Sep
10
2025

Atlas is Probably Already Shrugging

I Know I Am

In the text version, Jessica Riedl outlines the likely outcome: Here's what would happen if we seized all wealth from America's 800 billionaires.

Budget deficits of nearly $2 trillion—and speeding towards $4 trillion within a decade—will force increasingly difficult budgetary trade-offs. Many on the left, and sometimes the populist right, respond with: "Easy, just tax the rich. Problem solved."

But is it really that easy? Can most of these soaring budget deficits be closed by higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations? The answer is an emphatic "no." And that's not a question of ideology, or of picking winners and losers. It's just a matter of unforgiving math: Deficits have grown too big for even aggressive tax-the-rich policies to fix significantly.

Taxing the rich could be part of a broader deficit "grand deal" where all taxes and spending are up for debate. But it could only ever be a modest part of such a deal, because the potential revenue available from taxing the rich can close only a small portion of our nearly unfathomable deficits.

Jessica counts "about 800" American billionaires, and if Uncle Stupid simply expropriated all their wealth at full market value, it would pay for about 9 months of federal expenditures.

I recently linked to the WSJ article on billionaires; they count 1,135 of them, with a total worth of $5.7 trillion. That's a little higher than Jessica's numbers, but note that (as I type) FY2025 federal expenditures are $5,975,153,096,082.

On a related "tax the rich" note, I note that the probable next Mayor of NYC is a lying weasel:

Did you spot the lie? It's that word "asking". If Mamdani gets his way, the city won't be politely "asking" its "top earners" for more money; it will be demanding it, with guns.

Also of note:

  • Shut up, they explained. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has issued its 2026 College Free Speech Rankings.

    Free speech is under continuous threat at many of America's colleges, pushed aside in favor of politics, comfort, or simply a desire to avoid controversy. As a result, speech codes dictating what may or may not be said, "free speech zones" confining speech to tiny areas of campus, and administrative attempts to punish or repress campus free speech on a case-by-case basis have become all too common.

    So you can check out how your favorite institution of higher education is doing in that regard.

    I (of course) looked at the University Near Here. Although it got a good "green light" rating for its printed speech policies, its overall grade was a dismal D.

    FIRE is a tough grader. UNH is actually ranked #38 among the 257 schools surveyed. It's been up-and-down for them. Last year they were ranked #59, and the year before that, #3.

  • And on the other side of the Salmon Falls River… The Federalist reports lawfare: RNC Asks DOJ To Investigate Maine's Trump-Hating Election Chief.

    The Republican National Committee is asking the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, days after video showed the Trump-hating leftist acknowledging that there are surely “some” noncitizens on the state’s dirty voter rolls.

    According to documents exclusively obtained by The Federalist, RNC legal staff has sent a formal complaint to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division, Michael Gates, alleging Bellows has violated the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).

    The Democrat who attempted to boot then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump off Maine’s 2024 GOP primary ballot has effectively extended her middle finger to the RNC’s requests to make public “all records” pertaining to Maine’s voter list maintenance system, the complaint says. Bellows has apparently done the same to the DOJ when they requested voter data, telling the Trump administration to “jump into the Gulf of Maine.”

    Not that it matters, but President Trump's renaming of the Gulf of Mexico set off a round of suggestions for remaning the Gulf of Maine. Google shows:

    • Gulf of Wabanaki;
    • Gulf of Massachusetts;
    • Gulf of Lobster;
    • Gulf of Massholes.

    … and probably others I've missed.

    But those surviving the Gulf plunge will be electing a US Senator from Maine, either Susie Collins, or someone far worse, like this guy: Democratic Senate Candidate in Maine Claims 'Genocide' Perpetrated 'in Palestine'. That's Graham Platner previously mentioned here, raving Bernie-style about Theo Ligarchy and Geno Cide. From his Facebook ad:

    Nothing pisses me off more than getting a fundraising text from Democrats talking about how they're fighting fascism… Because it's such B.S. We're not idiots. Everyone knows most of them aren't doing jack right now to fight back.

    People are being kidnapped into unmarked vans by masked police. There is a genocide happening in Palestine. Literal billionaires have taken over our government. And all Democratic leadership can do is send us another fundraising text?

    Yes (eye roll) Graham is a "fighting fighter who fights".

    And, for poll-watchers, Nate Silver's site (but not Nate himself) wonders: Is Susan Collins toast?

    I probably don’t have to sell you on the stakes of Collins’s race. Why? Because it’ll be pretty much impossible for Democrats to take back the Senate next year — and difficult in 2028 — without defeating Collins. She’s the only Republican incumbent up for reelection in a state that Kamala Harris won in 2024, which automatically puts her in the “most vulnerable Republican seats” category — a lonely group that also includes North Carolina’s open seat and Senator Jon Husted’s seat in Ohio.

    There are a lot of declared Democrat candidates besides Platner. And Governor Janet Mills might run too, although she hasn't said.

  • Some wise words from Kat Rosenfield. She writes at the Free Press on The Taboo That Killed Iryna Zarutska. After reviewing the horrific video, that one you've either already seen, or decided you won't:

    Zarutska’s murder has received a striking lack of coverage from most mainstream media outlets, and while on one hand this is hardly surprising—there are tens of thousands of homicides in this country every year, and only a handful of these ever become national news—it’s hard not to see the silence of the press on this matter as representative of a certain bias in what kinds of American crime stories are deemed worthy of public attention. It’s hard not to compare, for instance, the media response to the death of Iryna Zarutska last month with its coverage of the May 2023 encounter on the New York City subway between Daniel Penny and Jordan Neely—who, like Brown, was black, homeless, mentally ill, and prone to violent outbursts on public transit.

    Then, as now, there was a sense that it was in bad taste—if not outright racist—to acknowledge that men like Brown and Neely are a familiar presence in American urban public spaces, and that this presence is not a good thing. Then, as now, the progressive party line was that it’s “real corny” and “a mark of low moral character” to admit that you are discomfited by encountering people on public transit who behave in ways that telegraph the imminent possibility of violence, or confrontation, or the lower-grade-but-still-unpleasant spectacle of seeing someone evacuate his bowels onto the seat where, but for your instinctive choice to herd your family down the car, your 3-year-old toddler would still have been sitting.

    The problem with this taboo around certain uncomfortable truths about public disorder is that when you make discussing those truths a thing that is Simply Not Done by decent progressive people, you leave the field of discourse wide open to the kind of person who cares about neither progressive politics nor decency. That is where we are now.

    And there's more at the link.