One of the most extraordinary threads I’ve read recently is Abigail Disney doing the math on how the Disney corporation could raise the income of its bottom tier workers.
I’m sure the math is complicated. And no one is complaining about pay at the middle and upper levels of the company. So let’s say you just raised the salaries of those in the bottom quartile. That would be 50K employees who would get, on average, a $740 bump from
— Abigail Disney (@abigaildisney) April 21, 2019
Iger’s bonus alone. That alone would be pretty dramatic. Then add in 50% of the rest of the upper tier bonuses. Now we are talking about a DRAMATIC change in living conditions for people who up til now worked full time and yet we’re living at or below the poverty line
— Abigail Disney (@abigaildisney) April 21, 2019
The poor are poor because the rich are rich.
In what ways did your dad change, other than having a jet?Actually, having a jet is a really big deal. If I were queen of the world, I would pass a law against private jets, because they enable you to get around a certain reality. You don’t have to go through an airport terminal, you don’t have to interact, you don’t have to be patient, you don’t have to be uncomfortable. These are the things that remind us we’re human…
How did the jet change your dad? It wasn’t just the plane, but it’s not a small thing when you don’t have to be patient or be around other people. It creates this notion that you’re a little bit better than they are. And for the past 40 years, everything in American culture has been reinforcing that belief. We say, ‘Job creators, entrepreneurs, these are the people who make America great.’ So there are people walking around with substantial wealth who think that they have it because they’re better. It’s fundamental to remember that you’re just a member of the human race, like everybody else, and there’s nothing about your money that makes you better than anyone else. If you don’t know that and you have money, it’s the road to hell, no matter how much stuff you have around you…
See, here’s the thing, as I’ve pointed out in the past. Airport security is awful for one simple reason: No one who matters goes through it. They fly on private jets. On the rare occasion those people go first class, well, first class security is far less unpleasant than what the peons go through.
Any problem that does not affect elites, they do not act on, unless they can make money on it. (In which case, their solution is likely to make things worse.)
This is exacerbated by the fact that elites effectively live in bubbles: They don’t have ordinary people as friends. They don’t identify with the middle class or the poor, and if you don’t identify with someone, their pain doesn’t bother you. (This is why, in wartime, the enemy is demonized. It is also why slave owners mostly believed that blacks were were inferior, and subhuman.)
Iger is a bad, even evil man, for the same reason most high-level American executives are. He could easily make his employees lives better and give up nothing that matters (see Disney on what executives would sacrifice) but they don’t do it, because they don’t care about the pain of their “lessers.”
This is a matter of the structure of modern capitalist society, but it is also an affirmative choice by the executive class. In the 50s and 60s these sorts of executive excesses were both illegal and frowned on ethically. It was felt that earning so much more than regular people was actually immoral.
Later generations of executives didn’t see it that way. They felt that “greed was good,” that they “earned it” and that anyone who didn’t earn that much was a loser who was getting what they deserved. If they deserved more, the market would give it to them!
So they worked very hard to change corporate culture, buy government and change laws. For example, stock buy-backs, which are very good for executives with stock-option bonuses, used to be illegal. Then there’s the reduction in top marginal tax rates, the refusal to enforce antitrust laws and on and on.
It took a lot of work, by a couple generations of US executives and other rich people, to get here.
And now they’re rich, and a lot of Americans are poor. And the reason other Americans are poor is that the rich are so rich. (Yeah, this isn’t the full argument, but the argument is easy enough: Buy the government and have it represent your class interests and everything else follows easily.)
And Bob Iger is evil, though I’m sure he thinks he’s a good person. But a lot of people are poor so he can be rich, and he and his executives could make their employees’ lives a lot better and give up nothing that matters to their own lives. When the situation is “I can help and I won’t even notice it” and you choose not to, well…
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