The Campaign for Universal Inheritance | |
FOR GREATER EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY | |
Universal SuffrageandUniversal Inheritance"We are the music makers,
We in the ages lying Arthur O'Shaughnessy, (1844-1881) - Ode
Universal Suffrage - votes for all - was once a dream - that in a democracy every young man and woman should It finally became a reality in Britain when women, having in 1918 obtained the vote at the age of 30, as compared with the age of 21 for men, achieved equal voting rights in 1928. British Universal Suffrage has transformed our country. (Although it will not be fully effective until the Westminster Parliament decrees, as it should have done already, that we can all vote with a Single Transferable 1,2,3.. Vote in existing Single Member Parliamentary Constituencies so that every vote counts in electing a Member of Parliament - instead of continuing to require us to vote with the archaic, intelligence-insulting, non-numerate and non-preferential X.) Universal Inheritance - inherited capital for all - is another such dream, first broadly suggested by Thomas Paine - that in a capitalist democracy, every young man and woman born a citizen of a country should also have the human right, not only to the vote at 18, but also to some capital - a minimum once-a-lifetime inheritance. In 1797, in Agrarian Justice, Thomas Paine proposed £15 at the age of 21, financed by a 10 per cent tax. In 2007, OPPORTUNITY - The Campaign for British Universal Inheritance- proposes a British Universal Inheritance of £10,000 at 25, financed by and subject to a progressive tax on all capital gifts and inheritance received, at a rate starting at 10% (down from the present 40%) and remaining there for most beneficiaries. The average wealth of every adult and child in the UK at the end of 2002 was £85,000, according to the Office of National Statistics. British Universal Inheritance - as this dream too comes to birth - will transform our country, as did British Universal Suffrage. Universal Inheritance will also transform the world, as Universal Suffrage has done, is doing and will continue to do. Other countries will have their own national universal inheritance schemes, with amounts related to their own average wealth.
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