Rights of Man by Thomas Paine

Review
http://www.buzzflash.com/hartmann/05/05/har05005.html

"Some people think that FDR invented the progressive income tax when
he raised income tax rates on the super-rich to 90 percent. Some
believe that LBJ invented anti-poverty programs when he more than
cut in half severe poverty in the US by introducing Medicare,
housing assistance, and food-stamp programs in the 1960s. Some
believe that Jack Kennedy was the first president to seriously
talk about international disarmament, a conversation that Richard
Nixon carried on in pushing through and getting ratified the
anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty so recently discarded byGeorge
Bush Jr. Some believe that Teddy Roosevelt - the Republican Roosevelt -
was the first to seriously discuss the "living wage," or ways that
corporate "maximum wage" wink-and-nod agreements could be broken up.
Some believe the inheritance tax to prevent family empires from taking
over our nation was the idea of Woodrow Wilson, or that FDR was the
first to think up old-age pensions as part of a social safety net
known today as Social Security.

"But it was actually Thomas Paine who first developed all these themes
in their modern political context. He did so in his book "The Rights of Man.""