Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) insists we can balance the 2011 federal budget’s $1.62 trillion deficit by raising taxes on America’s most successful employers, so I’ve been calculating the results of punishing evil corporations and their fat-cat CEOs. Starting with the ten largest companies in the S&P 500 index and moving to the least-Progressive villains after that, how far have twenty applications of Sherrod’s Sure-Fire Budget Oil brought us?
Though Sherrod – like President Obama – isn’t specific about his assuredly non-socialist methodology, my figures use the class-warrior’s dream scenario of doubled corporate income taxes and fully “reclaimed” CEO pay. If these extreme measures (view Excel summary) won’t work, Ohioans might want to start looking for a senator with more sense than Sherrod Brown!
Pictured above: the 2011 deficit bucket, and the 5.642% drop that would result from dramatically increasing taxes on twenty of America’s largest employers. That’s a reduction from $1,620,000,000,000 to $1,528,603,943,210. Even if soaking a few hundred more corporations could cover the remaining 94.358%, 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 and President Obama tax their way to the chart above:
- None of the corporations’ 4,921,660 employees will lose their jobs.
- None of the corporations’ products or services – health insurance, prescription drugs, medical devices, business & consumer lending, gasoline, construction equipment, air travel, shipping, cell phone service, broadband access, fast food, the thousands of items available at Amazon.com & Wal-Mart, toothpaste, diapers, detergent, baby soap, Band-Aids, computer software, iPods, laptops, servers, networking equipment, etc. – will get more expensive.
- None of the funds or individuals holding the corporations’ 61,229,800,000 shares of stock will be ruined… unless they deserve it!
- 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; soaking The Rich is the only idea Senator Brown and President Obama have got, and we’re stuck with them until January 2013.
Catch all the Soak the Rich fun on Facebook, and find me on Twitter at @jasonahart!
Cross-posted at that hero.
Please drop this crap....very boring.
ReplyDeleteYeah we get it, you dont want anyone to pay taxes...let it go
ReplyDeleteYeah, lets keep giving corporations tax breaks while trying to finance two wars and increasing Medicare costs as the baby boomers continue to retire. And they say the tea party isn't fit to govern... Well, then again, maybe they're right.
ReplyDeleteWhat's the matter? Its the progressive dream, man!!!
ReplyDeleteWe thought you libs and the plunderpals would love this series!
Anonymouses: If you're indifferent to the federal deficit and the left's hare-brained ideas for addressing it, feel free to skip future Soak the Rich posts.
ReplyDeleteI've made it easy; just stop reading when you get through the title! Assuming you're not doing that already.
I read it every week, and I asked a question last week which was never answered. So what is your idea to fix things, cause right now, we have a bunch of politicians using 20th century ideas to try to solve 21st century problems.
ReplyDeleteMJL
ReplyDeleteThe first answer is cut the size of govt. Next is get the economy growing again. The best way to do this is to get off of the necks of American businesses, through cutting excessive regulation (like financial reform and HC leg that have injected 2 decades worth of ambiguity into the marketplace), lowering corporate taxes (the US has the second honest corp tax rate in the world) and easing international biz restrictions (allow foreign profits to flow back to the US w no penalty.)
And I love how this blog is dissecting this argument and making Brown and Obama look increasingly smaller and intellectually simple-minded. Thanks, guys!!
And while our corp tax rate may be honest, what I meant to type was 'highest'. Happy to clarify.
ReplyDeleteWhy don't you drop your terrible metaphor and come up with something a little more effective than "soaking". Seriously, you tout yourself as one of the best political blogs in Ohio and you spend most of your bandwidth addressing an issue that NOBODY feels any remorse about except for ideologues such as yourself with your heads so far up your asses that you've managed to find yourself in a place where you're devoting time to feeling sympathy for the top twenty corporations. Soaking the rich? Wait, let me stop what I'm doing and force out a tear on account of this soaking. Good god. What if you tried to make an effective, useful, conservative point?
ReplyDelete