what's your problem? what is your solution? how do we want our lives to chae beyond the covid-19 virus crisis? that is the question of this special series of kamp solutions. abi disney grew up in e fantasy and fairy tale world that has inspired children across the globe for generations. she became an outspoken critic of the executive pay at her family's company and the voice addressing the deep inequality in society. welcome to kamp solutions. (soft music) you have been an advocate for addressing the issue of inequality in society.

i'm wondering when did you first realize that this was really becoming a problem? - when you're growing up, u know on the good side oravorable side of an unequal equation, you' not really aware of that really. it takes a long ti to let itn, just how vast the gulf is. so it wasn't until i was an adult in my 20s and 30s, that i've fully really embraced it. actually, it was just the friend this weekend who minded me of this garlic picker'stride. we went to together in 1984. and i remember thinking, "wait, that's how hard it is to pick garlic." like, you know, there are little moments like that but they pile up in you. and i think a lot of people kind of let those thingso because it's too hard to think abou and still get through your days. and i dot know how to do that. and so they really do make a really

hideous pile in my conscience. - and you started to speak out. so of course, i've read yourrticles about th and you ke this point that some say 40 years ago or so the average salary of a ceo is about maybe 30 times what an average worker would get in a company. and by now it's over a thousand times. how do you expin that? - well, i do think that a lot of it has to do with this sorof unleashg of a kind of animal spiritn wall street and across the professional biness world that started with, people like milton friean. it also started with people like lewis powell lewis powell who latebecame a supreme court justice in 1971 was hired by the business chamber of commerce to put together a memo that described all the ways in which business people felt they were being sort of

cast as the bad gu in american society. and then it was a sort of recipe or a plan for fixing that. so milton friedman in 1970 said, "as long as everybody plays by the rules, "then greed is good. you act raonally in ur own self-interest." but at the samtime, les powell was saying how about we change the rules? so he sort of unlocked this ferocious effort that went for years of rolling back regulations, rolling back taxes, taking all government control out of the business sector and nerally casting government as sort of the barrier to busess. and in the 80s that kinda ansformed into a priveging of the business mind and the business personality is sort of superior and we all just engaged in that eely. and i think that they felt they had the permission really to go kind of bananas.

- it is interesting th if one studies civilizations in history you see this pattern repeating itself again and ain, i mean the roman empire ended in the same kind of situation. i'm saying ended because, at some point it ends. is that where we are going or coming to rehears all this - i ask myself that question a lot. so much of the economy of the rest othe world depends on wheer or not the american economy is healthy. we are the linchpins democracy, economy in a lot of ways. so it's not just for americans, that that would be a tragic thing. but in terms of being the grt empire in the big gorilla country, that sort of decides everything. i don't know if th's been good for us honestly in terms of chacter, in terms of how we conduct ourselves on the international stage and so forth. and i don'know really what you get out of that

except for the people at the very top in terms of gratification and power. so ion't know if we lose all that much. if our dominance were to subside a bit, i think that might not be bad for the world. as long as the whole system doesn't cave . and honestly, under the weight of this inequality it really does threaten to cave the whole system in. i'm very worried right now about things like w overextended people are in terms of personal debt, student debt, mortgages and credit card debt. if those dominoes start to fall i don't see much hope for this economy. - so, you speak out about these issues anthey are important issues. at the same time, you meet people in circles who are more wealthy than average americans i'd say, what do you get back when you raise this issue? how aware are people on the good side of this problem?

