"The basis on which good repute in any highly organized industrial community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength; and the means of showing pecuniary strength, and so of gaining or retaining a good name, are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods. ...in the lower strata in which the two methods are employed, both offices are in great part delegated to the wife and children of the household. ...with a still lower descent into the levels of indigence—along the margin of the slums—the man, and presently also the children, virtually cease to consume valuable goods for appearances, and the woman remains virtually the sole exponent of the household's pecuniary decency. No class of society, not even the most abjectly poor, forgoes all customary conspicuous consumption. Very much of squalor and discomfort will be endured before the last trinket or the last pretense of pecuniary decency is put away. ...gratification of this higher or spiritual need."
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p.84-85
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_the_Leisure_Class
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The Theory of the Leisure Class
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