This work demonstrates how the behaviours of the upper classes in a feudal system - the warriors, the priests, the landowners - continued into the industrial era. The old upper classes, who indulged in useless activities that made no contribution to the economy or to the production of the useful goods and services that keep society functioning, were joined or replaced by the business class represented by the men who owned the means of production. The Capitalists, in other words. With great wryness, Veblen unpicks all that is unfair in a society that is built around rewarding the idle rich and keeping down the working poor. He begins with a study of how what he calls the Leisure Class came to exist and how it then begat the servant class to administer to its needs, ending with the hypocrisy of the wealthy considering themselves fit to consume drugs and alcohol to excess while denigrating the working class and women as dissolute for the same behaviour. I really enjoyed reading it. ( )

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