Abigail Disney: ‘We’re creating a super-class’ of rich people

Abigail Disney on Monday spoke in favor of a federal wealth tax on the richest Americans, with the Disney heiress telling CNN that concentrated wealth has led to a “super-class.”

“We’re creating a super-class so far above the vast majority of people that they don’t share the same planet anymore,” Disney, the granddaughter of Roy Disney and grandniece of Walt Disney, told CNN’s Don Lemon.

{mosads}“Forty-seven percent of people can’t cope with a $400 emergency,” she added. “I don’t think that the people who are on their private jets or living in incredible riches can even begin to digest what it means to not have $400 for an emergency.”

This wealth disparity, she told Lemon, had ensured the rich no longer “share the same reality” as the working class.

“We don’t stand in line with everybody else, we don’t wait patiently like everybody else, we’ve sort of short-circuited all the social processes and created kind of a parallel universe that we live in, and that is not good for solidarity, it’s not good for opportunity,” she added.

Disney was one of nearly 20 of the wealthiest people in America to sign a letter endorsing a “moderate wealth tax” on the richest 1 percent, along with figures like Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes and financier George Soros.

The letter specifically mentions proposals by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to tax “only 75,000 of the wealthiest families in the country.”

“America has a moral, ethical and economic responsibility to tax our wealth more. A wealth tax could help address the climate crisis, improve the economy, improve health outcomes, fairly create opportunity, and strengthen our democratic freedoms,” reads the letter, published in The New York Times on Monday.