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Sir Terry sums this problem up quite nicely in Men at Arms: "The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less mone

Sir Terry sums this problem up quite nicely in Men at Arms: "The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. 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. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. 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 the 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 socioeconomic unfairness."

737maxtw 6y ago
This in spades. As a very real example, my family was not very well off growing up. My parents could typically only afford used Chrysler cars. The result was invariably getting stuck with vehicles that quite frankly were at least as expensive as the competition after repair costs and extra insurance. And, speaking as someone who thankfully doesn't have to worry nearly as much about such things thanks to the sacrifices my parents made... The DIFFERENCE in quality of life changes too. Its not just the cost of buying the cheap stuff every time, it is also that frustration of watching it break over and over. Also, dare I say. One of the biggest silent accelerators of our class divide (financially) is this dilemma. In the 40s-60s stuff was built to last. Lower income families could save and buy an expensive appliance but know it would last or at least be repairable. A fridge was a real investment. A set of silverware had the extra couple mm of thickness or even a square handle so it wouldn't bend at the first sign of trouble. Now? Its all disposable, so those who have money to keep up with planned obsolescence will pull ahead. Consumers save 5-10$ on a 100$ tool, but now it lasts 3-5 years instead of 30-50
- jxramos 6y ago
  This makes me think about some of the reviews I read for a book that came up in an article I read back in the end of May https://www.amazon.com/Unheavenly-City-Nature-Future-Crisis/dp/B0006CUBPG#customerReviews https://www.amazon.com/Unheavenly-City-Nature-Future-Crisis/... Search them for future and time and you'll hit upon the main thesis quickly, eg: Banfield carefully defined class membership, not in terms of income status, such as government statistical poverty levels, but in terms of orientation toward the future, or time preference. I can't say I ever heard such an idea so clearly stated before. I still haven't dug into the argument too much to know one way or another or be able to offer much in way of a critique, but it's caught my eye and attention enough to make it a reading TODO.
  - content_sesh 6y ago
    I haven't read the book either, but from reading the reviews it seems like the thesis is that your wealth is a function of your time orientation - whether you prefer to plan short term or long term. If that's the case, I disagree strongly. It seems like a post-hoc conclusion; if you are wealthy, you can afford to plan for the long term; if you are poor, often you can only orient your behavior towards immediate needs and survival. Poor people know that its better to save for a house than pay rent to a landlord - they're not stupid. But your kid has a cavity that need filling, the rent you are paying is due, and god help you if you have an unexpected expense like your car breaks down. Does the author account for decades of wage suppression that prevents all from sharing in the nation's wealth? The systematic erosion of labor rights? The (I'm assuming the author's American) carceral state that makes people unhireable and takes away some of their most productive years for earning and saving? In the case of the Black community, does he account for the generational effects of centuries of stolen labor? The list goes on. Poverty is a cycle[1] and is worthy of serious study and consideration. Paternalistic victim blaming has no place. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_of_poverty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_of_poverty
    - michaelt 6y ago
      The time-orientation theory reminds me of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen...
jedmeyers 6y ago
"Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. 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 then there were LeBron Nikes made in China with cheap labor and sold for $225. Those were the kind of shoes poor people bought using their credit cards.
- mynameishere 6y ago
  Troubled Teens Mock Social Worker's Car https://local.theonion.com/troubled-teens-mock-social-workers-car-1819566938 https://local.theonion.com/troubled-teens-mock-social-worker... A lot of people on HN are from Upper-Middle-class backgrounds and it's funny how the same just-so stories and excuses come up when discussing the poor. The idea that poor folk are going to use their UBI to buy the 24 pack of eggs instead of the 12 pack, or the leather boots instead of the faux-leather boots, and spend the long-term savings towards a Coursera subscription just isn't realistic, howsoever common.
  - rwmurrayVT 6y ago
    Ouch, that one hits home. My partner is a social worker and her car leaves a lot to be desired..
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  Not sure why this is being down voted. Perhaps some consider it punching down? While a generalisation it is true that some economically disadvantaged spend a lot on 'luxuries' like shoes or cars. Often this is for social signally and sometimes because it's a luxury they can afford now vs those which appear completely unattainable forever. Some rich people too spend extravagantly beyond their means. It's just less obvious since they aren't obviously hurting for money on other ways.
  - legerdemain 6y ago
