Talk:Thomas Spence

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Richard Carlile criticisms

The following passage can be found in 'The Origins of Universal Grants: An Anthology of Historical Writings on Basic Capital and Basic Income' (2005, p. xxi)

In the 1820s, the notorious freethinker and republican, Richard Carlile, challenged the whole basis of Spence’s scheme as it was presented by one of his closest followers, Allen Davenport. The challenge was presented in a series of sardonic comments published in the radical newspaper, The Republican. It involved four related charges that presage current objections to basic income: the first was that the payments would obviously have to be funded somehow from taxation which would therefore be higher than otherwise; the second was that ultimately taxation would fall on labour because land produced little without it; the third was that the payments would constitute a disincentive to labour, transforming the whole nation into parasitic and idle ‘little royal families’; and the last was that this disincentive, in combination with Malthusian pressures, would result in very low levels of payment anyway. Given these objections, Carlile’s preferred alternative was a single progressive land tax to finance all government activity; this would act as an incentive for owners of large estates to ensure that their land was productively cultivated rather than being left as wastes or parklands. In turn, this incentive to productive cultivation would increase employment and demand for goods, which would no longer be taxed, and therefore cheaper.

We may also want to draw on some of the following points regarding Spence's land reforms (on p. xx):

In The Rights of Infants, the English land reform radical Thomas Spence asserted the superiority of his own reform scheme over the compromise and expediency of Paine’s welfare proposals. By 1797, Spence had already been publicising his scheme for over twenty years and saw no reason to change its core features in the light of this newcomer in the reform camp. Spence proposed that all land should be owned by parishes in the form of a joint-stock company composed of every local resident regardless of gender or age. The parish would allocate holdings to individuals or families through an auction with rents being payable to it. The proceeds would cover the very limited expenses of national and local government; any surplus would be distributed equally between all inhabitants of the parish at quarterly intervals, and Spence thought that the level of payment would be sufficient to secure a reasonable standard of living. Whereas the entitlement to participate in the bidding for leases on the land reflected Spence’s commitment to the right of all to the means of subsistence, these unconditional payments indicated his concern for the right to subsistence itself and anticipated some later basic income schemes.

Birth dates

The article says '21 June Old Style/ 2 July New Style, 1750'. The first of these date comes from Mackenzie, but how does anyone know it is Old Style? And why is the 2nd of July the New Style version of the same date? (it may be, I just didn't think that was how the difference worked, and I think this needs some explaining generally). Marinheiro (talk) 16:49, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]