Entitled Agrarian Justice and published in 1797, Paine’s essay proposed that every American man and woman be paid fifteen pounds when he or she turned twenty-one, a sum that would serve as a basic minimum income. Revenues for this would come from a tax on the inheritance of land. This, Paine reasoned, would foster economic independence, so crucial to the budding democracy. In setting out the argument for his proposal he noted that private property was a human contrivance.
