Abigail Disney has one of the world’s most recognizable names. But this week she became a thorn in her famous family’s side when she spoke out against the vast salary of the Walt Disney Company’s chief executive, Bob Iger, and found herself at the center of a debate about inequality and extreme wealth.

Disney, 59, made headlines after branding Iger’s near-$66m pay packet “insane”. In an interview with the Guardian, she was unrepentant, describing some of the Walt Disney Company’s financial pledges to employees as “neoliberal claptrap” and calling for Iger to renounce his extraordinary compensation.

Disney, the great-niece of Walt Disney, also derided Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, for his treatment of low-paid Amazon workers, in a wide-ranging conversation about the state of big business.

Abigail Disney made waves in a series of tweets, condemning Iger’s pay for having “deepened wealth inequality”. Iger made $65.6m in 2018 – 1,424 times the median salary of a Disney employee. The Walt Disney Company responded by saying it had agreed to pay a minimum wage of $15 an hour by 2021. It also said it plans to spend $150m on an education initiative to provide free college training.

But Disney, the great-niece of Walt Disney, told the Guardian she found the company’s response “insulting”.

“They say they pay more than the federal minimum wage. But they know [$15 an hour] is not a living wage in Anaheim,” Disney said, referring to the southern California city where Disneyland is located.

In 2017, the Guardian reported that some Disneyland workers were forced to live in their cars because of low pay. At that time the Orange county office of care coordination estimated the hourly wage needed to afford a median-priced, one-bedroom unit in Orange county last year was $25.46, while a 2018 study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition found that pay of $15 an hour wasn’t enough to rent a two-bedroom rental home in a majority of US states.

“Then they go on to say that they offer education and upward mobility – and that’s neoliberal claptrap,” Disney said. She added that the company’s response implied people’s current jobs were not being valued.

“The presumption that every job is a job from which you should ascend is to say that the job you start in isn’t a real thing, or that it doesn’t deserve all the respect and dignity any other job deserves.”

Then they go on to say that they offer education and upward mobility – and that’s neoliberal claptrap Abigail Disney

Disney, who stresses she does not speak for her family, has found herself at the center of a wider discussion about income inequality in the US, where the richest 1% of Americans own more wealth than the bottom 90% combined.

The Democratic contenders 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.

As part of a wealthy group of Americans called the Patriotic Millionaires, Abigail Disney is calling for higher taxes on the richto close that gap. For her, offering education programs rather than livable wages, is “an insult” to some minimum-wage workers who would be unable to take up the offer of higher learning.

“Many of them are immigrants who weren’t educated in their own countries. And if you’re not fluent in your second language how are you gonna ascend into these jobs? So [it’s] a set of really middle-class, entitled presumptions,” she said.

References to her great-uncle’s cartoon empire abound in Disney’s New York City office, where she runs her documentary company Fork Films. A Pinocchio portrait hangs on one wall and a playful “Mickey Mao” sketch on another, while a “Feminist AF” nameplate on her desk offered a nod to her philanthropic work. Disney’s Peace is Loud charity promotes female leaders around the world, and she estimates she has given $70m to charity over the past 20 years.

The 59-year-old, whose grandfather Roy O Disney co-founded the Walt Disney Company with his animator brother, inherited a share of her family’s wealth, and is reported to be worth $500m. She has no role in running the Walt Disney Company, but said she has “deep loyalty” about its meaning to people.

The company has defended Iger’s pay, saying the CEO has “delivered exceptional value” for the company’s shareholders. Iger’s tenure has seen the company’s stock price rise to $135 a share in 2019, up from $24 in 2005, and it is valued at close to $250bn.

Abigail Disney, who has shares in the company, has benefited from that rise. She described Iger as a “brilliant man”, who “deserves to be rewarded well”.

“I also think he’s a good man,” she said.

But does that justify his $65.6m pay packet?

“No one on this freaking planet is worth that kind of money,” she said.

Bob Iger. The Walt Disney Company said Iger had delivered ‘exceptional value’ for shareholders. Photograph: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP

Abigail Disney also has strong views on Amazon. Senator Warren wants to break up the retail giant to create a more level playing field – and Disney was also critical of Bezos, the world’s richest man with an estimated net worth of $156.1bn.

“Jeff Bezos could just pay people well at Amazon,” Disney said, pointing to the company’s immense fortunes.

In October last year, Amazon – which is valued at $957bn and made record profits in the first quarter of 2019 of more than $1bn a month – has pledged to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour after years of protests from workers. But critics say that isn’t enough.

Some employees said cuts Amazon simultaneously made to bonuses negated the increase, and the company has also been criticized for poor working conditions. The Guardian found that in November – the month the increase to $15 an hour took effect – part-time workers at Amazon-owned Whole Foods had their hours cut.

In a statement, Amazon said full-time staff in Whole Foods stores “averaged the same number of hours in January and February 2019 as they did during the same time last year”. It said claims that it was “reducing hours as a result of increased wages” were false.

The company said: “Employees are the heart and soul of our operations and we work hard to ensure they are provided a safe, comfortable, and modern work environment, as well as opportunities for upward mobility […] We encourage anyone to compare our pay and benefits to other retailers.”

Her comments come as CEO-worker pay gaps shoot up and the debate about extreme wealth takes on a new urgency. A report by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations unions found that, in 2017, CEOs at major US companies made 361 times more money than the average production worker, up from a ratio of 42-to-1 in 1980 and 20-to-1 in 1950. For Disney, change can only be driven by wealthy individuals like Iger making sacrifices. One solution, she suggested, would be for Iger and other CEOs to tell their companies not to pay them as much.

“It is possible to say no to money,” she said. “If CEOs don’t lead this by making a conscious ethos shift, then I don’t know where we’re gonna go.”