“However widely, or equally, or "fairly", it may be distributed, no general increase of the community's wealth can make any approach to satiating this need, the ground of which is the desire of every one to excel every one else in the accumulation of goods.”

—  Thorstein Veblen, book The Theory of the Leisure Class

Source: The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), p. 32

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Thorstein Veblen41
American academic 1857–1929

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