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No. You've got it dead wrong. "... tax breaks, investment write-offs, and other business tax 'expenditures'" are tax dodges and fakery, loopholes that businesses routinely lobby for and bribe politicians for and use to avoid paying taxes while they whine and bleat about how high their tax rates are.

This is about a straight tax on profits, (not gross income), i.e., money going to the owners or stockholders after all costs and overhead is satisfied, and giving businesses the option to avoid those taxes by re-investing in their own businesses (and the economy) instead of giving it to their stockholders as dividends or to managers as bonuses. In the long run it will benefit the business by building up its customer base and creating growth. And it will further economize by removing the political, legal and accounting costs of administering the current system.

To make it worthwhile for the stockholders, they could be given a capital gains tax cut to compensate for their lowered dividends, in fact, the two could be linked, so their net dividend income remained unchanged or even higher. This would not discourage investment, it would do just the opposite.

The money is now not being "circulated" through the banking system and back into the economy, as the capitalists would have us believe. For one thing, the banks are not lending it. Second, it is being extracted from the economy and going overseas, or migrating to domestic tax-free havens and shelters, or being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. This is why the poorer we get, and the more poor there are, the richer the rich get. Did you really think concentration of wealth was just a coincidence? No, it is deliberate. It was planned and nurtured by those who benefit the most from it. Their prosperity is being fed by the misery of the society. Same as it ever was, only more so.

Money that is taxed may not be spent as efficiently as if it were invested privately, but at least it is staying here, not vanishing into the pockets of the wealthy and their offshore investment institutions and shelters.

Tom, capitalism is no longer individual middle class entrepreneurs opening corner businesses and hiring their neighbors. It is entering into its final, bloated and most decadent stages. It is no longer a commensal organism, or even a wholesome predator keeping the prey healthy by culling its weak. It is a vampire, a parasite that is killing its host.

You argue convincingly here every day that if we had a real laissez-faire system, a Libertarian economy, this would not happen, and maybe (I said maybe) you're right. But we will never have your Randian Paradise here because it isn't as obscenely profitable for big business. The business community wants no part of a laissez-faire economy. They don't want competition and they don't want free markets. They will do everything in their power to avoid competing for capital, raw materials, labor, and customers. And since they control the currency of political power in this country, money to buy propaganda and politicians, the fantasy world of Objectivist philosophy will never happen. It can't.

The enemy of free enterprise is not Socialism, it is Finance Capitalism.