Agrarian Justice

Paine proposed that landowners pay a property inheritance tax to fund one-time payments to young adults at age 21 and annual old-age pensions starting at age 50. He argued that since land ownership originally separated people from their natural right to the commons, society owed compensation to those left without property.

Agrarian Justice was published in 1797, during the later period of Paine's career after he had written Common Sense and The Rights of Man. It was written in response to debates during the French Revolution about poverty and property.

Paine's old-age pension proposal in Agrarian Justice is often cited as one of the earliest intellectual precursors to modern social insurance programs, including Social Security in the United States. Though Paine's specific mechanism (a land tax) differs from payroll-tax-funded systems, the principle of guaranteed payments to the elderly is strikingly similar.

Paine drew on natural rights philosophy, arguing that the earth was originally common property and that private land ownership created poverty by excluding non-owners. He did not call for abolishing property but for compensating those disadvantaged by the institution through taxation and redistribution.