Soak the Rich: Exxon Mobil

If you’re looking to squeeze more dollars out of private industry fat-cats – and what Progressive isn’t! – Exxon Mobil is a perfect candidate. Exxon’s currently top dog in the S&P 500 index by market cap, in addition to being a ravager of the planet and a generally non-patriotic corporate beast.

Here’s what we’re working with: a projected 2011 US budget deficit of $1.62 trillion. That means the federal government is spending $1.62 trillion more than it’s taking in. Excess spending is not the problem, because Senator Sherrod Brown and President Barack Obama have said so. No, the trouble with America’s balance sheet lies with greedy CEOs and corporations. Let’s redistribute some wealth!

Now Soaking: Exxon Mobil

• CEO Rex Tillerson’s compensation is listed as $21.48 million. Rex has been an officer on the Exxon board since 1999, so he’s got enough money. Rex’s $21,480,000 will help fund entitlements and economic “stimulus” programs.
• Exxon's income statement lists $21,561,000,000 in income taxes in 2010. That’s not nearly enough, but let’s be generous and simply double it. $21.56 billion more from Exxon will help Sherrod Brown and Barack Obama continue the Keynesian spending that has been so successful these past few years.
• What was a $1,620,000,000,000 deficit is now a mere $1,598,417,520,000 deficit.

Not to worry – doubling taxes on Exxon won’t cause undue harm to the corporation’s 83,600 employees or the holders of its 5 billion outstanding shares of common stock! Doubling taxes on Exxon also won’t affect the price of gasoline or anything else, and taking 100% of CEO Rex Tillerson’s pay won’t send the nation’s business leaders fleeing for safer shores. We hold these leftist conceits to be self-evident.

It also helps that essentially everyone (I’m including myself here) is terrible at visualizing big numbers. Leftist budgeting works by taking in tons of money, spending tons and tons of money, then shaking down “the rich” for tons more. Billions, trillions… it all works out, right?

Tons - (Tons + Tons) + Tons = Balanced Budget!

Cross-posted at that hero.

[Updated 05-03-2011 to specify that the second bullet point is from the company's income statement. I didn't look at write-offs or anything else to determine income tax; just pulled the number from the income statement.]