Veblen, << VEHB luhn, >> Thorstein Bunde (1857-1929), an American economist, was one of the most original and creative thinkers in the history of American economic thought. His first book, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), is a scholarly and satirical protest against the false values and social waste of the upper classes. The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904) criticizes capitalism and predicts it will drift into fascism or socialism. In The Engineers and the Price System (1921), Veblen assigned to scientists and engineers a major role in building a new planned economic society. Veblen was born on July 30, 1857, in Cato, Wisconsin. He died on Aug. 3, 1929.
