Universal basic income has gotten some serious twenty-first-century play, but the idea is hardly new.

As the HBO series The Gilded Age suggests, charity allowed wealthy women to play a visible role in public life. It was also a site of inter-class animosity.

Maybe it’s something about the number eleven?

Elizabeth McKenzie's "The Portable Veblen" concerns a character named Veblen, a woman who feels keenly the ideas of the great economist.