Democrats just won’t give up on this; especially during an election year.  They know that people who might easily be talked into voting Democrat are, economically ignorant.  The newest idea?  A 3% surtax on all earned incomes higher than $1,000,000 per year.   

There are about 139,960,580 tax payers with positive AGI in 2010.  Only 0.2% of taxpayers earn a million dollars or more, meaning that there about 279,921 households will be target with this wonderful new bash-the-rich surtax.  Let’s assume that all of these households earn pretty much around the $1 million mark (because let’s face it, there are a lot more people earning close to a million than close to a billion).  With a 3% surtax on $1 million, that comes out to $30,000 for every household -- assuming they earn $1 million – and that’s not considering any tax breaks that might get in the way.  Multiply the number of households earning a million (279,921) by the surtax ($30,000) and you get 8,397,630,000 … so about $8 billion.  How fast do we spend money does our bloated federal government spend in a day?  Try $3.7 trillion dollars.  That turns out to be about $10 billion per day, and that means that the wonderful 3% surtax on the evil rich would bring in enough money to operate our government until just about dinner time on only one day.

Let’s really give the left a wet dream … let’s just tax all AGI above $1,000,000 at 100%.  After all, nobody really “needs” more than a million a year, right?  And after all, with the Dear Ruler in office, it’s all about from each according to their ability and to each according to their need.  So let’s just take it all.  And just how long would that run our government?  About three days. 

You should also consider the fact that many taxpayers will magically change their earning habits to bring that total under $1 million in order to escape the extra tax.   But this isn’t about funding government … this is about stirring up class envy and trying to convince the dumb masses that what were facing is not a spending problem .. it’s simply a taxing problem, and all we have to do is get the evil rich to “pay their fair share” and everything will just be fine. 

What if we just taxed the billionaires …. Not just taxed them but took away everything that they earned and made them sell all of their assets?  From Investors Business Daily:

According to the Forbes 400, America has 400 billionaires with a combined net worth of $1.3 trillion. Congress could confiscate their stocks and bonds, and force them to sell their businesses, yachts, airplanes, mansions and jewelry. The problem is that after fleecing the rich of their income and net worth, and the Fortune 500 corporations of their profits, it would only get us to mid-August.

Also consider that the top 1% of taxpayers earned $1.6 trillion in 2010.  These are households earning over $380,000 a year.  Even if we took all of their wealth earned in 2010, we would be unable to fund our government for one year, as we will spend $3.7 trillion.