Morris Pearl knows the power that money can buy. As the former managing director of BlackRock, one of the largest investment firms in the world, he earned millions of dollars, travelled the globe, rubbed shoulders with influential politicians and played pool with Ben Affleck.

But these days, he spends more time calling out the rich than schmoozing them. Now retired from the finance world, he leads a group known as The Patriotic Millionaires, a network of individuals who describe themselves as “traitors to their class”. Their treachery? Loud and sustained calls for higher taxes on the rich.

With a billionaire in the White House, two more running for the 2020 Democratic nomination, and wealth inequality in the US at historic levels, their calls have taken on a new urgency.

Abigail Disney, one of the group’s most prominent members, recently made headlines when she called the $60m pay packet of the Walt Disney Company CEO, Bob Iger, “insane”. The group has argued for higher wealth taxes, called out the “spectacle” of charitable giving and rallied behind progressives such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders.

Today Pearl resides on New York City’s Upper East Side. When we met at his apartment, his table held a book, written by Pearl, that’s considered the group’s bible: How to Think Like a Patriotic Millionaire. It lays out specific proposals they would like to introduce.

Pearl resents how wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few, pointing out that the Forbes list of the top 20 richest Americans includes three members of the Walton family, as well as both Koch brothers, Charles and David. There are six members of the Mars family – of the chocolate bar fortune – in the top 100.

“They’re not bad people; they had the good fortune to be born of parents who were multibillionaires,” Pearl says. “But I don’t see any reason why those people should pay less tax on the money they got than people that were born to working-class people, and are still working-class people.”

Pearl’s reckoning with his own extreme wealth began in Greece, during a meeting with bankers seeking a bailout, when he witnessed protests against the government and began to question his commitment to his career in finance.

“I just thought to myself: ‘Am I really doing any good for the people of Greece, beyond these 20 bankers I’m having lunch with?’ I just decided shortly thereafter that I’ve done as much as I could for the shareholders of BlackRock.”

One of his biggest gripes is how wealthy donors influence US politicians. Pearl has seen it firsthand, recalling his involvement with the Democratic party following Howard Dean’s ultimately unsuccessful 2004 campaign. “Our congresspeople, our senators spend a lot of time with their donors. So they get to know the donors, they get to know the problems the donors have,” Pearl says.

“They’ve heard it from the millionaire’s point of view. They’ve not necessarily heard the other guy’s point of view.”

‘Disneyland would never have happened’

Some members are questioning more than just the country’s tax structure. For Abigail Disney, the great-niece of Walt Disney, it’s about calling out America’s myths about wealth and success.

Disney believes the idea of truly self-made success is a fantasy; even her family’s own company would not have been successful without government subsidies.

“People who amass enormous amounts of wealth do so by relying very heavily on public services,” she says. “You know Disneyland would never have happened if Eisenhower hadn’t invested in the highways. They wouldn’t be a multinational corporation if there hadn’t been the Marshall Plan.”

Disney – who is reportedly worth $500m and estimates she has donated $70m to charity – and has been fiercely critical of the pay of corporate CEOs. Sitting in her office close to the Flatiron Building in New York City, she stresses that she doesn’t speak for her family or the Disney company, although reminders of her grand-uncle’s legacy are rife. An array of eccentric takes on the Disney cartoon canon line the walls – including one of “Mickey Mao”.

Not everyone is happy about the patriotic millionaires’ work – particularly other rich people.

Lawrence Benenson, a real estate executive and member of the group, recalls upsetting one acquaintance in particular, who argued that even though her family made $1m a year, it still wasn’t enough to get by in New York City. “You raise taxes and it’s going to be difficult,” he recalls the friend said. “And it’s like: ‘Are you insane?’”

Under the Trump administration, which delivered the biggest corporate tax cut in US history, the billionaire backlash has reached a fever pitch. Democratic presidential candidates such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have, in their 2020 policy proposals, both unveiled ambitious plans to tax the wealthiest Americans. Warren’s “ultra millionaire tax” would levy an additional 2% tax on households with a net worth of over $50m, and a 3% tax on those worth more than $1bn.

“If you look through history, all the smart people say you can measure a civilization’s civility by how it takes care of its poorest population,” Benenson says.

“And we’re doing a really bad job of that.”