    In college, I lived with roommates in a working class urban neighborhood three or four blocks away from campus. The block I lived on featured the convenience of only one side of the street having houses on it. The other was nose-in parking, facing a creek. The cars that lined the other side of the street were uniformly nice. Every time I remarked about that, my roommates would dump on the working poor for buying showy cars they couldn't afford. They never once considered that the street was used as free overflow parking by university employees, which even cursory observation showed to be the case. So yes, "they buy nice cars they can't afford" is a mean cliche, even if I'm sure you can find some case of it being true.
xphos 6y ago
Maybe I am alone but I disagree and agree here. I agree that rich people know how to spend less but one does not become rich on savings alone. It takes the ability to make value out of nothing whether it be your the lord of feudal lands which you rented out to peasants or online book company that made buying and selling slightly easier. Those people made money because they made value. Not just saved value. I think this well intentioned advice can actually act as a hindrance to escaping poverty. If you spend a ton of your time walking through the grocery story saving a couple bucks buying cheaper eggs you really lost a lot of your potential earns in that time you spent. Because this is a behavior you will repeat and repeat and the accumulation of this time is a net minus on what you could have saved if you spent that time learning a valuable skill. I think that's why any major uptick in peoples wealth is usually (not always) correlated by education. Places with smarter people tend to have more money because smart people generally speaking know how to create value.
- Joof 6y ago
  You missed it. He was saying that amortized costs are cheaper, but poor people can't pay the upfront costs.
- Viliam1234 6y ago
  Yeah, good money-saving tricks are the ones where you only spend a lot of time thinking once, and that helps you switch from one type of auto-pilot to another type of auto-pilot. If you have to think every time, then you pay with your time, and you quickly run out of available time. For example, if you notice that X is equivalent to Y and costs less, it may take some time to notice, but afterwards buying Y is just as simple as buying X, once you develop the new habit. Or if there are two shops in the same distance, and you spend some time researching which one sells more cheaply the stuff you usually buy. (Or a more distant shop, that is so much cheaper that you can afford to pay for having the stuff delivered to your home, and still save money.)
- stainforth 6y ago
  I don't think the feudal lord made the land or the value from it. And what his son, and the son's son, who inherited the status and the land?
ghufran_syed 6y ago
I love Terry Pratchett, but is there any evidence that this is true in our modern economy? As opposed to just being a cute story that reinforces our existing biases that "the rich get richer, the poor get poorer" which is demonstrably false over the past few hundred years? I bought a 7 yr old $8000 dollar car, that's still going strong 12 years later, if I'd bought a $40000 car, could I expect it to last 512= 60 years? And that's being generous and assuming a linear relationship. If we use the example from the book, spending 5 times as much should give me a car that lasts up to 10 times* as long, so 120 years!
- tehjoker 6y ago
  If you can deny the rise in inequality that is at this point obvious, the decimation and precarity of the lives of service workers and former manufacturing workers, the unhealthiness of what should be the most univerally gleaming and glittering society in the history of humanity, I don't know what to tell you.
- nytgop77 6y ago
  yes. if you have money you invest and get richer. poor might not get poorer, but for them it is problematic to save any significant amount. One example: buying a house vs renting it. (where I live amount for rent is approx the same as interest amount for mortgage). one who bought a house has a cushion (house is an asset) for retirement, one who always rented has to continue to rent.
- sjtindell 6y ago
  The Cost of Being Poor is a well known comparative study of the urban poor in Indiana, United States that addresses this directly. There have been numerous others. These are people who definitely could not get together the $8,000 for a 7 year old car in good condition, or get a loan at all besides a Payday one. They live paycheck to paycheck. The question is not just a quantitative one of the car cost, depreciation, years of use. It’s a qualitative one, as in quality of life. A poor person who can only afford to take the bus loses time sitting on a bus instead of grocery shopping, taking care of their kids, etc. and needs to exert mental energy to plan their day around bus rides and schedules. They generally “pay” in numerous ways besides the pure value of the vehicle vs. some other more expensive vehicle. Above all, they pay in mental bandwidth. They spend most of their mental energy worrying, planning, and stressing about being poor. That distinction can help clarify this argument a lot, and that old boot example doesn’t capture that.
treis 6y ago
This is a fun and often repeated quote, but bears little relation to the modern world. A nice pair of boots doesn't cost more than a months salary. They cost 2 days of labor at minimum wage and last for years.
- ghaff 6y ago
  A nice of pair of hiking books can be had for $100-$200. I can spend more than that and it may be worth it to do so for specialty purposes. But you can buy a pair of what may literally be the best custom 3-season hiking boots for ~$700. Are those a good buy? If you do a lot of hiking, yes. (Though they're big and heavy so I only wear them for some things.) In any case, they may be at best 10x of the cheapest pair of boots you can buy at Walmart, which are incredibly cheap footwear historically.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - unishark 6y ago
    Interestingly, the most expensive boots at places like Walmart are not for rich people but for working class people who need high quality since they wear them all day in their jobs doing construction or whatever.

