The Guardian columnist John Harris recently interviewed heiress Abigail Disney. Despite her famous last name, Disney has chosen a life marked by activism and advocacy.
One area she is particularly vocal about is the responsibility that comes with extreme wealth. Disney has been a staunch supporter of higher taxes on millionaires and billionaires.
She is a longtime member of the Patriotic Millionaires, an American organization focused on changing the tax system so that people as rich as—or even richer than—its members pay more income and wealth-based taxes.
And she touched on that again in her latest interview, saying:
"I am of the belief that every billionaire who can’t live on $999 million is kind of a sociopath."
"Like, why? You know, over a billion dollars makes money so fast that it’s almost impossible to get rid of. And so by just sitting on your hands, you become more of a billionaire until you’re a double billionaire."
"It’s a strange way to live when you have objectively more money than a person can spend."
Disney also had some harsh truths for Donald Trump.
"Trump is an inheritor. He never acknowledges it, but he wouldn’t have been able to do any of the things he did without an inheritance."
"He absorbed the lessons of inheriting money almost unfiltered: 'You have this money because you’re special'."
"If you read about his childhood, it’s like the textbook worst way to raise a person—you know, he was violent, he was a bully and he was rewarded for that, even as a very small child. And the more money he had, the more he exhibited these bad qualities, and the more people told him he was wonderful."
Elon Musk faired no better.
Disney stated:
"There are people suffering and dying today because of [Musk's] cut [to the PEPFAR program]. There are children who have HIV who shouldn’t because of Elon Musk. Now. As we sit here and talk."
PEPFAR stands for the President’s Emergency Plan For Aids Relief.
Created in 2003 by the administration of Republican President George W. Bush, the program is estimated to have saved 25 million lives by supplying medicine to people with HIV and AIDS around the world.
The Disney heiress added:
"That natural human proclivity to say, ‘Hmm, that doesn’t feel right’—[Musk] doesn’t have it. Trump doesn’t have it. They’re spending no time in shame, and shame is a righteous emotion."
"It’s not an emotion you want to live in, but it’s an emotion you want as a motivator sometimes. And where is it? Where’s the shame?"
Disney is also an inheritor, but not a wealth hoarder like Musk and Trump. By her 20s, she started donating large chunks of her inheritance—approximately $70 million as of 2021—mostly to organizations that help women.
People applauded her stance.
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Of her own heritage, Disney has stated:
"My grandfather, Roy O. Disney, and his brother, Walt Disney, started The Walt Disney Company. They came from Midwestern American poverty and everything they accomplished was a result of their hard work and creativity."
"[I am rich] only because of some quirks in the tax system, some good luck, and some very loving grandparents. But nothing else."
Her father, Roy E. Disney, was a familiar face in the Disney empire, and Disney herself is a film director and producer.
Her last name—and the privilege that came with it—put her in a unique position to speak about generational wealth and the societal responsibilities that should come with it.
In her 2024 OpEd titled "World leaders have a chance to raise taxes for rich people like me. I’m begging them to take it," Disney wrote:
"The need to tax rich people like me has never been so dire."
"Extreme wealth concentration in the hands of a few oligarchs is a threat to democracy the world over."
