More Disney Family Class Traitors Please

Abigail Disney is the granddaughter of Roy Disney, who cofounded the Walt Disney Company with Walt Disney. Abigail also has some thoughts about just how much Disney CEO Bob Iger makes, and it’s decidedly unexpected coming from someone who’s so closely tied to the smiling face of American capitalism.

On Friday, Fast Company reported on comments Disney made during a Thursday panel discussion on “humane capitalism” (other panel members included Howard Buffett, aka Warren’s grandson, and Lady Lynn Forrester de Rothschild). During the discussion, Disney specifically called out Iger, who made $66 million last year and briefly flirted with a run for president. Per Fast Company:

“I like Bob Iger. Let me be very clear: I think he’s a good man. But I think he’s allowing himself to go down a road that is the road everyone is going down,” she said, citing Wall Street-driven norms. “When he got his bonus last year, I did the math, and I figured out that he could have given personally, out of pocket, a 15% raise to everyone who worked at Disneyland, and still walked away with $10 million. So there’s a point at which there’s just too much going around the top of the system into this class of people who–I’m sorry this is radical–have too much money. There is such a thing.”

Disney (the company) responded rather tersely to Disney (the person), saying, “Disney has made historic investments to expand the earning potential and upward mobility of our workers, implementing a starting hourly wage of $15 at Disneyland that’s double the federal minimum wage and committing up to $150 million for a groundbreaking education initiative that gives our hourly employees the opportunity to obtain a college or vocational degree completely free of charge.” (It should be noted that it only took a months-long battle with unions for Disney to wage raises at Disneyland.)

On Sunday, Abigail Disney (who said that her only current involvement with the company was owning “not that many” Disney shares) followed up with a Twitter thread.

In particular, Disney took issue with the line that working for the company is a “starter job.” (Although, uh, people who “flip burgers at MacDonald’s [sic]” also deserve a lot of money.)

Yes, that is an actual Disney family member casually dropping “neoliberal indoctrination” in a 22-tweet thread. The rich: they’re just like us, only richer.

In all seriousness, Abigail Disney is 100 percent correct here. There is such a thing as too much money, Bob Iger is making exponentially more than that, and Disney workers aren’t making nearly enough of it. More Disney family member class traitors, please.