Soak the Rich: Week 2 Progress

As an avid fan of Senator Sherrod Brown’s practiced class warfare routine, I was disappointed to learn that one week of soaking the biggest corporations in the S&P 500 index wasn’t enough to fill the U.S. government’s $1.62 trillion budget deficit. Mercifully, there are no shortage of bad, successful corporations left to penalize!

This week we put the Brown / Obama policy of higher taxes on The Rich to good use, doubling the corporate income taxes General Electric and Chevron Corporation reported for 2010. We also took all compensation from the CEOs at both corporations, for a cumulative budget-balancing act that looks like this:

So close, yet... not even close at all! Oh well – there’s always next week, and there’s always someone else to tax for America’s rapidly expanding entitlement costs.

Grand Progressive Accomplishments

• Fiscal year 2011 US budget deficit reduced from $1,620,000,000,000 to $1,579,852,210,000
• Deficit reduction as a percent of the FY2011 total: 2.478%

Ways the Market Will Not Respond

• None of the corporations’ combined 482,000 employees will lose their jobs
• None of the funds or individuals holding the corporations’ combined 18,524,800,000 shares of stock will be ruined
• Domestic and foreign lenders will not stop investing in American companies or entrepreneurs
• Talented workers and business leaders won’t flee the country
• Corporations (those already soaked or those further down the list) won’t move more jobs overseas

Things that Won’t Get More Expensive

• Shiny MP3 players, laptops, tablet PCs, consumer software, or the hipster lifestyle in general
• Gasoline, plastics, or any of the other products dependent on Big Oil
• Natural gas or any of its competitors in the energy market
• Anything that needs to be shipped from one place to some other place
• Jet engines, lending, or any of the million other things GE sells

Maybe covering less than 2.5% of a single year’s budget deficit seems like small potatoes, considering the severe scope of these tax increases. Remember, fellow leftists: there are many fat-cat corporations that don’t contribute enough to America’s nationwide, knee-deep safety net, and any number of ways heroes like Sherrod Brown and Barack Obama can bridge the gap between free markets and fair markets!

Cross-posted at that hero.