- the awareness tends subside the higher up you get on the chain or actuay the concern subsides. so the irony is that the more money people have, the more they tend to go looking for money. money has this weird capacity to make you feel like you live in an environment of scarcity. so the 'cause of the way that people have of comparing themselves to each other and so forth. so the concern ssides beuse takes a back seat to the concern for the immediate achievement of a goal around. if my net worth is 143 billion well, i wanna be the first trlionaire on earth. so if you watch jeff bezos over time and you just look at his physical cnge from when he w a young man to now, it's a very interesting thing to look at. because you can see his entire personality

and sensibility shift from one thing to something entirely else. and i do believe that too much money has a way o carving you out. so, i'm moving among people who have a lot of money and a t of them are with me, but they're with me until ittarts to involve something that might mean they would have to pay hier taxes or maybe give up thr fourth house. we're not gonna be able to maintain everybody's fourth house and address this inequality question. ere's no win-win for this. - no, that's an portant point. it is giving. but the interesting thing is that in this series of interviews, i also did an interview with a btish prossor richard wilkinson, who has been studyin this issue of inequaty for a few decades and one of his observations is that the interesting phenomenon is that

for the people on the good side, or if you call it a good side the wealthy side, things don't get better either. you see more drug abuse, you see more depression, u see all kinds of things in more unequal societies that are not healthy f the wealthy if you like. - i actually, i'm working on a project on this because what i've seen is not only iyour whole society kind of really set up to fail when it gets as lopsided as ours is now, it's the people in the position that everyone envies tend to be pretty unhapp and if you go oking at the rates of drug abuse the rates of divorce and the rates of suicide and those kinds of things very wealthy families you'll find that they actually mirror the rates at the bottom of the income spectrum. the poorest people live in a misery that if you measure it by those kinds of outcomes, it's similar. so what, what i know is at,

i think that if yo follow the impulse, which most wealthy people have of surrounding yourself by other people who are like you because it's uncomfortable to be directly in conversation with people, you know, are suering. and then you sort of give yourself latitude for the private planes and the private rooms and the private lessons and the private schools. eventually you can build a world that allows you to kind of forget about the dissonance you feel, the total alienation that you're expiencing now from the resof the human race. and i think if you let yourself be swallowed up by tha it's easy to think that nothing needs fixing and that everything is fine. - no, it's a very difficult issue. and of course, it's clear that it has become worse because of that growing inequality

and people just basically fall out of the system. so of course, one of the issues and you've advocate for that also is tax. we have only been lowering taxes for decades. thatbviouslys something we see the results of. so taxes can be increased, have to increase i suppose. that is e thing, but what is really needed here? - well, what's really needed actually is a massive shift in mindset socially andulturally and politically, because what happens thugh the 70s and then we when we elected ronald rgan and people just fell for it. people just fell for what he was selling and it's it makes me crazy because i remember how angry we were and how we were trying to get through. and i remember how genial he was never really liked his sense of humor. anyet i knew what he was doing in latin america. how were peoplall right with this? just 'cause he was smiling.

so some things started emptying out the amerin consciousness. it really did in the 80s. and it just kept gng in that direction on that trajectory toward caring less and less if you can be sure that's never going to affect yo so people have looked the other way for a long time they have bought this thing that both margaret thatcher and ronald reagan were selling, which was poor people are poor because they're stupid and lazy and they've done something wrong. so i think underlying like a particular policy or a particular way of dng business before allf it, a ndset shift has to happen. and that starts inulture. and that starts with speaking upublicly i mean it di't take bernie sanders very long to catch fire because what he was saying about the inequality people needed someone to say that. and he was pointing something out that was aplain as the nose on your face. and ere's only so long you can go

ignoring the nose on your face. so i think that we're right next to a big shift that will happen, hopefully. - the situation now changed so much that i'm wondering what would have happened if he would he's still running now. i think there' even more awareness and that was a few months ago. - i think that's because bernie was opening the doors of people's minds and peopleaid, yes, and i'll walk right through at door d see what on the other side. so without him, we wouldn't be having the conversation about inequality at all that we're having now. and elizabeth rren alsexpanded the space there was for that. julian castro also real good voice but it's not just a fringe elemt in society that has observed rightly that this is not working for us. any of us the richer or the poor. and there's an expanding group of people who are now wiing to go there and find out and think and experiment with the idea of changing.

