The Savage Society of Thorstein Veblen Summary and Analysis

By the early 1900s, Europe and America, while very similar, still had their differences. Europe still carried the vestiges of feudalism, while America shared none of that history. The American needed only money to enter the upper class. This was the era of the Goulds and Rockefellers and all of their business deals which earned them millions of dollars in profits. "Official economics, in a word, was apologist and unperceptive; it turned its eye away from the excesses and exuberance that were the very essence of the American scene and painted instead a stereotype in formal lines and lusterless color. While it did not lack honesty or courage or intellectual competence, it suffered from what Malthus had once called 'the insensible bias of situation and interest.' The American economists were...