Not exactly the tweet, but dropping this again here because of the title.
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. … A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. … But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness.
This might not apply anymore though since it seems capitalism found out about it and companies realized they could make the $50 boots as trash as the $10 boots and the rich wouldn’t think twice about throwing them out at the same rate so the two options now are spending $10 a year or $50 a year on boots.
A tough lesson I learned when I got worked my way into the middle class was that all the “expensive version that will last you” items are a thing of the past.
When us poors run into trouble, we have to deal with it immediately, without a chance to plan for it or save up for it or make other arrangements, so we have to buy the cheap boots, because we don’t have the financial buffer to absorb the impact of the 50 dollar boots on our budgets, even knowing it will save us money in the long run, because we’re living so threadbare that money is stretched to the limit.
Not exactly the tweet, but dropping this again here because of the title.
This might not apply anymore though since it seems capitalism found out about it and companies realized they could make the $50 boots as trash as the $10 boots and the rich wouldn’t think twice about throwing them out at the same rate so the two options now are spending $10 a year or $50 a year on boots.
A tough lesson I learned when I got worked my way into the middle class was that all the “expensive version that will last you” items are a thing of the past.
Its ultimately the lack of economic flexibility.
When us poors run into trouble, we have to deal with it immediately, without a chance to plan for it or save up for it or make other arrangements, so we have to buy the cheap boots, because we don’t have the financial buffer to absorb the impact of the 50 dollar boots on our budgets, even knowing it will save us money in the long run, because we’re living so threadbare that money is stretched to the limit.