Quote of the Day (Thomas Paine, Foreseeing the Need for Social Security)

“The contrast of affluence and wretchedness continually meeting and offending the eye, is like dead and living bodies chained together. Though I care as little about riches as any man, I am a friend to riches because they are capable of good. I care not how affluent some may be, provided that none be miserable in consequence of it. But it is impossible to enjoy affluence with the felicity it is capable of being enjoyed, while so much misery is mingled in the scene. The sight of the misery, and the unpleasant sensations it suggests, which, though they may be suffocated cannot be extinguished, are a greater drawback upon the felicity of affluence than the proposed ten per cent upon property is worth. He that would not give the one to get rid of the other has no charity, even for himself.”—English-born American patriot and pamphleteer Thomas Paine (1737-1809), Agrarian Justice Opposed to Agrarian Law, and to Agrarian Monopoly; Being a Plan for Meliorating the Condition of Man (1797)

Thomas Paine is most famous for laying out the case for American independence in Common Sense, then sustaining that cause through “the times that try men’s souls” in The Crisis Papers. Less well-known is his advocacy for bridging the growing gap between rich and poor through something like the modern welfare state.

Indeed, he has been called “The Father of Social Security,” and Agrarian Justice, one of his last great pamphlets, can be found on the Website of the Social Security Administration.

Paine was appalled not just by the wretched poverty he had seen in France and his native England, but also by religious rhetoric regarding it as the natural order of the world. (Indeed, he had thought of withholding publication until war had ceased between the two countries, but decided to express his thoughts immediately when he heard of a sermon by an English bishop entitled, “The Wisdom and Goodness of God, in having made both rich and poor.")

The French mathematician and philosopher Condorcet had preceded Paine in recommending a social insurance scheme for the aged and for young people just starting out in life, but Paine demonstrated for the first time how it might be economically feasible with a proposal for a 10% tax on inherited property.

His thinking was all the more remarkable because, as implied by the second and third sentences in the passage above, he had not in the slightest abandoned his belief in the right of private property.

It would take the worst excesses of the Industrial Revolution and the need to defuse the rising labor radicalism it unleashed for others to lay the political foundation for Paine’s prescient economic idea.

Now, it has taken such root with the American public that Senator Rick Scott was forced to exclude Social Security and Medicare from his proposal to “sunset” federal legislation, once it became a potential campaign target for the Democratic Party.

For more information on the background to Paine’s pioneering pamphlet, I recommend Bernard Vincent’s discussion in The Transatlantic Republic: Thomas Paine and the Age of Revolutions, and a 2014 interview with Brown University political scientist Alex Gourevitch on “The Junto,” a group blog on early American history.

Quote of the Day (Oliver Goldsmith, on ‘The Man of Wealth and Pride’)

“The man of wealth and pride
Takes up a space that many poor supplied;
Space for his lake, his park’s extended bounds,
Space for his horses, equipage, and hounds:
The robe that wraps his limbs in silken sloth
Has robbed the neighbouring fields of half their growth.”—Anglo-Irish poet, playwright and novelist Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774), “The Deserted Village” (1770)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Pope St. Leo the Great, on the Paramount Importance of Mercy to the Poor)

“Although a man be full of faith, and chaste, and sober, and adorned with other still greater decorations, yet if he is not merciful, he cannot deserve mercy: for the Lord says, blessed are the merciful, for God shall have mercy upon them [Matthew 5:7]. And when the Son of Man comes in His Majesty and is seated on His glorious throne, and all nations being gathered together, division is made between the good and the bad, for what shall they be praised who stand upon the fight except for works of benevolence and deeds of love which Jesus Christ shall reckon as done to Himself? For He who has made man's nature His own, has separated Himself in nothing from man's humility. And what objection shall be made to those on the left except for their neglect of love, their inhuman harshness, their refusal of mercy to the poor? As if those on the right had no other virtues those on the left no other faults. But at the great and final day of judgment large-hearted liberality and ungodly meanness will be counted of such importance as to outweigh all other virtues and all other shortcomings, so that for the one men shall gain entrance into the Kingdom, for the other they shall be sent into eternal fire.”— Pope St. Leo the Great (c.400-461), “Sermon 10,” translated by Charles Lett Feltoe from Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 12, edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace

Spiritual Quote of the Day (St. James, on the Rich and the Poor in Religious Assemblies)

“For if a man with gold rings and in fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, ‘Have a seat here, please,’ while you say to the poor man, ‘Stand there,’ or, ‘Sit at my feet,’  have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?  Listen, my beloved brethren. Has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he has promised to those who love him?  But you have dishonored the poor man. Is it not the rich who oppress you, is it not they who drag you into court?”—James 2: 2-6 (Revised Standard Version)

The image accompanying this post, of St. James the Apostle, was created in 1516 by the German Renaissance painter Albrecht Durer (1471-1528).

