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A profile of the lives of America’s top 1%, focusing on Miami developers Masoud and Stephanie Shojaee, is generating heated reactions.
The Wall Street Journal detailed the couple’s ultra-luxury lifestyle built around private jets, members-only dining rooms, invitation-only clubs, and a service economy that eliminates the inconveniences “everyday people” deal with.
The Shojaees describe it as a lifestyle of “time-saving and efficiency and service.”
At MILA’s members-only dining room in Miami Beach, they’re greeted with personalized engraved chopsticks. On work trips, they fly private on a Bombardier Global jet, transfer to a Maybach, and arrive through secret hotel entrances where butlers check them in.
Stephanie Shojaee even said conversations with other rich people in these curated environments “feel safer” and “deeper.”
But it’s the excess that has caught the internet’s attention. Miami’s wealth sector now includes condos with car elevators, social clubs that cost $30,000 to join, and private dinner clubs that recreate bespoke meals on command.
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A travel concierge summed it up: “We’re into that exclusive access right now — things that other people can’t get.”
The fascination and frustration of these extravagant lifestyles stem from their broader implications.
As services cater to those with the means to bypass crowds, lines, traffic, and even public interaction, it creates a gap between community infrastructure and private systems. This can lead to fewer investments in public amenities and less engagement in solutions that support climate resilience.
The ultra-wealthy have raised plenty of eyebrows for private jet use alone. Not only is private jet travel on the rise — it ballooned by 53% from 2019 to 2023, according to CNN — but it’s a major contributor to a warming climate.
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Rising temperatures affect communities around the world, from extreme weather events to failing crops. Much of the public’s anger is because a tiny privileged part of the population contributes to climate shifts disproportionately.
While some wealthy people use their influence for the greater good, like Billie Eilish recycling concert t-shirts and donating to climate causes or Ed Sheeran trying to travel sustainably, these examples are few and far between.
Online reactions were sharp. One commenter said, “This sounds like an overwhelmingly dystopian, sterile, boring, and meaningless life.”
Another added, “America has more inequality and disparities of wealth between rich and poor than any other major developed nation.”
A third said, “The money spent is obscene by the standards of almost every person on the planet.”
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