The American Revolution is the ONLY revolution in the history of the world started by elites—the people that had the most to lose. Can you imagine Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Donald Trump getting together to overthrow the government? It would never happen! Yet that’s the situation that existed in the 13 colonies before the revolution.

There's a lot more to explaining how the American Colonies went from king-loving loyal British citizens in 1763 to firing the "shot heard 'round the world" on the morning of April 19, 1775 than simply repeating the bumper sticker slogan, "No taxation without representation." 

Reasons rich guys would stage a revolution:  

• Franklin said the revolution began because the British forbid the colonies from issuing their own paper money. This affected every tradesman and merchant in the colonies. With no paper money the colonists had to use coins--gold and silver--for all business transactions. With a severely limited money supply businesses suffered, profits dwindled, workers suffered, and the once thriving colonial economy  floundered.
   

• “Tell me about...OHIO.” When the French and Indian War ended in a victory for the colonies and Britain there was an incredibly huge tract of land that was left vacated by the French (except for a few hundreds of thousands of natives…) in North America. Certain moneyed interests in the 13 colonies, before the war was even over,  thought they could go in, claim the land, and resell it at a profit. Then King George drew the Proclamation Line of 1763 and nullified any colonial land claims. That angered a lot of very powerful colonials.
   

• The Enlightenment. Apparently the elites in the 13 colonies were pretty good readers. There were people like John Locke, Montaigne, Descartes, and Voltaire that, for over a hundred years, were raising issues surrounding  the Rights of Man that appealed to people like Franklin and Jefferson. Freedom and liberty were concepts being bandied about on both sides of the Atlantic. The colonial elites thought they should be more free than they perceived they were. In 1776,  Thomas Paine wrote his Common Sense pamphlet calling American colonists to declare independence so they could have the freedoms guaranteed by natural laws. He believed in the themes of the Enlightenment and wanted all men to join him in these beliefs.
   

• James Otis may not have said it first, but he is the one most closely associated with the phrase, “No taxation without representation.” But the 13 colonies HAD representation! Each colony had its own legislature. Local communities had town hall meetings. And the elites of the colonies met informally on their own. Granted, there was no representative in Parliament exclusively for the 13 colonies, but for almost a hundred years the British were practicing Salutary Neglect—they left the colonies alone—and the colonies liked it that way!
   

• The rights of Englishmen. The elites of the 13 colonies felt slighted by the British. George Washington quit the British Army when he was told he could never be a full officer because he wasn’t born in England. The colonial shakers and movers—educated men of great wealth and property—didn’t like the way the British aristocracy, Parliament, and George III slighted them. The attitude in London was that anyone from across the pond was a “rustic” and could never socially or politically measure up.
  
  Rights of Englishmen were included in the colonial charters and were generally identified through English common law. The struggle against Gov. Edmund Andros's arbitrary rule in the Dominion of New England during the 1680s, as well as the publication of John Locke's Two Treatises of Government in 1690, popularized knowledge of these rights. After the Glorious Revolution (1688), colonists identified the English Bill of Rights and other new legislation as the foundation of English liberty–safeguards against tyranny at home and abroad, under laws that governed both king and Parliament. After 1763, colonists claimed the right of English subjects to be taxed internally only if they had representation in Parliament. Later, the patriot movement asserted English liberties to defend life, liberty, and property.
   

• Smugglers, like the richest fellow in New England John Hancock, had their livelihoods threatened when the British LOWERED TAXES on tea and other goods to encourage the colonials to purchase tea from the British East India Company or other goods from English merchants. The colonials turned out to be masterful propagandists. When Britain did away with the taxes the colonists hated, the British were then accused of flooding the colonial markets with goods that would undermine colonial manufacturers. The radicals that wanted rebellion were not satisfied with anything Parliament or the King did.

Add to the factors listed above the simple fact that Parliament dropped the ball on the way the colonies were governed. One mistaken policy after another played right into the hands of the most radical colonists. By the time the British figured out what was happening the mother country and her colonies were well on their way to what became the War for Independence.