Paine’s grant was a one-off to enable land purchase, not recurring income

Evidence

Yet matters quickly become more complicated. Agrarian Justice goes on to clarify that the payment would be a one-off; after calculating the costs and numbers of England’s national capital, Paine hopes that his plan would “immediately relieve and take out of view three classes of wretchedness—the blind, the lame, and the aged poor”—and also would “furnish the rising generation with means to prevent their becoming poor” without ever “deranging or interfering with any national measures.” Most important, the plan “would multiply … the national resources; for property, like vegetation, increases by offsets”; and “when a young couple begin the world, the difference is exceedingly great whether they begin with nothing or with fifteen pounds a piece.” “With this aid,” that couple “could buy a cow, and implements to cultivate a few acres of land; and instead of becoming burdens upon society, which is always the case where children are produced faster than they can be fed, would be put in the way of becoming useful and profitable citizens.” — Anton Jäger and Daniel Zamora Vargas, Welfare for Markets, 65

Categorization

• XREF: Directly challenges the claim earlier in the same book that Paine is a UBI grandfather — his fifteen pounds was a startup capital grant, closer to today’s ‘baby bonds’ than an income floor. — connects to: Most basic income histories anachronistically assume past thinkers shared present questions — Anton Jäger and Daniel Zamora Vargas, Welfare for Markets: A Global History…, 51; Basic income is uniquely defined by being monetary rather than in-kind — Anton Jäger and Daniel Zamora Vargas, Welfare for Markets: A Global History…, 52