Quote of the Day (Aldous Huxley, on ‘The Leisured Rich’ and the Poor)

“The leisured rich, who are not paid to do anything, themselves pay for the privilege of filling their vacuum with active occupations or passive diversions. Sport in all its varieties, alcohol and elaborate eating, love-making, theater-going, card-playing—these are some of the activities and diversions with which the rich can afford to fill up the aching void of their leisure. By means of such distractions they contrive to keep boredom and melancholia at bay….To the onlooker, the leisures of the rich may not provide a particularly uplifting spectacle; but for the rich themselves unemployment is not intolerable. A poor man, living at subsistence level, can buy no opiates or stimulants. Foe him, the vacuum of leisure is complete. He is exposed to the full force of boredom and depression. He is never able to forget, as the rich man can forget in the whirl of his distractions, the futility of a life deprived of sense or purpose and contributing nothing to the greater life of society at large. The effects of prolonged and unmitigated leisure are appalling. Slowly and insidiously it tends to reduce its victims to a kind of living death.”  — English novelist/essayist Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), “The Man Without a Job,” December 20, 1936, in Aldous Huxley, Between the Wars: Essays and Letters, edited by David Bradshaw (1994)

These days, addiction rates are twice as high among the jobless as among those with a job, according to the information web guide Addiction Center. So Huxley’s contention about the poor man being unable to buy “opiates or stimulants” does not hold true today, no matter what may have happened when he wrote this during the Great Depression that gripped both side sides of the Atlantic.

Huxley—who, later in life, experimented with mescaline and LSD—recognized, in his 1932 dystopian novel Brave New World, that “psychotropic drugs were not just toys for recreational purposes but had the power to fuel political and religious change,” according to this Oxford University Press blogpost by pharmacology professor Richard J. Miller of Northwestern University.

Huxley's other point, about the poor being exposed to “the full force of boredom and depression,” remains true, as does his warning about “prolonged and unmitigated leisure” among what used to be called the “idle rich.” The impact of the current COVID-induced recession will take a long time to sort out, but the psychological effects cannot be discounted.

Quote of the Day (Pope Francis, on the ‘Gospel of the Marginalized’)

“We will not find the Lord unless we truly accept the marginalized! Truly the Gospel of the marginalized is where our credibility is at stake, where it is found, and where it is revealed.” —Pope Francis, sermon on Feb. 15, 2015, quoted in David Gibson, “Pope Francis to Church: Don’t Be a Closed Caste or Afraid of Outcasts,” Religion News Service, Feb. 15, 2015

Quote of the Day (Tony Judt, on Why ‘The Rich Do Not Want the Same Thing as the Poor’)

“The rich do not want the same thing as the poor…. Those who do not need public services—because they can purchase private transport, education, and protection—do not seek the same thing as those who depend exclusively on the public sector.”— British historian/essayist Tony Judt (1948-2010), Ill Fares the Land (2010)

The next few weeks may bring about the ramifications of this in the Republican tax plan now unveiled on Capitol Hill. Maybe the hit to the state-and-local tax deduction—especially common in states such as New York and New Jersey, which tend to fund public services more generously—will help leave this bill dead on arrival. We shall see. But, far from “draining the swamp” in DC, this bill only leaves the alligators—those in the 1%--more alive than ever.

Quote of the Day (St. Augustine, on the Poor and the Rich)

“The poor and the rich God made of one clay; the same earth supports alike the poor and the rich.”— Christian theologian and philosopher St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD), Tractates (Lectures) on the Gospel of John, Tractate 6 (John 1:32-33)

Quote of the Day (Pope Francis, on the ‘Culture of Deterioration and Waste’)

“Many are the faces, the stories and the evident effects on the lives of thousands of persons whom the culture of deterioration and waste has allowed to be sacrificed before the idols of profits and consumption….  Many lives, many stories, many dreams have been shipwrecked in our day.  We cannot remain indifferent in the face of this.  We have no right.”— Pope Francis, “Speech to UN Officials in Nairobi,” Vatican Radio, Nov. 26, 2015

Quote of the Day (Oscar Wilde, on the Poor’s Importance to the Rich)

"Really, if the lower orders don’t set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them?"--Algernon, from Oscar Wilde, Act I, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)