- you're also involved wit initiative called just capital, which by the way, is a sponsor of this very program, this very series of interviews. to what tent do yo see the positive chae in busess that we need? - i haven't seen all that much positive change yet but just capitals part of an effort to address this mindset shift that needs to happen. because a lot of what's happening is happening because the ceos and the c-suite executives today we're in business school in the 80s. and they ce out of business school with an idea of hoit was done. and when milton friedman told us that the best possible thing was for us to seek out our own self-interest. he gave them moral cover. he offered them an alibi morally speaking. to be able to just go and pursue their own self-interest as ferociously as they have.

anthat's not just about the greedy moves people make that's about a higher tolerance for risk. that is about not understanding that people, coloand women and so forth need to be in your ranks. that's about a whole range of things. i go back and forth actually wildly between wantinto burn it all down and wanting to reform it from the inside. so just capital is probly the... the people trying to reform it from the inside one of the best. and then i meet incredible business people who really are thinking in terms of, is there such a thing as too much money? there really is not, a crazy question. having too much money is a thing. and i don't hear anybody talking about it. $143 billion is too much money period, full stop. so there ceos saying my $200,000 salary or whatever it is wi get me ju fine

through evything i need to get through. and i don't see why i shouldn't because the company's being profitable, pass some of the profits along, down the line. one of the things i was thinking when i was fighting the company was that a ceo shouldn't really be sort of like a ship's captain, because like tre you are. and you're accepng all of the benefits of leadership and all the accolades and the public attention, all the rest of it. and you've got this profitable company but if the ship, is going down and you don't make sure everybody gets on the lifeboats before you do, that's the most fundamental job you have. so iyou're in a profable company and people can't put food on the table before you take your bonus wouldn't just common sense tell you, "i wanna make sure "that people are feeding their children "and housing and getting what they need in terms of healthcare."

so, i have nothing against bonus in and of itself. well, what i have problem with is taking it in the absee of making sure everybody's okay. - in the army also the leaders are supposed to lve the scene last and ke sure th everybody's okay. that is a good comparison. and you have the situations that people are as you have described live on food stamps while they're serving a company that is insane. so from there, wou that be, if i could make you a president for just a few hours and you could sign this executive order what could be in that order? - oh, there are a few things that i would do very specifically like in the carried interest loophole and tax pital gains as income period, end of story. becausright now, we're privileging capital gains what we've said is we value ownership over work. so, as a merely, as a philosophical thing

i would st send that tomorrow and make sure that working people were paying the same or le taxes th the people who were wealthy and most wealthy people most of their income is in capital gains. so, that's aery specific gralar thing that i would do right out of the gate. and then i would lead my country. i would go and talk to peopl and find out where the problems were and i'd spend time wi the ceos. and would mandate worker presence on every board of directors in the company. and i would mandate women and people of color represented in those leadership circles. and i would mandate it. i don't care what people say about tokenism. we have more than proven we won't do thisn our own. so those are the things i probably emphasize. and then i would rebuild the social network as the safy network that we used to have. public schools are failing,

our healthcare system is a joke, our roads and highways are falling apart. it is like in every sing thing that used to be in place for person in 1950s to go to work pull down a salary and raise his fami that he could ly on. she or hcould relyn. these have all been taken out from under people. even the college education is an invitation of risk now because of the amot of debt pple have ttake on. so i'd forget student debt right away,eriod. but the rebuding of the safety net really needs to be front ancenter. we need to make sure that people are getting the rewards of the covenant that i thought we made as a country. when we throw our lot in together and throw our taxes in. there are certain things we agree to. and what i did notgree to was considering the the starvation and the insecurity of wide swaths of the population

to be an acceptable thing. - let mesk you this. what are you proud of when y look at disney? - yeahi'm proud of so much of it honestly. and one ofhe reasons i'm fighting this is i sort of wanna save them from their selves because frankly they are right now, right on the razor's edge of just throwing a brand they were handed by their rapaciousness and the way they treat theiemployees. and that brands is, i think, a national treasure. in independent of what it means for revenues and the rest of it. when i meet people and they hear my last name d they tell me what my mily's name means to them, they always go a little soft in their eyes and their faces go a little soft and you can see them. they're thinking about their childhood. so thinking about their parents and families and things. what disney does iit offers families and everyone

