Heiress Abigail Disney — yes, that Disney — took corporate America and CEO pay to task in a recent interview, saying “Jesus Christ himself isn’t worth 500 times his median worker’s pay.”
DISNEY: “If your CEO salary is at the 700, 600, 500 times your median worker’s pay, there is nobody on earth — Jesus Christ himself isn’t worth 500 times his median worker’s pay.”
Speaking on CNBC’s “Squak Box,’ the granddaughter of Roy Disney, co-founder of The Walt Disney Company with his brother Walt, also said she thinks “CEOs in general are paid far too much.”
“If your CEO salary is at the 700, 600, 500 times your median worker’s pay, there is nobody on earth — Jesus Christ himself isn’t worth 500 times his median worker’s pay,” she said, though, she refused to discuss Disney CEO Big Iger’s pay.
Iger — who took home $65.6 million last year — recently agreed to a new contract that reduced his maximum annual pay by $13.5 million.
Disney eliminated a $500,000 boost to his base salary, which is $3 million, and cut his potential cash bonus from $20 million to $12 million. Disney also reduced his long-term incentive pay from $25 million to $20 million, the company said in a securities filing on Monday.
Per CNBC:
Disney has long been a proponent for lowering executive paychecks and taxing the rich more.
“The problem is that there’s a systematic favoring of people who have accumulated an enormous amount of wealth,” she said.
Disney signed on to a letter with about 200 other millionaires living in New York last month, asking lawmakers to introduce a “millionaires tax” on households earning more than $5 million to help fund affordable housing, infrastructure and other initiatives.
Disney declined to say what a fair tax would be for millionaires, but noted that there needs to be more conversations about what is fair and how to rectify the inequality between the working class and the super rich.
“I think that the top rate right now is as low as it’s ever been,” Disney said. “And if I’m paying a lower effective rate than my assistant is, something is fundamentally not right.