To begin with, the No Billionaires Campaign isn’t about reducing the deficit. We don’t have a debt crisis in America, we have a demand crisis. Which is why we also have an unemployment crisis. Average working people don’t have enough money to spend, so goods and services aren’t in demand, and therefore businesses aren’t hiring any new employees to make things because nobody can afford to buy them.
The No Billionaires Campaign address this demand crisis head on – instead of trying to go after the phony debt crisis. The campaign meant to redistribute wealth from those at the very top, who can’t possibly spend all the billions they’re hoarding, to working people whose new disposable income, when spent, will power the economy and generate wealth for everyone.
As billionaire Nick Hanauer has repeatedly said, “There can never be enough super-rich Americans to power a great economy.”
Though billionaires have millions of times more wealth than average Americans, they do not buy millions more groceries, or shoes, or cars. Simply put, the 400 richest American billionaires just don’t have the purchasing power of hundreds of millions of working-class Americans with a solid middle-class income.
That’s why it’s a lie to call billionaires “job creators.” Working people spending money is what creates jobs, not rich people, whether their billions are sitting in Cayman Island bank accounts or in the stock of Microsoft.