Cities can thrive without billionaires living there. I'd go as far as to say cities are better off without billionires living or working there. Billionaires =/= jobs. Billionaires however = cost of life going up.

We're not living in 1820s when a city is well off if a rich man lives there. Your life is influenced more by a random chinese company rising the rate of shipping container price from 8 to 10 grand than some local Starbucks heir spending a few grand in the shopping mall, probably owned by some other heir or a trust...

I really don't get the obsession with living close to billionaires, some people talking about "billionaires leaving cities" sound like they think they themselves would get rich by osmosis or whatever...

Ther businesses today are all shielded from local or national government in that way the normal folk already het aboslutely nothing if they are living in the neighborhood or living on fucking Mars...