Part of this is taxes... if we just taxed them properly they wouldn't grow large and wouldn't need to be broken up.
Companies don’t pay taxes, people pay taxes. Companies may be the ones signing the checks to IRS, but they’re not the ones footing the bill.
The only difference is that for big companies it’s worth their while to have lots of accountants working the books, the same way it’s worth it to have lots of engineers fine-tuning the tech.
The advantages over small companies aren't neccessarily a problem - in the same way that it isn't a problem that a fabric mill makes hand weaving uncompetitive and that a skilled weaver makes a rank amateur uncompetitive.
In other words: progressive taxation destroys wealth creation.
No, progressive taxation destroys wealth concentration.
I understand that when the pockets that wealth is concentrated in are your own, it might feel like destruction in a "who-moved-my-cheese" sense, but the fact is, no wealth is destroyed.
Arguably, at taxation extremes, wealth creation does suffer: too high and you remove some of the incentive to earn more (if there were a 100% tax rate above a certain bracket, for example), too low and government can't afford to enforce property rights and your incentives are to invest in protecting what you have (or can grab).
But in the very broad middle, the data shows that progressive taxation does not reduce the incentive to create wealth, and in fact the creation of wealth by most measures ends up being higher overall.
What is the difference to me, as an individual, what happens to the wealth once it's been taken from me?
Since I'm not spending it to further my own goals (e.g. by charitable donation to a cause whose values I share), does it matter whether that money has been spent on something someone else values, or literally burned?
Since I'm pretty sure that burning it would cause a deflationary spiral, yep.