JF wrote:
One follows the other.
Strictly speaking, it works both ways (and not just one, as you have described). And if it's a chicken or egg question, it might very well be seen to start with basic infrastructure and services (upon which private industry is organized and primarily benefits). This includes everything that pertains to a well run, stable, and orderly society: physical infrastructure, accountable and good governance, health, education, justice and legal system (that protects private property), banking (that is organized around regular and predictable rules), regulatory bodies (that ensure conformity of private industry to general and public interest), etc. Without any of these civil and public interest institutions and protections, you have corruption and graft, an unstable business environment, uncertain property and investment rules, and more importantly a poorly performing and inconsistent labor market.
So once again, regular rules, civil institutions, and orderliness looks to me like a free service to industry (upon which private enterprise and capital receives a clear and very significant benefit). Hence, the fairness of taxes as a means of accounting for these fundamental and broadly received benefits.
You clearly want to make some kind of ideologically derived argument about "job creation" and private industry as being a driver in this. When doing so, I'm not sure why common sense has to be left out of the picture, or some notion of civil society and the social contract (since none of us lives in a Hobbsian State of Nature … nasty, brutish, and short … and modern capital, when predictable and regular, abhors a vacuum).