a chance to kind of slow dn and connect with the thin that matter. - do you think that the moment is here or it's coming closer than it ever was? we had the occupy movement some years ago. nothing really changed after that, but can we escape change one more time? - no, we can't. and i would just push back on the idea that occy didn't achieve anything because we wouldn't be talking about the 1% at all. if it hadn't been for the occupy movement. and i know many people who were in their 20s, in the occupied movement who learned a lot, and this proliferation of grassroots organizing that is really coming to fruition in this moment. this wouldn't be such an effective moment. if there weren't powerful networks of grassroots people everywhere in the country, small towns, big cities, everywhere that were strong and well versed in how to organize a how to push for political change.

so we can't resist change partly because everybody 40 and under, is not having it anymore. and the long we resist it the worse the change will feel for the old folks like me. and so don't see them going me satisfied til theyet systemic change. - what are the posite signs that you've seen? - oh my gosh. i mean, i quarantined with a heavy heart and all i could think about was the meaning of what would ppen to the economy. and i'm still worried about that because i know that in august, we're gonna have a flood of evictions and then just a massive uptick in homelessness across the country. and then there are ople i know and love that i worryeeply abou so that really was a hard thing to sit still with for what was it, 10 weeks. and en these protests erupted and my heart broke even further because i thought

oh my god, this is a momentf such mouing and suffering. and people are so hurting people i love were hurting. and then it just took this tur and i started seeing city councils say well, we really do have to think about that reform isn't cutting it. we really do have to think about deconstructing this wholthing and rebuilding it in a different way. we have to think differently about public safety. we have to think differently about who the police serve. and, as i've seen that start to really take shape in a real actual substantive way i've gotten much more optimistic. and it was just the thing that i needed to make me feel better about the plague. was this amazing strategic organizing and accomplishment of concrete goals that i'm seeing around me now. - abi, and finally, what is your favorite disney movie and why? - you know, i have two favorites

and one is dumbo and the other pinocchio. because dumbo is a perfect gem. it's like there is no loose end in that film in terms of storytelling and even in rms of visual storytelling, it's the most tight and lucid piece of storytelling any reader really has. and then the visual, the art, if you watched that scene when they're building the circus tents, it's straight out of wpa murals. it really is absolutel breathtaking. those backgrounds are incredible. so i love that and then my second favorite is pinocchio. al an old one that didn't really do that well at the box office at the beginning, but i love jiny cricket. i really love him. and part of the reason i love him is because he speaks in these funny midwestern expressions that were exactly how my grandfather spoke. he would says, "golly, gee, willikers and things." it's so cute.

but he'shere specifically to say the pesky ethical thing. he's glass his whole role in the film. and wiout him, there's no achievement of the satisfaction of the ending and the al boy and everything. and, we could all use, a jimmy cricket in our lives. - what was hisessage? - his message is very simple. always let your conscience be your guide. and what would happen to american business everyone let their conscience be their guide. - thank you abi. - thank you. deep and painful inequality. disturb harmony and peace in society. abi disney uses her name and connections to raise awareness and suprt for very necessary change. she has to conscience of jiminy cricket on her side. this was kamp solutions. stay wl and see u, next time.

(soft music) - [narrator] kamp solutions is presented by the world business academy. on behalf of just capital, the covid-19 corporate response tracker of just capital is tracking the best practices of corporations serving the needs of their employees and of the communities they serve in this time of national crisis. see how the best of america's largest employers are treating stakeholders amid the coronavirus at justcapital.com.

kkkkkkkkcç■ç■ç■r■ç■ç■ç■q■q■q■q■x host: welcome to "global 3000." arone father, twelve sons. a nurturing new home for refugee children from north korea a natural wonder with bathtub rings in the u.s. a hidden landscape is gradually emerging from the deep. and, in east africa, drought has left millions of children facing starvation. ♪ climate change, war, and a pandemic.