Abigail Disney Profile picture
Filmmaker, philanthropist, and activist.

Jan 12, 2020, 9 tweets

No, actually they couldn't. Education, first of all trains future workers for future jobs. Your plan would ignore the 53 million americans currently working in low wage jobs. What's more,no matter how well-educated your populace is, there will always be a need for service jobs 1/

Which means that your education plan does nothing for them, and only reinforces the idea that at the bottom of the wage scale are a bunch of good-for-nothing losers who deserve what they get because they aren't educated enough or aren't trying hard enough. Are you content to 2/

let a good 40% or more of all American workers live on the knife edge of poverty? Are you content to say that a hotel maid, even though her back hurts at the end of every day's work, should take home barely enough to feed her family, much less live a life of dignity? 3/

You are also presuming that the people in low wage jobs aren't already educated. Which they very often are, and just haven't been able to find jobs suited to their education. 4/

You seem like a smart person and I am glad you built a company which you sold for a great profit. I mean that. I am not being snarky. But you represent a tiny minority of people. No matter how many and how good our entrepreneurs are, someone still has to scrub the toilets 5/

If you are not willing to do so, are you content to pay someone else less than they need or deserve to do so? Or is every single job worthy of the basic dignity of a living wage? 6/

Are you content to live in a society built on the whims of its most wealth people? what happens when funding education becomes less popular in philanthropic sector and donors give to something else? How will we hold them accountable if the rest of the world disagrees with7/

what they decide? Education is great. Please fund it. But this country is about to lose a significant chunk of the very jobs which do earn a living wage. What we will be left with is mostly service jobs. IF we don't respect those jobs and honor them with living wages, what 8/

Become of our great country? Who do you want us to be. A country divided between have-everythings and have-nothings? Or is there a place on the continuum between these two things that we can all agree is better?

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