Disneyland and Zion

The Devil was piqued such saintship to behold, And longed to tempt him like good Job of old: But Satan now is wiser than of yore, And tempts by making rich, not making poor. —Alexander Pope, Moral Essay III

Things are going very well in Disneyland. The CEO of Disney, Bob Eisner, made $63 million dollars in salary in 2018. That salary was actually reduced by $10 million dollars because the stockholders voted against giving him that big of compensation. I don’t doubt that Bob Eisner is worth that to the stockholders of Disney and to the board who voted him that salary, but, $63 million turns out to be 1,424 times the median salary of the 200,000 employees of Disney. His compensation totals the pay of 9,284 Disneyland workers. Does that seem a little excessive to you? Some argue, to justify the large salary, that if he gave all of his salary to those 200,000 employees it would only increase their yearly salary by $315. Maybe so. Abigail Disney, grand niece of Walt Disney, counters by saying that paying huge bonuses to Bob Eisner sends a terrible message to all the Disney employees who are struggling to make ends meet. She says the message it transmits is “Corrosive”.

I suggest to you the widening gap between top salaries and unskilled workers is a sign of our times. You have all heard of the robber barons and industrialists of the late 19th century like Carnegie, Rockefeller, Frick, J.P. Morgan, Vanderbilt and others who extorted fabulous wealth on the backs of workers. Living extravagant lives while their employees lived in deplorable conditions. Great labor unrest and the intervention of the government in the early years of the 20th century helped to close the gap and improve conditions dramatically for the blue collar worker. But, it seems, the days of the robber barons are back. The industrialists of late 19th and early 20th centuries have become the technocrats of our generation.

Now, I don’t really want this to be about how we take away from the rich and give to the poor. Bob Eisner is probably a good guy, right? He pays his taxes, gives lavishly to the poor, and is honest and full of integrity to a fault–I will give him the benefit of the doubt. I do know that Eisner was a big reason for the success of Disney over the last 10 years or so; he has made stock holders a lot of money and to them he is well worth the bonuses he has been paid.

I want to use his example to point out what is happening to our society, and the slippery slope we are careening headlong into. At $15 an hour, which is now the starting pay for most unskilled workers at Disney, an employee cannot make a living wage in southern California. $15 an hour is one the highest paying minimum wages in the country, and yet, no one can support a family on that.

A recent poll of Disney workers reveals the following:

1. 75% say they do not earn enough money to cover basic expenses every month.
2. More then 50% of Disney Resort employees are afraid of being evicted.
3. Two thirds (67%) are food insecure (don’t know where their next meal is coming from).
4. One half of workers live in over crowded apartments where more than one family shares a single or double bedroom.
5. 10% of workers have been homeless at one time.
6. Work at Disneyland is the primary source of income for 91% of workers, but full time employment is provided to only 54%.

Some might argue, “Why don’t they just leave and get a higher paying job?” First of all, Disney is one of the highest paying employers in the region. The median minimum pay in So. Cal. is $13.23 per hour. So, leaving Disney to work at a lower paying company isn’t really an option. Erratic work schedules at Disney also means it is almost impossible to find a second job. Most of these workers are trapped, there is really no other option for them. And what is really wrong about this is that Disney Corporation knows their employees have no better option, and is able to manipulate the situation to make larger profits.

I mentioned that Bob Eisner has been very successful at Disney. Stock price has almost doubled from $85 a share to $146 in five years. Revenue has doubled in ten years. Eisner was the key figure in acquiring several large acquisitions that have doubled Disney’s Market share. I’d say he has earned his bonuses. Like all successful CEO’s he has become a master at converting men’s (and women’s) lives into money. Other men’s lives, that is, into his money. There are no murders involved here as there was among the Gadiantons in the Book of Mormon, but there is the calculated plan to extort blood and sweat from people in order to gain the maximum profit. While Cain gloried in the murder of his brother, because he obtained his brother’s flocks through murder, the modern Master Mahan is more sophisticated. He knows how to convert men’s lives into money without shedding blood. And that is what is happening in corporate America. It is not about fairness, it is about how can the maximum amount of productivity be obtained for the least amount of expenditure. Squeezing the life of workers, because they can. And then squeeze the consumer to get as much money as they will pay. It is not about a fair wage for fair labor, or fair price for a fair product.

