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… - Thorstein Veblen

It is much more difficult to recede from a scale of expenditure once adopted than it is to extend the accustomed scale in response to an accession of wealth.

The current periodical press... is a vehicle for advertisements. ...Exceptions ...are official and minor propagandist periodicals, and, in an uncertain measure, scientific journals. ...The first duty of an editor is to gauge the sentiments of his readers, and the tell them what they like to believe. ...His second duty is to see that nothing is said which may discountenance ...his advertisers. ...The net result is that both the news columns and the editorial columns are commonly meretricious in a high degree.

In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and ennobling in all civilised men's eyes.