Purpose – The aim of this paper is to outline and compare the land ownership, land taxes and citizens' dividend proposals by Thomas Paine and Thomas Spence. Design/methodology/approach – Paine wrote “Agrarian justice” in which he argued that every proprietor of cultivated land owes to the society a ground-rent for the land which the person holds because it is common property. This ground rent would take the form of a tax per year of 10 per cent on inheritances. It is this ground-rent that would fund the payments made to every person based on some age restrictions. In response, Spence wrote “The rights of infants” in which he went a step further as he recommended the abolition of aristocracy. As a result, there would have been common ownership of land and revenue derived from land would be administered by the parishes and distributed to everyone equally. Findings – In assessing the two proposals using the citizens' dividend criterion, each proposal has consistent and inconsistent elements. Practical implications – It can be argued that the two proposals are primitive versions of citizens' dividend as espoused today. Originality/value – The paper contributes to knowledge regarding the debate at the time. During that period, public opinion associated classical political economy with a resolute denial of the right to subsistence to the poor and vigorous opposition to the English Poor Law based on the ideas of Malthus. Students of social economics would benefit from this paper in placing on equal footnoting in the historical debate the counter-proposals to the dominant position at the time.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.