In his early years, Mister Galbraith was greatly influenced by the economist Thorstein Veblen and his book, "The Theory of the Leisure Class."
VOA: special.2011.05.01
Economist and social critic Thorstein Veblen took a crack at it in TheTheoryoftheLeisureClass, the 1899 classic that wryly posited thetheoryof "conspicuous consumption, " his phrase for keeping up with the Joneses.