I DON'T THINK BAGGERS READ MUCH

You may recall that Glenda Beck had a crush on Thomas (Tom) Paine and even named one of his assembly line books after one of Paine's books.  A few days ago, I was reminded that Paine was an ideological opponent of perhaps the greatest conservative thinker, Edmund Burke, so I took out a book by analytic philosopher A. J. Ayer on Paine and found out a little more about both writers.

Perhaps the most surprising fact about Paine is that he supported a progressive income tax and was an early proponent of the Welfare State.   From Ayer, page 106:

In addition to doing away with the poor-rates, Paine also proposes only to abolish the tax on houses and windows, which 'falls heavy on the middling class of people',' and the commutation tax. Even, therefore, allowing for the economies that he thinks that he can effect, he is aware that he will need much more money to carry out all his intended reforms. His solution is to introduce what we now call a graduated income tax, proceeding from 3d per pound on incomes up to £500 a year, 6d per pound on incomes from £500 to £1,000, rising by increments of 3d up to the second and third thousand, sixpence to the fourth and fifth, and thereafter by a shilling per pound on each additional thousand up to the limit of £23,000, on the last £i,000 of which the plutocrat will be paying 100 per cent. Thus, according to Paine's calculations, the most that anyone will be able to keep out of his annual income, however great it may be, will be £ 2,370, that is, nearly half a million pounds in today's purchasing power. It may be remarked that this is more than would be allotted to the best-paid civil servants. At the other end of the scale a man earning £50 a year would pay only twelve shillings and sixpence in tax and a man with an income of £1,000 a year would retain £979 of it. If one keeps bearing in mind that these figures have to be multiplied by forty to reach today's equivalents, Paine's tax can hardly be considered punitive, even for the possessors of great wealth.


We come at last to his proposals for reform. I list them in his own words.

Provision for two hundred and fifty-two thousand poor families.

Education for one million and thirty thousand children.

Comfortable provision for one hundred and forty thousand aged persons.

Donation of twenty shillings each for fifty thousand births.

Donation of twenty shillings each for twenty thousand marriages.

Allowance of twenty thousand pounds for the funeral expenses of persons travelling for work, and dying at a distance from their friends.

Employment, at all times, for the casual poor in the cities of London and Westminster.'