Soak the Rich, Week 7

Because seven is such a lucky number, many of you are thinking the seventh week of Soak the Rich is the one where we fill in the 2011 U.S. budget deficit - a $1.62 trillion gap - by cranking up taxes on big corporations. Many of you are 5.215% correct.

Starting with the ten largest corporations in the S&P 500, we’ve soaked 14 of the most successful businesses in the world. Though sophists like Sherrod Brown and Barack Obama aren’t specific about their assuredly non-socialist methodology, we’ve taken a leap to doubled corporate income taxes and fully "reclaimed" CEO pay.

If these extreme measures (view Excel summary) won’t work, there’s a tiny chance Sherrod Brown is either ignorant or dishonest to claim the budget could be balanced by making The Rich pay their fair share!

By dramatically increasing taxes on fourteen of America’s largest companies, we could reduce the 2011 U.S. budget deficit from $1,620,000,000,000 to $1,535,510,754,960. That’s a 5.215% slice of a single year’s deficit pie. Even if soaking a few hundred more employers could cover the remaining 94.785% of the 2011 deficit, would it be worth it?

Of course it would! As any Progressive will tell you, raising taxes on The Rich has no negative effects. Among the things that won’t happen if Sherrod Brown taxes his way to the chart above:

• None of the corporations’ 4,457,460 employees will lose their jobs.
• None of the funds or individuals holding the corporations’ 56,628,800,000 shares of stock will be ruined… unless they deserve it!
• None of the products or services – fast food, construction equipment, business & consumer lending, the thousands of items available at Wal-Mart, prescription drugs, medical devices, computer software, cell phone service, broadband access, Band-Aids, baby soap, energy, transportation, iPods, laptops, servers, networking equipment, toothpaste, diapers, detergent, etc. – sold by these companies will get more expensive.
• None of the world’s entrepreneurs or executives will stop investing in American businesses.

It’s a good thing raising taxes is an all-around win, because Sherrod Brown is our only hope and soaking The Rich is his only idea.

Wait, I nearly forgot – Sherrod Brown would be happy to cut defense spending! Because that isn’t one of the few things the U.S. Congress is actually supposed to spend money on.

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Cross-posted at that hero.