My grandfather, Roy O. Disney, and his brother, Walt Disney, started The Walt Disney Company. They came from Midwestern American poverty and everything they accomplished was a result of their hard work and creativity.
A lot of people think of them as the embodiment of the American Dream. I, however, am not a representative of the American Dream. In this century, very few people are. As an inheritor, I exist only because of some quirks in the tax system, some good luck, and some very loving grandparents. But nothing else. That means I’ve never had to work or be brilliant. For me, the table was set long before I was born and there was very little I could do to lose my advantages.
I’ve seen all the good that wealth can do, but I have also stood witness to the way it can lead to personal, social, political, moral, and even spiritual corrosion on an epic scale. And now, I am grief-stricken as I watch the havoc that that moral and spiritual corrosion is capable of wreaking when they sink their teeth into a democracy.
For the last half-century, wealthy Americans have carried out a well-funded and ferocious campaign to change the narrative about democracy and money. My admittedly flawed country once told itself a story of how diverse people (mostly diverse insofar as European males can be diverse) came together to build a remarkable nation. A place where people could join together to face a challenge like the Depression or World War II. The heart of that narrative was that we need each other the way we need oxygen and that the best things we do we do together.
That narrative was purposely replaced with another, darker one – that each of us is in it for ourselves and that the best way to build a society is for everybody to walk their own solitary path. It urged us to raise ourselves up by our bootstraps, climb the corporate ladder, and grab the brass ring. But if you spend just one minute imagining how that works, you’ll understand how insulting and absurd that image is.
Central to the new narrative is the idea that the government is always wrong, can do nothing right or well, and that taxation is always destructive. Politicians and pundits say that taxes kill economies and inhibit creation. But when I hear this, I wonder, how did my grandfather and great uncle build a global juggernaut of a company while paying a 91% marginal income tax rate and how were they able to provide so much that even their great-grandchildren are set when their estates were taxed at over 50%?
Inequality exerts a downward pull on the moral lives of the very wealthy. I have seen how wealth erodes character, the way it saps empathy out of even the most well-meaning people, and the way it leaves them under the impression that everywhere they go they must be protected from the “them.” No one can be trusted, and that, without their private guards, private airplanes, private parking lots, and private restaurants, they’d never survive.
Entitlement. Narcissism. Impunity. An unwillingness to acknowledge the suffering of others in any meaningful way. A willed ignorance about reality. An undisciplined idealism about how much philanthropy can actually accomplish and a deep intransigence about the idea that the world can ever be shaped in any other way. These are the characteristics I’ve watched form again and again and again in wealthy people around me. They are also the characteristics of people who should be kept as far from power as possible. And not just political power – any kind of power.
And yet, we have handed the keys in the United States to the wrecking ball to the very men (and yes, they are mostly men) who are bent on a kind of wreckage so absolute that when they are done, I believe they will even try to wreck the ball itself.
We are in a bind. Not just democracy but global stability itself in many cases rests in the hands of those least able, much less willing, to acknowledge that every single person on this planet is deserving of a life of dignity and that the world as it is currently shaped is a long way from being able to make that happen.
The only way out of this bind we are in is to get back to the place where it started: taxes. When we eviscerated our tax system, we started down the path that has led us to this point. When we tax income from work, we must tax it more favorably and more progressively than we tax capital. And we must tax wealth, not just income, because it is wealth that drives wider the chasm between us. Billionaires complain about this, but my feeling is that, if you can’t live on $999 million a year, you have bigger problems than a tax code can address.
To safeguard our democracy, we must also reform our campaign finance system. It’s one thing to use the tax code to reduce the obscene financial resources that people like me have to get in politicians’ good graces and twist the law in our favor. But we need to lock the doors that the wealthy use to access and influence politicians in the first place by instituting stricter campaign contribution limits.
Finally, we must also reform the way we pay people in America. It is morally repugnant that we live in the richest country in the history of the world, yet millions of Americans can’t afford necessities like food, rent, or clothing. Minimum wages at the federal, state, and local levels need to be raised to be living wages that allow people to afford a basic cost of living. As I like to say, if all people are deserving of a life of dignity, they need to be paid enough to actually afford to live it.
For these reasons and more, I am proud to join hands with my fellow wealthy peers in the fight for economic and political justice at Patriotic Millionaires. Our members have had very different life experiences, but they’ve all led us to the same conclusion: we must pay our fair share and use our wealth and privileges to build a more equitable economy, a more vibrant democracy, and a healthier planet. There is too much on the line to wait to do it.
Abigail Disney is a philanthropist, social activist, and Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker. Her latest film, “The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales,” made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and is available on-demand. She is also the Chair and co-founder of Level Forward, an ecosystem of storytellers, entrepreneurs, and social change-makers dedicated to balancing artistic vision, social impact, and stakeholder return; the founder of Peace is Loud, a nonprofit which uses storytelling to advance social movements; and the founder of the Daphne Foundation, which supports organizations working for a more equitable, fair, and peaceful New York City.
To get in touch with Abigail, please contact Emily McCloskey, Deputy Communications Director, at [email protected].