New Memo Highlights How Ultra-Wealthy Drive up Costs for Working Families
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Tax the Greedy Billionaires released an interested parties memo endorsed by more than 20 progressive groups calling on lawmakers to go beyond articulating the failures of the Trump administration and offer a real, forward-looking economic agenda to build an economy that actually empowers working families and breaks up extreme concentrations of wealth. Endorsers include Americans for Tax Fairness, Popular Democracy, People’s Action, Public Citizen, and Patriotic Millionaires. (View the full list here.)
The affordability crisis is a wealth hoarding crisis. Historic concentrations of extreme wealth have enabled a small group of ultra-wealthy individuals to distort our economy, jacking up prices on everything from housing, healthcare, childcare, grocery, energy, and more. Any serious effort to address affordability must shift economic power away from billionaires and towards working people by taxing extreme wealth.
This new memo highlights the tangible ways billionaires control increasing costs on working Americans. Excerpts below:
- Billionaires are increasing the cost of housing. Billionaire-run private equity firms currently own at least 1.6 million housing units in the United States and deploy aggressive revenue-maximizing tactics to generate significant returns for their investors while increasing costs for families. Many of the metropolitan areas where private equity landlords own a large share of apartments—Tampa, Phoenix, Dallas, Atlanta, and Charlotte—have experienced sharp increases in rent.
- Billionaires are increasing the cost of healthcare and degrading care quality. Billionaire-run private equity loads hospitals with debt, cuts operating costs, and shuts down “unprofitable” services so billionaire investors can extract more cash—while patients in entire regions lose access to basic care or pay more for care.
- Billionaires are increasing the cost of childcare. Billionaire-run private equity firms now control an estimated 12% of the U.S. childcare market, concentrating ownership in large for‑profit chains that target higher‑income communities and charge premium prices far above federal affordability benchmarks. Families are already spending roughly 27% of their income on childcare, as average costs have jumped about 30% since 2020.
To be connected with real people impacted by rising costs, please email [email protected]. We have storytellers who can speak on healthcare, childcare, energy costs, and more.
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