I'm not one that thinks citing the Founding Fathers "proves" anything, but i thought it was interesting to see that Thomas Paine was an advocate for the redistribution of wealth. This is from an article on Bill Moyer's site about Bernie Sanders:

It was the American Revolution's patriot and pamphleteer, Thomas Paine -- a hero today to folks left and right, including tea partiers -- who launched the social-democratic tradition in the 1790s. In his pamphlets, Rights of Man and Agrarian Justice, Paine outlined plans for combating poverty that would become what we today call Social Security.

As Paine put it in the latter work, since God has provided the earth and the land upon it as a collective endowment for humanity, those who have come to possess the land as private property owe the dispossessed an annual rent for it. Specifically, Paine delineated a limited redistribution of income by way of a tax on landed wealth and property. The funds collected were to provide both grants for young people to get started in life and pensions for the elderly.

Let's call this my July 4th post. Happy Independence Day!