As others have correctly located Veblen's use of the phrase "trained incapacity," I will add simply that Veblen, in using it, was, in his sardonic fashion, observing that failure to use industrial capacity fully was only in part a consequence of "trained" or "learned incapacity." He also attributed such failure to "an habitual, and conventionally righteous disregard of other than pecuniary considerations" (p. 347 in THE INSTINCT OF WORKMANSHIP as republished by Transaction Publishers, 1990). Veblen attributed both the "trained incapacity" and disregard of other considerations to both workmen and businessmen who, as part of their inherited cultural context, gave pride of place to pecuniary considerations rather than to use of industrial capacity to produce as much as could be produced. One way to understand these passages in Veblen is as repetition of a theme that runs through all of his work: human understanding and behavior is patterned by cultural heritage (as well as by reasoned reaction to situations) and such patterning may not lead to outcomes that otherwise seem reasonable. It is also of interest to note that Veblen contrasted the focus of businessmen and workmen on pecuniary considerations with that of the engineers who designed and, as Veblen saw it, could manage if allowed to, the industrial capacity of the nation to serve other considerations. The engineers, he thought, did not see industrial capacity through the same pecuniary lens that gave rise to the "trained incapacity" of businessmen and workmen. It was this understanding that led to the rather curious convergence of Veblen's vision and that of Herbert Hoover in the years immediately following WWI. (On this see William Barber, FROM NEW ERA TO NEW DEAL, Chap. 1 especially, and the article that Janet Knoedler and I wrote on Veblen and the Engineers, published in HISTORY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 31:2.) Finally, it is worth noting that Veblen could have used (and perhaps did use) the phrase "learned incapacity" in any number of places in his work. Over and over he made the point that people had to be taught (through the subtle process of enculturation) that it was undesirable to do things for ones' own self when status could be gained by having others do them for you. Veblen's understanding of "the leisure class" and of much else rested on a notion of "learned incapacity." Anne Mayhew