737maxtw 6y ago

This in spades. As a very real example, my family was not very well off growing up. My parents could typically only afford used Chrysler cars. The result was invariably getting stuck with vehicles that quite frankly were at least as expensive as the competition after repair costs and extra insurance. And, speaking as someone who thankfully doesn't have to worry nearly as much about such things thanks to the sacrifices my parents made... The DIFFERENCE in quality of life changes too. Its not just the cost of buying the cheap stuff every time, it is also that frustration of watching it break over and over. Also, dare I say. One of the biggest silent accelerators of our class divide (financially) is this dilemma. In the 40s-60s stuff was built to last. Lower income families could save and buy an expensive appliance but know it would last or at least be repairable. A fridge was a real investment. A set of silverware had the extra couple mm of thickness or even a square handle so it wouldn't bend at the first sign of trouble. Now? Its all disposable, so those who have money to keep up with planned obsolescence will pull ahead. Consumers save 5-10$ on a 100$ tool, but now it lasts 3-5 years instead of 30-50

jxramos 6y ago
This makes me think about some of the reviews I read for a book that came up in an article I read back in the end of May https://www.amazon.com/Unheavenly-City-Nature-Future-Crisis/dp/B0006CUBPG#customerReviews https://www.amazon.com/Unheavenly-City-Nature-Future-Crisis/... Search them for future and time and you'll hit upon the main thesis quickly, eg: Banfield carefully defined class membership, not in terms of income status, such as government statistical poverty levels, but in terms of orientation toward the future, or time preference. I can't say I ever heard such an idea so clearly stated before. I still haven't dug into the argument too much to know one way or another or be able to offer much in way of a critique, but it's caught my eye and attention enough to make it a reading TODO.
- content_sesh 6y ago
  I haven't read the book either, but from reading the reviews it seems like the thesis is that your wealth is a function of your time orientation - whether you prefer to plan short term or long term. If that's the case, I disagree strongly. It seems like a post-hoc conclusion; if you are wealthy, you can afford to plan for the long term; if you are poor, often you can only orient your behavior towards immediate needs and survival. Poor people know that its better to save for a house than pay rent to a landlord - they're not stupid. But your kid has a cavity that need filling, the rent you are paying is due, and god help you if you have an unexpected expense like your car breaks down. Does the author account for decades of wage suppression that prevents all from sharing in the nation's wealth? The systematic erosion of labor rights? The (I'm assuming the author's American) carceral state that makes people unhireable and takes away some of their most productive years for earning and saving? In the case of the Black community, does he account for the generational effects of centuries of stolen labor? The list goes on. Poverty is a cycle[1] and is worthy of serious study and consideration. Paternalistic victim blaming has no place. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_of_poverty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_of_poverty
  - michaelt 6y ago
    The time-orientation theory reminds me of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen...

jedmeyers 6y ago

"Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. 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 then there were LeBron Nikes made in China with cheap labor and sold for $225. Those were the kind of shoes poor people bought using their credit cards.

mynameishere 6y ago
Troubled Teens Mock Social Worker's Car https://local.theonion.com/troubled-teens-mock-social-workers-car-1819566938 https://local.theonion.com/troubled-teens-mock-social-worker... A lot of people on HN are from Upper-Middle-class backgrounds and it's funny how the same just-so stories and excuses come up when discussing the poor. The idea that poor folk are going to use their UBI to buy the 24 pack of eggs instead of the 12 pack, or the leather boots instead of the faux-leather boots, and spend the long-term savings towards a Coursera subscription just isn't realistic, howsoever common.
- rwmurrayVT 6y ago
  Ouch, that one hits home. My partner is a social worker and her car leaves a lot to be desired..
paulryanrogers 6y ago
Not sure why this is being down voted. Perhaps some consider it punching down? While a generalisation it is true that some economically disadvantaged spend a lot on 'luxuries' like shoes or cars. Often this is for social signally and sometimes because it's a luxury they can afford now vs those which appear completely unattainable forever. Some rich people too spend extravagantly beyond their means. It's just less obvious since they aren't obviously hurting for money on other ways.
- legerdemain 6y ago
  In college, I lived with roommates in a working class urban neighborhood three or four blocks away from campus. The block I lived on featured the convenience of only one side of the street having houses on it. The other was nose-in parking, facing a creek. The cars that lined the other side of the street were uniformly nice. Every time I remarked about that, my roommates would dump on the working poor for buying showy cars they couldn't afford. They never once considered that the street was used as free overflow parking by university employees, which even cursory observation showed to be the case. So yes, "they buy nice cars they can't afford" is a mean cliche, even if I'm sure you can find some case of it being true.

