STANLEY LEBERGOTT, 93
Economist who favored consumer culture
Stanley Lebergott, 93, a retired economist and professor whose influential books and articles maintained that consumerism had brought positive changes to the American standard of living, died July 24 of cardiac arrest at his home in Middletown, Conn.
Mr. Lebergott, a former government economist and Wesleyan University professor, took issue with those who disdained "consumerism" as wasteful, pointless, even immoral. Consumption, he maintained, has always been an expression of human longing rather than mere acquisitiveness.