Disney heiress and filmmaker Abigail Disney shocked listeners on Tax Day speaking in favor of a new, more equitable tax code. Disney says her famous grandfather paid a whopping 90% marginal tax rate, yet still managed to amass a fortune.
[Note: From 1944 to 1963, the top marginal tax rate in the U.S. was 91%, which applied to income over $200,000.]
Disney asks why amassing a fortune isn’t good enough for todays super-rich. Why do the wealthy need an economic system, Disney asks, where wealth becomes so concentrated at the top that it “threatens our democracy“?
In a Tax Day speech below, Disney calls for a new tax code. In calling out the current system’s failure to work for the middle and working classes, Disney sounds radical for a millionaire. Yet she has famous company in one of the world’s very richest people, iconic investor Warren Buffett, who has also said the current system is out of whack.
"My grandfather paid 90% marginal tax rate on his income and was still able to amass a fortune" – Abigail Disney
— Jay Arnold (@jadedcreative) April 18, 2023
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“I continue to believe that the tax code should be changed substantially,” Buffett said in 2021. “I hope that the earned-income tax credit is increased substantially and additionally believe that huge dynastic wealth is not desirable for our society.”
Disney is speaking for a group called “Patriotic Millionaires” — a group to which Mr. Buffett does not belong, despite shared beliefs about the societal danger of dynastic wealth.
“Patriotic Millionaires” was founded in 2010 to combat what it sees as a rigged wealth system that favors levels of wealth concentration that are harmful to true democracy. “The vast majority of Americans—71 percent—believe the economy is rigged in favor of the rich,” the group writes. “Guess what? They’re right.”
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, reviewing one of the group’s books, co-authored by a former BlackRock executive, “writes “Tax the Rich! reveals the inner workings of a system designed to make rich people richer and everyone else poorer. It breaks down how the economy has been deliberately structured, in large part through the tax code, to funnel the vast majority of economic growth into the pockets of millionaires and billionaires, working people be damned.”
The subtitle of Tax the Rich! reads: How Lies, Loopholes, and Lobbyists Make the Rich Even Richer.
The ‘Patriotic Millionaires’ Who We Are page contains a host of names familiar to many who followed business news over the years, including the founder of Men’s Wearhouse. “You’re gonna like the way you look.”
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