I agree completely, and in fact it was reading that work of Paine's that first led me to support social welfare even as a Republican conservative.
The labels we carry today started out as the difference of our political ideas represented by our government through our two party system. Today however those labels stifle any progress we could otherwise make by the false narrative that has been created by outside and corruptive influences on our government and we the people. How many instances can we find of this fact on this forum alone? You're a liberal? Enemy. You're a conservative? Enemy. Facts, historical wisdom, statistics, none of it matters as much as disagreeing or even hating the other side and for those whom the facts, etc., do matter it seems nearly impossible to have an actually discussion because the noise has become too loud, the pride to thick. Perhaps man wages war because the alternative, sacrificing their pride to do what is right, is far too difficult by comparison?
Paine undeniably got the diagnosis right -- forcible removal of people's rights to liberty via private ownership of land has made ordinary productive working people into the slaves of landowners -- but his prescribed treatment -- 15 quid at age 21 and a pension when you're too old to work a farm? Seriously? -- is clearly just something he cooked up on the spot. The real cure for the cancer of landowner privilege is to cut it out at the root: restore the equal individual right to liberty by securing every resident citizen (all ages alike, landholder and tenant alike) free, exclusive use of enough good land to live on; and require everyone who uses more than their equal fair share of the good land to pay the excess market rent to the community of those whom they are depriving of it. That would effectively eliminate the major cause of poverty and ensure everyone access to opportunity. It would also stimulate a permanent economic boom and enable ellmination of the unfair and destructive taxes we now suffer under, making everything cheaper and everyone but the top few percent of landowners wealthier -- in most case, FAR wealthier. It's real. It's possible. It's ours if we want it. We just have to find a willingness to know the facts that prove our current system is unjust, destructive, evil, and based on a tissue of lies.
I developed it based on ideas like Paine's and some modern geoists' who advocate distributing universal dividends like the Alaska Permanent Fund dividends out of land value tax revenue. But I don't believe most people really want, need, or have any right to cash payments like that. Cash can be lost, stolen, or squandered. An equal human right to use land can't. People want, and have a right to, the freedom of having a secure place to live in where they have stable access to the opportunities the community provides, without having to pay the rent of the land to a landlord or tax authority. If they had that, they wouldn't need welfare, unemployment insurance, and all the other costly poverty-relief measures governments undertake to try to undo the damage caused by removing people's liberty to use land. They also wouldn't have to offer their labor to employers on unfavorable terms just to avoid destitution, because they'd always have the option of living by their own labor on a bit of good land they'd be using for free. Once I understood the fundamental violation of people's liberty rights by landowning, the solution seemed obvious.
Lol, no. I couldn't copy and paste the quote from my phone, so planned to just leave it until I could it's a Tecumseh quote. "The only way to stop this evil is for all the red men to unite in claiming an equal right to the land. That is how it was at first, and should be still, for the land never was divided, but was for the use of everyone. Any tribe could go to an empty land and make a home there. And if they left, another tribe could come and make a home. No groups among us have a right to sell, even to one another, and surely not to outsiders who want all, and will not do with less. Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the clouds, and the Great Sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Good Spirit make them all for the use of his children?" There's another I like, but can't recall who said it or the exact words, but it's something like "you can't own the land, it can't be put in your pocket," yadda yadda.
