Are there any existing tax benefits for educating your workers? That might be the next govt involved step here.
On the other hand, you'll find Libertarians like me. We're pissed off because the government is taking our tax-money on the pretense of fixing these issues, and has nothing to show for it. These are all problems that we expect to be fixed using our money, and yet it's not happening. It just get's dragged along, year after year, election after election. Meanwhile, millions and billions (or whichever amount) is spent on useless endeavors such as foreign intervention/meddling, and wars.
contributing to the GDP is synonymous with the basic function of any business. employing people is synonymous with the basic function of any business.
large corporations shouldn't be allowed to flaut their tax bill, while paying people minimum-wage-or-close-to-it, simply because they are a large part of the economy.
starbucks is not a non-profit. all of those activities are great, but this is kind of like saying that your heart does so much work in moving blood around that it does not need to oxygenate your blood.
Large corporations don't flout their tax bill. The imputation that they do is absurd, as doing so would result in jail time for those in charge. They take whatever deductions they can (just as you surely do on your tax bill), leveraging options to reduce it toward zero. Those deductions are, on the whole, enacted because some socioeconomic benefit comes of that deductible activity (some surely debatable, but some justification resulted in legislating the deduction). So while my example of employment & GDP contributions may not "qualify" to you (I'll leave you to contemplate a loss of 150,000 jobs and $14B of GDP), you've refined my argument to observe that by demanding greater tax payment you're (by consequence) demanding an end to incentivizing socioeconomic contributions which corporations make for the purpose of lowering their tax bill. Raising Starbucks' taxes from an assumed $0 to, what, $5,000,000,000 ... the equivalent of twice their employee base cumulative salary (at minimum-wage-or-close-to-it); eliminating deductions to force Starbucks to no longer "flout their tax bill" would not just end the good done by engaging in those deductible behaviors, but would also result in ejecting a large part of their workforce. You cannot ignore the socioeconomic good of employing so many and earning so much, nor ignore the good done (abiding with legislated incentives!) to reduce tax burden, and continue to blindly demand "fairness" as if increasing tax revenue won't have negative consequences.
You'll probably be likewise outraged to know that I've zeroed out my state tax liability this year. I wouldn't have leased an electric car if not for that deduction; would you rather the state have the deducted amount, or replace a smog-spewing old Jeep with a zero emissions vehicle?
As for your analogy: the heart doesn't oxygenate blood, its sole purpose IS to move blood, and somehow punishing it for not oxygenating while ignoring the service of pumping is just downright stupid.