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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through The Higher Learning as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Veblen say happens as technology progresses?
(a) Men have more time for activities beyond subsistence.
(b) Men have more children.
(c) Men have more wives.
(d) Men have more time for prayer.

2. What is the state of the institution with regard to the present moment?
(a) It transcends the present moment.
(b) It predicts how people will behave in the future.
(c) It represents a snapshot of the present moment.
(d) It is never fully caught up to the present.

3. What does Veblen say happens whenever people acquire a greater ability to pay?
(a) They buy more items of conspicious consumption.
(b) They invest their money in the community.
(c) They pass their money to their children.
(d) They improve their quality of life.

4. What, in Veblen's description, does education accomplish?
(a) It drives the expansion of the leisure class.
(b) It forms habits and thoughts.
(c) It opens the leisure class to newly wealthy people.
(d) It lays the foundation for inventions.

5. What does Veblen consider education to be?
(a) A form of vicarious leisure.
(b) A form of conspicuous consumption.
(c) A form of vicarious consumption.
(d) A form of pecuniary waste.

Short Answer Questions

1. Under what conditions is there a quasi-peaceful stage in Western culture, according to Veblen?

2. Which holiday does Veblen cite as an example of holidays being vicarious leisure?

3. Who benefits by a scholar's work?

4. To which group does the selection process seem to apply least?

5. What is the term Veblen uses for the belief that a sports event can be influenced by outside factors?

(see the answer key)

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