On the Following Fair Taxation System(s).

Pro proposes alternative systems to be "fair" without even suggesting the definition of "fair." Bear with me as I develop a suitable definition. The reason that taxes exist at all is to provide for the necessary functions of government, such as the police, the courts, and the military. The reason that those government functions are necessary is that having them promotes the overall well-being of the country, and in particular the economic well-being. For example, if we didn't have a court system, contracts could not be enforced and overall commerce would be severely inhibited. Net prosperity increases by having a court system. Government has legitimate non-economic functions as well as economic functions. For example, citizens may choose to provide welfare payments to the poor. Those functions will be most affordable if the economy as a whole prospers the most by most efficient use of whatever money is left in the private sector after taxes have been collected. Indeed, "fairness" may require helping the poor. However, that is fairness separate from the tax system. I am claiming that the fairest way to raise taxes is the system of taxation that allows the system to have the greatest overall prosperity. In other words, it is unfair to tax people so that the overall prosperity of the country is diminished more than it has to be. How the revenue raised by taxes is spent is a different question, which involves other issues of fairness. This leads to the definition of "fairness" in taxation as: The most fair tax system is the system that provides the needed revenue to government with the least damage to the economic well-being of the country. In the definition "needed" means whatever the democratic process determines government needs, not what is needed on some absolute scale of need. Under the definition offered, System 1 and System 2 as first stated seem to be reasonable efficient systems. What destroys any possibility of them being fair is Pro's "last component" of protective tariffs. Protective tariffs severely damage the productivity of an economy. This is well-established both in theory and practice. Protective tariffs (a) preserve inefficient industries by protecting them from competition, and (b) doing so ties up resources that would otherwise go to industries in which the country is genuinely competitive. Relative to maintaining inefficiency, liberal economist Thomas Friedman's book "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" gives many examples. In the auto industry after WWII, India and Japan took different approaches to developing their industries. Hindustani Motors was diligently protected by the Indian government, preserving all of the local jobs. Toyota and other Japanese companies had to slug it out in the competitive marketplace. The results were entirely predictable. Relative to tying up resources, consider the fight to protect the textile industry in North Carolina and other parts of the South. The protection effort failed, and so jobs sewing shirts were lost to overseas. However, North Carolina is now considerably more prosperous than before, shifting resources to new industries like technology, pharmaceuticals, and banking. The proper role of government is to retrain people for new jobs and to facilitate transition, not to damage the economy by preventing it. The argument that preventing competition from lesser-developed nations helps them is truly a puzzlement. Pro asserts that the U.S. has been doing manufacturing in Africa and that has kept the Africans poor. This is false because (a) there has been no such manufacturing in Africa, (b) Africa's economic problems are more due to experiments in socialism, both democratic and undemocratic, than to any other factor [carefully documented by Muravchik: "Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism"], and (c) what Africa mainly produces for export, other than minerals, are agricultural commodities, and protective tariffs set up by the U.S. and Europe have inflicted substantial damage on those countries [Friedman, op cit]. The prime example of manufacturing jobs moving overseas is mainland China. Pro asserts that a lack of US protective tariffs should render them impoverished and effectively a colony of the developed world. That has not happened. Nor has it happened in Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan that would in Pro's thinking have been the first round of victims of this "colonial oppression." Nor is it happening in Malaysia, Thailand, or the current beneficiaries of free trade. Keep in mind that US workers are consumers of manufactured goods. Thus increasing the price of manufactured goods hurts US workers substantially. So as their jobs sewing clothing are preserved, they get to pay more for not only clothing, but many other manufactured goods. Pro's tax proposals are manifestly unfair because the protective tariffs unnecessarily damage the economy. A fair system does not punish citizens by unnecessary reducing their prosperity.