Talk:The Theory of the Leisure Class/Archives/2012

This page seems to contradict itself
The third line from the very top of the article begins:

"Veblen claimed he wrote the book as a perceptive personal essay criticizing contemporary culture, rather than as an economics textbook. Critics claim this was an excuse for his failure to cite sources. Nonetheless, Theory of the Leisure Class is considered one of the great works of economics as well as the first detailed critique of consumerism."

The above doesn't actually clarify whether Leisure Class is an economics textbook or a subjective essay, as the use of the phrase "is considered" in this case doesn't describe the author's intentions as much as the work's reception by the public.

The eighth line from the top of the section entitled "Use of satire, sarcasm, and humor" begins:

"Ironically, Veblen did not intend for Leisure to be a satire, but a serious economic analysis of contemporary America."

This, of course, directly contradicts the first quote. Now, the two are technically not mutually exclusive, i.e. it is possible that Veblen lied when he "claimed" that it was a personal essay when in fact it is an econ texbook, but it should be made clearer in the first section whether the "claim" was true or false. I do not know the answer, so I cannot make the correction myself, but I felt I should point out the issue nonetheless.

Perhaps a more straightforward contradiction can be found in the first paragraph under "Intellectual Significance," which announces of Verblen, "...most modern economists ignore him. The primary reason for this appears to be his attack on the rational expectations theories..." "Rational expectations" has a link taking you to an article defining the term as "a theory in economics originally proposed by John F. Muth (1961) and later developed by Robert E. Lucas Jr." Veblin's 1899 treatise attacking a theory originally proposed in 1961, eh? VERY impressive. UnclejackDC 12:41, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Trophy housewife and housecleaning
Those are two different issues. Chauvinists are not necessarily tidy, and two or more people sharing an equal amount of chores are not necessarily living in a mess.

It seems that someone adding comments between brackets confused things together. Even if it were true that Veblen was messy, that should not have any relevance to what he said about trophy housewives.

Would anyone object if the article was made more coherent by removing these comments?


 * John Kenneth Galbraith believed all this information was relevent. You don't. Case closed; the section is being restored. --76.16.163.91 22:31, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I also think it doesn't make sense to mix this two topics.

Needs more cititation
This article needs more citations for its claims, and it should use the wikipedia method of referencing rather than in-line citations, as it uses now. --Nemilar (talk) 22:37, 29 February 2008 (UTC)