Abigail Disney: Some Executives Would Rather Get Shot Than Fly First Class

New York (CNN Business) – Abigail Disney has a lot to criticize about American billionaires, especially when they inherit a lot of money and avoid paying income taxes.

She knows: she inherited a lot of money from her family. She is the granddaughter of Roy Disney, brother of Walt Disney. Two years ago, Abigail Disney said she had a fortune of $ 120 million.

On CNN’s New Day Tuesday, Abigail Disney spoke about the “spirit of many, many generations” that exists within wealthy American families to take advantage of the tax system and protect their assets.

“The fact is that there are people sitting on their butts on their couches making money and not paying taxes, while there are people who go out to a job every day and work hard just to make ends meet. And that looks like a backwards structure, “Disney said.

Abigail Disney first shared her thoughts in an op-ed in The Atlantic, in response to a ProPublica report earlier this month that revealed that some American billionaires, including Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk, pay a tax on the minimum income compared to most Americans, despite their immense wealth.

A member of the Patriotic Millionaires, an organization of American millionaires who want the rich to pay more taxes, the heiress has been outspoken about executive pay.

She has criticized her own family’s company, Walt Disney Co. (DIS), as she did last spring when she lashed out at Disney for fire low-paid workers during the pandemic, after paying its executives millions of dollars. In the fall of 2020, he supported Senator Elizabeth Warren’s letter criticizing Disney for prioritizing shareholders and its CEO over the well-being of its workers.

While nothing revealed in the ProPublica report is illegal, Abigail Disney noted that the actions of billionaires to protect their assets are a matter of ethics rather than legality.

“For many people, especially those most deeply ingrained in the culture of having and obtaining money, ethics is a tenuous and ineffective nuisance: an abstract set of principles that cannot withstand the rigors of living life at full speed, efficiently leading the money. business and devour and sideline competitors, ”Disney wrote in its op-ed.

Abigail Disney compared wealth to addiction, explaining that “when you have things, you have to have more things, everything you have becomes what is normal.”

“Right now, there are people who fly private jets who would rather be shot than sit first class on a normal airline because that would mean they would have to walk through an air terminal,” he said. “And that is terribly dangerous for democracy, for society.”