
Reading Paine from the Left - e12e
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/03/thomas-paine-american-revolution-common-sense/
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e12e
There's been a few discussions on hn regarding universal basic income, and I
found the points related in the last third of this article quite interesting,
and would like to hear how the hn community responds:

> This is a universal capital grant, not a basic income. Paine wants to make
> everyone the owner of productive property.

> (...) The ground-rent he proposes would take the form of a 10 percent
> inheritance tax on all estates. The value of these inheritances, he
> realizes, includes “what is called personal, as well as . . . landed
> property,” and there is no clear way of parsing out the two.

> Personal property is the effect of society; and it is as impossible for an
> individual to acquire personal property without the aid of society, as it is
> for him to make land originally. Separate an individual from society, and
> give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal
> property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the
> end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be
> obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a
> man’s own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes
> on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of
> that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.

> “if we examine the case minutely it will be found that the accumulation of
> personal property is, in many instances, the effect of paying too little for
> the labour that produced it; the consequence of which is, that the working
> hand perishes in old age, and the employer abounds in affluence.” Here Paine
> sees property to be the result of the exploitation of labor by capital.

