It must be nice to be a bil lionaire in the greatest city on earth.

The 16 lucky New Yorkers who are rich enough to make the cut of the 100 richest persons on the planet never have to hail a taxi or worry about securing a last-minute reservation at Nobu. Most don’t have to get very dirty making or counting their money. That’s how we New Yorkers like it.

Of the top 16 Gotham billionaires singled out by Forbes magazine this week, one made his billions in perfume, three in media, the other 11 in private equity and hedge funds, i.e. making money with other people’s money.

By and large, the three media moguls and the perfume prince employ tens of thousands of New Yorkers and have a great percentage of their “so-called” wealth tied up in plants and equipment. The 11 hedge-fund billionaires have no physical assets — other than perhaps a G-V jet — and only hundreds are in their employ. No factories flood in the middle of the night. Their think tanks don’t pollute. Only one New Yorker on the top list made his billions in heavy manufacturing.

He’s David Koch, Sr. of Koch Industries, employer of upwards of 70,000 Americans, maker of the refined oil that powers our SUVs and the paper in the Dixie cups that dot our children’s birthday tables. And to hear it from the media elite in this town and elsewhere, he is the Darth Vader of Park Avenue.

Why have the Kochs become such a lightning rod in the media? I’ve wondered about this for a while (not only because I consider Koch a friend), but because of the intense nature of the vitriol against him.

The media likes to affix the word “secretive” to his name. But how many “camera-shy” New Yorkers are fixtures in the New York Times Style section?

No, New Yorkers hate the message more than the messenger. Koch’s no-holds-barred honesty about the fiscal calamity that confronts us and our dire need to cut benefits and taxes is not exactly a “forks-up” conversation among the liberal crowd.

Then there’s the messy business of what Koch Industries does — refines oil, cuts down trees, makes paper products. It makes “stuff,” and New Yorkers don’t like “stuff” unless it’s things like iPad apps or advertisements for them. Trouble is, even the greatest technology company in a generation, Facebook, employs fewer than 2,000 people. Like it or not, real jobs are going to have to come from companies that make real stuff, and making real stuff can be messy.

For two decades now, New Yorkers have prospered in relation to other US cities by making financial instruments rather than stuff.

“Nobody’s Daddy makes anything anymore,” one 10-year-old was heard saying on a Randall’s Island soccer field last fall. And he was correct. All over town, socialites scurry for a seat next to the man who shorted the housing market and made billions, not the man who makes the furniture that goes in the house.

It’s a model that will be hard to sustain indefinitely. The financial crisis of 2008 gave us a glimpse of that. David Koch understands.

Yes, New Yorkers like their billionaires antiseptic, their politics pollution-free. That is David Koch’s real problem. terrykeenan@email.com