In the mid-1840s German economist Wilhelm Roscher (1817-1894) founded the German historical school of economics, which promoted the cyclical theory of nations-economies passing through youth, manhood, and senility-and spread through academia in Britain and the U.S., dominating it for the rest of the 19th century [REF].
Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929), who came from rural midwestern America and worked at the University of Chicago is one of the best-known early critics of the "American Way".