's say we're out and about closer to 5 hours. That means number_of_people_passed = 9,000 instead.
These days, it doesn't really take much to be a millionaire. If you have a retirement account and are over 50, you're probably a millionaire. And if you live on Manhattan and own a decent property, there's a pretty good chance you're a millionaire. But, how many people in NYC actually are millionaires, then?
So, then how many millionaires are there in NYC? Or more specifically, Manhattan (where I think we'll find the most millionaires of any borough). That is, people with a net worth over a million dollars. Well, it seems like Henley and Partners has that data for NYC and other major cities around the world. Unfortunately, they don't have borough-specific data, so we'll need to use all of NYC data, which is most unfortunate.
Okay, here we go. According to the data NYC had 349,500 millionaires in 2024. With a population of 8,258,035, that means around 4.23% of NYC residents classify as millionaires. For millionaires, number_of_rich_people = 349,500.
Filling in the data in our formula, we get: 1 - (1 - 349,500 / 8,258,035) ^ 1,000 = .9999999...%. Yeah, you're pretty much 100% likely to see a millionaire. Those MFs are literally everywhere. Not unique or special, I guess..
Huh? Didn't know this term existed. Guess we gotta invent new terms for rich people as they get richer, cause they are 100x richer than just a regular ol' millionaire. It's like comparing a millionaire to a person who has $10,000. Okay, anyway, there are way fewer of these blokes. Only 744 centi-millionaires exist in NYC, translating to a paltry 0.009% of the population.
So, what are the odds? Let's plug and chug: 1 - (1 - 744 / 8,258,035) ^ 1,000 = 0.08615849. So, around 8%. Not that high, but also pretty high if you think about it! What about on the weekend? 55.553464%. Man, you telling me I got a 50/50 chance of seeing a centi-millionaire on a given weekend day? Kinda crazy.
Alright, finally the people with the real sauce. There are only 60 billionaires in NYC. You're barely ever gonna see these SoBs, comprising a measly 0.00073% of the population. Elusive creatures, these billionaires, I reckon. Anyway, calculation time! 1 - (1 - 60 / 8,258,035) ^ 1,000 = 0.00723934. That's just 0.07%. Rough. And on the weekend? 6.329894%. Still very unlikely. In fact, you'd need to spend 69 days outside in NYC just for a 50/50 shot of seeing a billionaire. Not great odds.
Honestly, this data is far from perfect. First, it includes all of NYC (5 boroughs) instead of just Manhattan. I actually think that means the actual percent must be a bit higher, since there are probably more rich people per capita in Manhattan than Staten Island, for example. So, maybe the odds are slightly better? Especially for the billionaires, surely.
Also, this data assumes an average number of people encountered on a sidewalk anywhere in the city, and it doesn't account for differences in neighborhoods. Like, there's probably more rich people on 57th street (Billionaire's Row) than Harlem, even if you encounter the same number of people. And Times Square is full of tourists, not local residents. Still, it's a decent approximation.
Oh, yeah, and there's also the whole "walking" thing. Honestly, I'd be surprised if the true fat cats actually walk anywhere in the city. Centi-millionaires and billionaires have too much money to walk. They probably fly there by helicopter or at least have a private driver or some shit. So, maybe your odds of seeing a really rich person are actually basically zero? Look, I got no clue.
And the moral of the story is: Rich people are all around us. Watch your back.
Oh, and big thanks to Andrew Zuckerman who did all the hard work for me so I could babble on about rich people in this blog and pretend I can do math instead of having to walk around and meticulously count people I see.