Interesting article in U.S. News & World Report: Should Uncle Sam Take Oil Company Profits?, by James Pethokoukis:
How about a windfall profits tax on Google? It’s an idea that came to me after watching a video of Sen. Hillary Clinton, speaking at the Democratic National Committee’s winter wing-ding, apparently call for the confiscation of oil company profits. As the front-runner for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination put it:
The other day the oil companies reported the highest profits in the history of the world. I want to take those profits, and I want to put them into a strategic energy fund that will begin to fund alternative smart energy … technologies that will begin to actually move us toward the direction of independence.
Why stop there? Why not confiscate a portion of Google’s fat annual profits–the company’s 2006 earnings were some $3 billion on revenue of $10.6 billion–and use it for some relevant national goal?
