leisure classes
Those who loaf
The leisure classes are wealthy social groups who don't need to work for a living.
The term comes from economist Thorstein Veblen's 1899 critique of the idle rich, who demonstrated status through conspicuous consumption and avoidance of productive labor.
The phrase often carries critical undertones, suggesting inherited privilege and disconnect from ordinary economic pressures: The leisure classes summer in the Hamptons while everyone else works.
- bon vivantConnoisseur of life's pleasures
- socialiteProminent figure in fashionable circles
- high societyThe social elite
- aristocracyRule by hereditary elite
- patriciansHereditary ruling class
gentry · debutantes · finishing school · sybarite · nobility · cultural capital · privileges · conspicuous consumption · soirees · elite · garden party · nouveau riche · jet set · landed gentry · magnates · Roaring Twenties · affluence · country club
leisure classesworking class
Manual laborers collectively
working masses · proletariat · wage earners · working poor · blue-collar workers
leisure classesunderclass
Lowest socioeconomic group
lower classes · common people · the masses · hoi polloi · commoners
leisure classesworking classes
Society's manual laborers collectively
workforce · breadwinners · toilers · drudges · worker bees
leisure, class, leisurely, leisured, classes, classed, classing, classify, classification