Secret-keepers of the rich and famous. Reporting from Palm Beach, Florida, where power is amassing among the affluent—and among their staff. Plus:
Emily Witt
Witt has been writing about politics, culture, sexuality, and night life for the magazine since 2015.
Late June is arguably the worst season of the year in Palm Beach, Florida. With the galas and society events already done for the summer, the affluent residents of the coastal enclave flee the steamy weather and travel north or abroad for the Fourth of July holiday. But I wasn’t interested in speaking with them; I was there to report for a story on the people who work for them. The household staff who serve some of the wealthiest people in America are expected to be presentable, tech-savvy, skilled in caring for fine art, china, rugs, and designer clothes—plus always available and completely devoted.
Summer is a revealing time to see Palm Beach: in the absence of the city’s rich, the orientation of the local economy toward their needs was stark. It was unusually easy to get a bar seat at even the most popular restaurants and a parking spot near the luxury fashion boutiques on Worth Avenue. Many businesses had temporarily shuttered; on deserted streets with boarded-up houses, trees were being trimmed, roofs repaired, hedges groomed. It was the time of year for deep cleaning, for maintenance, for keeping the foliage and mold at bay. The housekeepers I spoke with, some of whom are paid more than a hundred thousand dollars a year (and the estate directors, who earn up to half a million), had time to chat because their bosses were elsewhere.
Once a seasonal getaway, this relatively small city has in recent years become a center of political and financial power in the United States—particularly since Donald Trump won his second term in office—and is now being referred to as “Wall Street South.” An estimated sixty-five billionaires now have homes there. The rise in prominence of such an exclusive place is telling of the increasing influence of the ultra-rich in our society. For those qualified to work in these households, the pay can be good, but high demand for experienced staffers means they can be choosy about their employers—and many are unwilling to settle for being treated unprofessionally. The word that I heard most frequently, in speaking with the staff of these high-net-worth individuals, was “discretion.”
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P.S. Birthright citizenship was upheld on this day a hundred and twenty-seven years ago, when a native-born Chinese American named Wong Kim Ark won a landmark case before the Supreme Court. Read Michael Luo on what the history of anti-immigrant exclusion tells us about the current moment »
Hannah Jocelyn contributed to today’s edition.
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