While I disagree with some of your assumptions, I think that given your assumptions, your conclusions are very logical and fair. I do agree that the corporate tax rate is in many ways unnecessary since it is some ways redundant and in other ways leads to a cycle to the bottom.

Your assumptions about the recent decrease in consumer spending (i.e. no one has money) ignores the quite clear numbers that indicate that Americans have decided for a period of several months to pay down debt and increase their personal savings, which has resulted in a marked decrease in discretionary spending and a gigantic decline in the assumption of new debt (car and home purchases).

The fact is that relatively high corporate tax rates hurt us our country when it comes to competing with companies based in more tax-friendly lands. There are a lot of other reasons to run your company in the U.S. (physical security, mass of talent/technology, infrastructure) that allows us to get away with the current level of corp tax. But don’t imagine for a moment that it’s not a burden. A reduction in the rate to competitive levels would give us ALL of the advantages.

You’re also mistakenly interpreting the notion that JTP would be hurt by Dem tax policy as meaning that his income tax rate would go up. In fact, it goes down a bit, but that is NOT the problem. The harm is that the overall tax burden on America goes up, meaning that there is less money in the private economy and more money in the government. Libertarians like myself believe that that is a poor development which will in fact hurt every person who doesn’t have a political connection: JTP, some homeless fellow in San Diego and the owner of the S-Corp that I work for alike.

Unfortunately, the current batch of Republican spokespeople don’t seem to be able to articulate their positions very well. Maybe it’s because they don’t understand them. Of course, I’ve rarely ran into a partisan Democrat that can actually put up anything like a logical argument either, so I guess it runs both ways.