My friend blasted me at this wedding last weekend and said I read every column inch of CityLab, which may or may not be 100 percent true (but is probably close to true). I was just reading it — GUILTY AS CHARGED, BABY!!! — and came across this post, which in turn has this chart:
That’s from this study called “Decoding Global Talent” — you could not possibly come up with a more bullshit-laden name for a discussion on talent than that — and the first thing you should notice is this: out of the top 30 “global talent hubs” (or the most appealing hubs), only four are in the United States — New York (No. 2), Los Angeles (No. 12), Miami (No. 15), and San Francisco (No. 18). That means only 13.3 percent — slightly above 1/8th — of the 30 “global talent hubs” are from the U.S., which is a country that often believes the world outside itself doesn’t truly exist. (Half-kidding.)
London has more billionaires than any city on Earth, and that probably explains its semi-market share in this study. Real wealth perpetuates real wealth, you know what I mean?
Six of the top 10 on this study are in Europe — London, Paris, Madrid, Berlin, Barcelona, and Rome — which might make you question the overall methodology here because Europe’s economy isn’t necessarily the greatest thing in the world right now.
Overall, probably a somewhat flawed study — you can read the overall study and the CityLab analysis at the links above — but interesting to think that despite being the world’s No. 1 economy (in a very general sense), the U.S. only has about 1/8th of its “talent hubs.”
