in less than a heart-beat. Apart from Mexico and South America : 'Poor Mexico... so far from God, so close to the United States', in the words of its one-time (seven times) president, Porfirio Diaz, and a dictum said to be familiar to every Mexican, including the poor souls reduced to trying to find work and safety in the US.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/07/canada-america-taxes/533847/
It seems fairly obvious that the only just taxation system should be confined to tax on income (inc. corporation tax), i.e. according to their means. As far as we can tell, despite the laughably mendacious propaganda of the far-right, neoliberal headbangers, a system fully endorsed by Adam Smith, a firm believer in taxation according to ability to pay. He actually considered the merchant class as virtual criminals, always ready to conspire against the common, good via raising prices, cartels, etc., and needing to be kept under close control.
The spiel about Smith and free trade seems so much tosh. He evidently believed in normal trading, surely including a measure of common-sense protectionism ; while the royals, aristos et al would have envied the merchants' 'gift' for making lots and lots of money, while they affected to disdain trade, and had to rely on uncertain plunder from costly wars. No doubt, the merchants nevertheless hid most of their income from the tax authorities, and the former, aware of it, would have been driven to paroxysm of fury and envy. Their 'love' of protectionism would scarcely have derived from 'the milk of human kindness' towards their people. Hence Smith's stance against mercantilism of that 'dog in a manger' nature. But smith semed to hav far to muchs ense and decency to countenance 'dog-eat-dog' neoliberal economics.
What Smith did seem to suggest was that, pursuant to Augustine's precept that grace builds upon nature, 'the baby should not be thrown out with the bath-water' : 'the pathologically-antisocial cupidity of the merchants, generically, anyway, should instead be harnessed for the common good, no matter what poor opinion of them so many of them were engendering, or the no doubt self-serving grievances of the royals and upper class. Nevertheless, the notion that Smith rejected managed government out-of-hand seems nonsensical, particualrly in view of his belief concerning justly proprtionate levels of income tax .
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