To the Editor:

Judith Shulevitz (“It’s Payback Time for Women,” Sunday Review, Jan. 10) provides a very interesting economic model for helping to reduce the gap between the haves and the have-nots — a universal basic income. She estimates the price tag at “about $3 trillion, roughly 80 percent of the total federal budget.”

How about “test marketing” her ideas in a couple of states? California is prosperous and diverse and could afford to implement the concept. With modest federal support the basic program could be implemented, and no doubt would be supported by the Silicon Valley elite that Ms. Shulevitz mentions. Another test could be conducted in Vermont — a state that also favors social experimentation.

That would give social scientists a large and a small state to look at — and a chance to see if the underlying assumptions about work habits and financial offsets are reasonable.

CHARLES H. GESSNER

Marblehead, Mass.

To the Editor:

Judith Shulevitz gets it oh so right when she says “it’s society that’s getting a free ride on women’s unrewarded contributions to the perpetuation of the human race” and calls for “something like reparations.”