Updating Thomas Paine on wealth-sharing and the basic income guarantee

If I had to pick one American everyone should know, I'd choose Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense, the book that made the argument for the American Revolution. If I had to pick one quote to sum up my philosophy, I'd choose this, from his The Rights of Man: "I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good."

Paine noted in Agrarian Justice:

It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural, culti...