Our society has come to believe largely the same tenants and philosophy introduced by Nehor and Korihor in the Book of Mormon. Nehor philosophy became widely accepted by the Nephite and Lamanite societies and was embraced by the Gadianton Robbers in the last centuries of the Nephite nation before their destruction. The philosophy can be encapsulated in this passage:

“And many more such things did he say unto them, telling them that there could be no atonement made for the sins of men, but every man fared in this life according to the management of the creature; therefore every man prospered according to his genius, and that every man conquered according to his strength; and whatsoever a man did was no crime.” (Alma 30:17

Very few would ever admit to believing such a philosophy because we still pay lip service to American founding ideals based on Christian principles of fairness and principled work ethic. But Nehor philosophy is there, lurking behind the scenes whenever greed, avarice, and extreme selfishness hides behind the facade of good business practices. “It is just good business sense to pay the absolute least amount you can get away with to your employees. If they don’t like it, they can go somewhere else.”

Paying the CEO of Disney $63 Million is no crime. And on the face of it is the right thing to do if you are a stock holder who wants every advantage for the stock price to continue to go up. And we can argue that it is the best system going right now. Even the poorest American is better off than 80% of the world. But from a moral point of view, I think everyone would agree, there is something fundamentally wrong with this system. Ivan Boesky, famous for going to prison for criminal insider trading in the 1980’s wore a t-shirt that said, “He who dies with the most money wins.” Wins what exactly? What sort of prize does someone get for cheating and stealing their way to amassing a fortune? He also was famously quoted as saying, ” I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.”

Before the Industrialist Robber Barons there were the bankers, the land owners in England, Ireland, and France; the royalty; aristocrats; the financiers; and the warmongers. There have always been men who would stop at nothing to enrich themselves at the expense of the common man, serfs, and slaves. Laws have evolved over the centuries to make things more fair and to improve the standard of living among the lower classes. And for the most part they have succeeded in the Western world (Europe, United States and Canada, Australia and New Zealand). But there are always ways to get around the law, and very smart and enterprising people can develop schemes to “game” (cheat) the system. The Nehor system always works within the laws, usually because they create the laws, and if that doesn’t work, get really good lawyers (Alma 11:1-20).

In Zion, there will be no classes of people. There will be no poor, but not because poor people are barred from entering, but because all people will be poor together or rich together. The CEO will receive as much in wages as the ditch digger and garbage man. Somehow we have this idea in LDS lore, that the poor man is the way he is because of laziness and that only the industrious and hardworking will be allowed in Zion. But that is exactly the belief of the Zoramites in the Book of Mormon. They kicked out all the poor people and as a result suffered annihilation because the very people they despised were the reason the Lord held back the destructive impulses of the world.

Zion exists because the people of Zion have no egos. They have been able to shed the idea that any one person is more important than another. In fact, the whole society is built on the principle that their neighbor is as important and special, maybe more so, than themselves. If you live in Zion, your job is primarily be to look after the interests of your neighbor, your neighborhood, your city. You would give no thought to yourself and your well being, because your neighbor will be taking care of your needs. You will love your neighbor as yourself. How could you steal or cheat someone you love like that? When I served a mission in New Zealand, I had to be careful what I said. I couldn’t say, “I like your shirt” to the Polynesians because they would give it to me. I think Zion will be something like that.

So, my parting words to Bob Eisner are: “Congratulations, Bob, you have made it to the top rung of the ladder, but, you are on the wrong ladder.”