xphos 6y ago

Maybe I am alone but I disagree and agree here. I agree that rich people know how to spend less but one does not become rich on savings alone. It takes the ability to make value out of nothing whether it be your the lord of feudal lands which you rented out to peasants or online book company that made buying and selling slightly easier. Those people made money because they made value. Not just saved value. I think this well intentioned advice can actually act as a hindrance to escaping poverty. If you spend a ton of your time walking through the grocery story saving a couple bucks buying cheaper eggs you really lost a lot of your potential earns in that time you spent. Because this is a behavior you will repeat and repeat and the accumulation of this time is a net minus on what you could have saved if you spent that time learning a valuable skill. I think that's why any major uptick in peoples wealth is usually (not always) correlated by education. Places with smarter people tend to have more money because smart people generally speaking know how to create value.

Joof 6y ago
You missed it. He was saying that amortized costs are cheaper, but poor people can't pay the upfront costs.
Viliam1234 6y ago
Yeah, good money-saving tricks are the ones where you only spend a lot of time thinking once, and that helps you switch from one type of auto-pilot to another type of auto-pilot. If you have to think every time, then you pay with your time, and you quickly run out of available time. For example, if you notice that X is equivalent to Y and costs less, it may take some time to notice, but afterwards buying Y is just as simple as buying X, once you develop the new habit. Or if there are two shops in the same distance, and you spend some time researching which one sells more cheaply the stuff you usually buy. (Or a more distant shop, that is so much cheaper that you can afford to pay for having the stuff delivered to your home, and still save money.)
stainforth 6y ago
I don't think the feudal lord made the land or the value from it. And what his son, and the son's son, who inherited the status and the land?

ghufran_syed 6y ago

I love Terry Pratchett, but is there any evidence that this is true in our modern economy? As opposed to just being a cute story that reinforces our existing biases that "the rich get richer, the poor get poorer" which is demonstrably false over the past few hundred years? I bought a 7 yr old $8000 dollar car, that's still going strong 12 years later, if I'd bought a $40000 car, could I expect it to last 512= 60 years? And that's being generous and assuming a linear relationship. If we use the example from the book, spending 5 times as much should give me a car that lasts up to 10 times* as long, so 120 years!

tehjoker 6y ago
If you can deny the rise in inequality that is at this point obvious, the decimation and precarity of the lives of service workers and former manufacturing workers, the unhealthiness of what should be the most univerally gleaming and glittering society in the history of humanity, I don't know what to tell you.
nytgop77 6y ago
yes. if you have money you invest and get richer. poor might not get poorer, but for them it is problematic to save any significant amount. One example: buying a house vs renting it. (where I live amount for rent is approx the same as interest amount for mortgage). one who bought a house has a cushion (house is an asset) for retirement, one who always rented has to continue to rent.
sjtindell 6y ago
The Cost of Being Poor is a well known comparative study of the urban poor in Indiana, United States that addresses this directly. There have been numerous others. These are people who definitely could not get together the $8,000 for a 7 year old car in good condition, or get a loan at all besides a Payday one. They live paycheck to paycheck. The question is not just a quantitative one of the car cost, depreciation, years of use. It’s a qualitative one, as in quality of life. A poor person who can only afford to take the bus loses time sitting on a bus instead of grocery shopping, taking care of their kids, etc. and needs to exert mental energy to plan their day around bus rides and schedules. They generally “pay” in numerous ways besides the pure value of the vehicle vs. some other more expensive vehicle. Above all, they pay in mental bandwidth. They spend most of their mental energy worrying, planning, and stressing about being poor. That distinction can help clarify this argument a lot, and that old boot example doesn’t capture that.

treis 6y ago

This is a fun and often repeated quote, but bears little relation to the modern world. A nice pair of boots doesn't cost more than a months salary. They cost 2 days of labor at minimum wage and last for years.

ghaff 6y ago
A nice of pair of hiking books can be had for $100-$200. I can spend more than that and it may be worth it to do so for specialty purposes. But you can buy a pair of what may literally be the best custom 3-season hiking boots for ~$700. Are those a good buy? If you do a lot of hiking, yes. (Though they're big and heavy so I only wear them for some things.) In any case, they may be at best 10x of the cheapest pair of boots you can buy at Walmart, which are incredibly cheap footwear historically.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- unishark 6y ago
  Interestingly, the most expensive boots at places like Walmart are not for rich people but for working class people who need high quality since they wear them all day in their jobs doing construction or whatever.