Instead, he explains, the leisure class participated in intellectual or artistic endeavors to display their freedom from the economic need to participate in economically productive manual labor. During modern industrial times, Veblen described the leisure class as those exempt from industrial labor. The leisure class protected and reproduced their social status and control within the tribe through, for example, their participation in war-time activities, which while they were rarely needed, still rendered their lower social class counterparts dependent upon them.

Rather than participating in conspicuous consumption, the leisure class lived lives of conspicuous leisure as a marker of high status. These individuals could engage in conspicuous leisure for extended periods of time, simply following pursuits that evoked a higher social status. Unlike other sociological works of the time, The Theory of the Leisure Class focused on consumption, rather than production.

What results from this behavior, is a society characterized by the waste of time and money. Subsequently, people in other social classes are influenced by this behavior and, as Veblen argued, strive to emulate the leisure class. In other words, social status, Veblen explained, becomes earned and displayed by patterns of consumption rather than what the individual makes financially. He explains that members of the leisure class, often associated with business, are those who also engage in conspicuous consumption in order to impress the rest of society through the manifestation of their social power and prestige, be it real or perceived. The term originated during the Second Industrial Revolution when a nouveau riche social class emerged as a result of the accumulation of capital wealth. In this first work Veblen coined the term 'conspicuous consumption', which he defined as spending more money on goods than they are worth. In his most famous work, The Theory of the Leisure Class, Veblen writes critically of the leisure class for its role in fostering wasteful consumption.

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