If Abigail Disney had listened to her financial advisors as a child, the heir would have focused on one thing first: getting even richer.
Roy O., co-founder of the co-founder of the Walt Disney Company. Says Disney of those early money managers: “They were really lovely, wonderful and good people who knew me from childhood … and they taught me something I needed to know. I opened it a long time ago and really unboxed it. . Nobody said it out loud, they just really wanted it, but if you end your life with no more than you started, then for some reason you have failed. Besides, your kids should be better than you. But with him there was no need to amass more wealth than wealth. “I think it’s appropriate, maybe in the middle class or the working class,” he said. “But I’ve already started with more than I need. Because I want more or need moreover?
Social activist, philanthropist and documentary maker, he has become a large-scale rapist, leading his compatriots to reconsider their values and question the unequal structure of society.
“I just don’t think you can move around the world, keep your eyes peeled and feel good about how things are going right now,” Disney said. “I think it is necessary to call us on your team. The only thing you never do is say, “But you know, I think it’s wrong.” He is very crazy, he is “non-university” and “too emotional and irrational” and that’s it. But it seems to me that what we are doing now is not working so well. In reverse. And I saw no other option than to be involved in my class in some way. “
Disney, in a 2021 editorial Atlantic, Exploited the dynastic wealth. And in 2020 he joined the dirty rich, including the Pritzker and team members, who supported the tax hike on the super rich.
“We who are in the richest 1/10 of the richest one percent should be proud to pay a little more for America’s future,” the group wrote in a letter to the 2020 presidential candidate. : Taking this tax is the smallest thing we can do to strengthen our beloved country ”.
Disney has described Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett – the three richest people on the planet – as “plutocrats”. And in a 2019 Washington Post article, he criticized the “naked obscenities” of the salary of Robert Iger, then CEO of the Walt Disney Company.
“According to Equilar,” he wrote referring to an information services firm specializing in business leader analysis, “Iger brought in over $ 65 million in 2018. That’s 1,424 times the average salary of a Disney employee. this gap, in 1978, the average CEO was paid about 30 times the salary of ordinary workers. Since 1978, the salaries of CEOs have increased by 937%, while the average salaries of workers have increased by only 11.2% .
It does not limit its criticism to the press. Disney expands the theme of income inequality in its latest documentary. The American Dream and Other Tales, co-directed by Kathleen Hughes. The film, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, is aimed directly at C-suite executives and low-level staff that Disney pays at its theme parks, including workers Disney calls “cast members.” .
Ralph and Trina, a married couple who works at Disneyland and parents of three girls, say in a Disney movie: “Even when we both work full time, we’re still below the poverty line.” Ralph and Trina work nights at Disneyland, earning $ 15 an hour, another 75 cents an hour for night shifts. “We’re the people who clean up pixie dust at night,” Ralph said. You washed kitchens, floors, bathrooms. And I’m proud of what I do “.
But Ralph tells the manager it’s hard for him and the other Disneyland workers to make ends meet. “We have members who have to make decisions [paying for] “Medicines and food,” he said. “And this is something necessary. You can’t make a choice like that. “
In the film, Disney interviews several park employees who are struggling to save their paychecks. With workers at the round table, he asks them to show how much food stamps are on, skipped medical care to save money, or slept in the car because he couldn’t afford housing. Most of the hands are raised high.
“What I saw during the shoot was such a strong vision in the management that the people who work with you for hours, the people who clean the bathrooms and the rest are not quite like you. “- says Disney. “I really think this is an ideology very close to racism. So a guy who has never used the education program you offered and is still there with the minimum wage deserves what he gets and his children deserve what they get. “
Disney begins the documentary with a quote from poet Gwendolyn Brooks: “We are each other’s business; We are the greatness and the connection between us ”. The director believes that the attitude that was once prevalent in America, as he sees it, began to crumble during the Reagan era. “80s” [saw] The big change in the norm, he says, is that we’re not all together.
The change in this rule, coupled with changes in pro-rich tax policies, has led to “historic income inequality,” Disney said. “If we don’t go through the golden age now, we will definitely get there.”
In this regard, Disney recently tweeted: “There has been a massive redistribution of wealth over the past four decades. The only problem is that it was for those who were already rich. “
Disney estimates its assets at $ 120 million. She says his efforts have focused on reducing wealth rather than increasing it. “If I wanted to, I would become a billionaire. I said no more money for most of my adult life … I think it’s a long, slow and solemn suicide what I’m doing, I’m a bad businessman and I give a lot. But I don’t understand why this is not one of the options. “
This approach makes it stand out among the super rich, among the people who flock to Sun Valley, St. Moritz and Bora Bora.
“If I were invited to places I don’t think I would be, I’d be happy to say something uncomfortable, because what do the rich need to feel comfortable?” he says. “I think they are conditioned by their comfort. So they have to overcome the unfortunate reality of the consequences of their wealth and inequality. “
Disney claims to have developed its perspective on wealth and inequality over time. It wasn’t as if the lamp was going on one day. “Epiphany is like silver bullets. “There is no such thing,” she said she. “I’ve been paying strange attention since my childhood, probably. My mother said: Karkama brought everyone else, but Ebi arrived on a spaceship. And I’m proud of it. “
His political views – in favor of unification, taxing the rich, choosing abortion rights, and gun control – are at odds with the wider Disney clan, which he describes as conservative. He can organize awkward family reunions.
“I would say that there is a difference of opinion about me in particular,” he says, “but the people who are close to me have to stay close and keep talking.” And my two brothers helped me a lot, a lot, a lot and it was really wonderful. “
Abigail and Susan Disney Lord and brother Tim Disney are executive producers. The American Dream and Other Tales. The film has not yet found a distributor, although the end of its streaming seems absurd on Disney +. Disney suggests that criticism of former Disney CEO Robert Eiger in the film could alienate other potential distributors. “Disney owns, controls or influences just about everything,” he says. “It’s class loyalty. “You’re not criticizing another billionaire,” he said.
“I think there were doubts about what the film was about, particularly Bob Eiger, because that’s what you’re not doing. I doubt we will probably end self-distribution or any kind of service contract. “If I have to stand in the square with a megaphone, I will. It will be seen, one way or another.” I hope to be out in the fall. “
Meanwhile, he is still involved in social media, defining what he sees as the catastrophe of the grotesque degree of wealth inequality. Disney recently wrote about himself on Twitter: “Being a traitor in my class is my proudest achievement.”
Source: Deadline
