Averages tend to mask the true reality.

If a corporate executive makes $10 million dollars a year. And the next 100 people makes $100,000 a year. Then the total is $20 million dollars.

When you divide this by 101, you get an average of $198,000. Which is nearly double what the normal person in this example earns.

The better metric is to use the median salary. Which in this example is $100,000. And the executive’s salary is the outlier.

Then again, most executives are paid in tax deferred stock options. And they cash out for a pot of gold after a few years. So this distorts any estimates of general income and wealth of the population.

I don't live anywhere near NYC, and probably haven't visited more than a half dozen times, and even I know that $140K/year isn't getting you into Tribeca these days (granted, I occasionally glance at the NYT real estate section). I would expect someone covering that beat to be able to do that gut-check and, I dunno, maybe double-check those numbers.

Rich people fleeing doesn't bring them back. Whatever they suffered in displacement is just sunk. In the very long term it may form part of a new cycle of gentrification, but only after the neighborhood has lost a lot of its old value and is usually accompanied by the kinds of desperation that poverty causes.

So it's not a good thing -- though you're right that this study is so dubious that it may not even really be an issue.

There are a lot of things that rich people can do besides displace poor people. Maybe you can think of some.

I wouldn’t put too much weight into this data.

And yes, all of the "data" in the linked article is complete garbage. Don't take any of it as fact.