Excessive Profit Tax?

QandO piece on Arlen Specter's desire for a tax on excessive profits.

Arlen Specter (R-Pander) wants a tax on excessive profits...

A Republican senator says the government should consider a tax on oil companies if they make excessive profits amid rising gasoline prices.

Tax those "extreme, obscene profits" echoes Senator Carl Levin (D-Greedy).

Therefore, since asking $3/gallon and making profits of 10%+/year is just unconscionable, I expect prompt Congressional action to remove taxpayer subsidies and impose windfall profits taxes on Kraft Foods.

With milk going for $3.19/gal — even more than gasoline! — and the dairy products in which Kraft Foods traffics generally going for even more, Kraft Foods is making a profit margin of 12.38%. That, by the way, is almost 2 percentage points higher than Exxon-Mobil's "extreme, obscene profits" profit margin.

I like some of the other ideas in the comments as well.

Since Windfall profits taxes are so good, I have a modest proposal. We push for a windfall profits tax on left wing actors and filmakers, and a big one on class action trial Lawyers.

That actually makes me laugh thinking about how the movie industry would explode.

More stupid taxes isn't the answer. Notice that there still hasn't been any intelligent proposals out of Washington.