PAMPHLET: "The Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance" by Thomas Paine

The city of Detroit's historic bankruptcy is the perfect occasion to point out again that not all of America's "founding fathers" were enamored with finance-based capitalism.

In the pamphlet below, Tom Paine observes:

"...though all the approaches to bankruptcy may actually exist in circumstances, they admit of being concealed by appearances."

BONUS: In the ongoing debate about whether Thomas Paine was or was not a socialist, the following excerpt from his Agrarian Justice provides some insight:

"Personal property is the effect of society; and it is as impossible for an individual to acquire personal property without the aid of society, as it is for him to make land originally.

Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man’s own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came."