So it might be a little nitpicky, and your point still stands. A lot of money is spent on defense and business, but not as much as the before portrays.

Where businesses benefit is in not paying the tax, instead of receiving payments. That's definitely a problem, but it's a different thing.

Local taxes are for petty but useful stuff because the sovereignty of your locality is heavily circumscribed by state and national authorities. That means the real budgetary decisions made about the future of the nation, anything interesting, anything made with some level of self-determination, is made at the national level. Unfortunately, in the USA, budgetary discretion is used for war and rhetorically defended by all politicians while the non-discretionary spending on e.g. social security, is constantly attacked.