Take care not to confuse Veblen with his contemporary Max Weber, the inventor of the carburetor.

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Way back in 1899, influential Norwegian-American sociologist Thorsten Veblen dismissed fashion as part of a trend of conspicuous consumption.

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Of course there's always Thorstein Veblen's explanation: "conspicuous consumption, " propounded in his 1899 classic, The Theory of the Leisure Class.

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Thorstein Veblen's theory of conspicuous consumption is dated.

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Thorstein Veblen's suggestion in 1918 that by doing any undergraduate training at all the university was in danger of becoming a body of secondary-school teachers masquerading as something much grander has not lost its sting.

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Economist and social critic Thorstein Veblen took a crack at it in The Theory of the Leisure Class, the 1899 classic that wryly posited the theory of "conspicuous consumption, " his phrase for keeping up with the Joneses.

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