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I will never waste an opportunity to share my favorite quote from my favorite fantasy series, the Discworld: “The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reas
by dstick 5y ago
I will never waste an opportunity to share my favorite quote from my favorite fantasy series, the Discworld:
“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.
- blfr 5y agoIt's not true though, not any more at least. A supermarket pair of shoes is much, much less than even resoling of quality shoes. It's definitely cheaper to just wear them for a season or two instead of buying shoes that might last you a decade or two or more but cost 8-20x more and require expensive (in terms of cheaper shoes) fixes.
- cauliflower2718 5y agoBack in the day, I used to spend ~$20 for a pair of rainboots, and they would invariably leak within a year. This stopped happening when I bought ~$50-$100 rain boots, which are certainly not grocery store boots. A $50-$100 pair of rain boots isn't exactly top quality, but is still much better than a $20 pair.
- scyzoryk_xyz 5y agoOh you’re talking about the level of quality leveling off at a certain point when increasing price. The quality difference between a $10 product and a $100 product of the same type is enormous. But then when you go up to $200 the quality increases much less. There is a name for this that I can’t recall right this second, the point being that there is a sweet spot price/quality wise for most things.
- aceki 5y agoYou're thinking of the Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns
- cuu508 5y ago"sweet spot", "the point of diminishing returns"
- amanaplanacanal 5y agoWhen it comes to clothing, a lot of people pay extra for specific brands, especially if the tag is on the outside so that other people can see it. Best not to do that if you are looking for good value.
- Bootvis 5y agoMaybe not for boots but what about housing?
- nomorewords 5y agoYeah, the above comment kind of stuck to the analogy item of shoes. A lot of the things that are quality and are worth it (from a long-term POV) are going to be better value than getting the lower quality item more often, than the one time purchase. Housing is also getting pretty bad. Essentially, the lower your income, the more you are expected to pay back to the bank since you can only put aside so much money for the mortgage each month. A well-off person will pay his house as much as 2-3x faster than a 'poor' person, essentially allowing him to invest for the future at a much earlier stage in life.
- viraptor 5y agoThere are also extras that come with the home. The better house you buy, the less you spend on heating/cooling. The more you can invest in solar panels / batteries, the less you spend on electricity. The bigger house you get, the more space you can use for buying bulk items. The more exclusive area you live in, the lower the insurance. And many others...
- WalterBright 5y agoOn the other hand, mortgage interest is often the cheapest way to borrow money. A savvy wealthier homeowner may very deliberately minimize paying back the mortgage in order to invest the borrowed funds elsewhere. Mortgage interest is also tax-deductible, while personal loan interest is not. This makes the mortgage the last debt to pay off, not the first.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago> Mortgage interest is also tax-deductible, while personal loan interest is not This does not affect 80%+ people, who are better off with standard deductions since 2017 tax cuts and jobs act. In 2018, 87% did not itemize. https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-tax-stats-at-a-glance https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-tax-stats-at-a-...
- kylegordon 5y agoIt's an analogy, not a shoe review.
- blfr 5y agoSure but mass production has made it true for virtually all mass produced goods.
- dstick 5y agoPlease note that this is a quote from a fantasy world that is a disc, that rests on the back of 4 elephants, that stand on the back of a turtle that's swimming through space. Take the specifics with a grain of salt ;-)
- Dah00n 5y agoSounds less messed up than this world..
- foobar33333 5y agoThis quote no longer applies. With buy now pay later schemes, its trivial for anyone to buy the nice boots and then pay them off over 2 years of affordable payments. Of course in reality these schemes are traps to get poor people to overspend, but the issue is not that they are physically unable to buy long lasting items, but that the system is constantly trying to trick them in to failing.
- tubularhells 5y agoYou are an idiot
- nomorewords 5y agoDoesn't it? Although there are no-interest loans (for a promotional period at least), you are most likely going to pay more than what the price tag says since the bank wants to make a buck too. So the poor people end up spending more again. I do agree that it is a better scenario than having to always buy the lesser quality item, but you still are paying the 'poverty tax'
- redisman 5y agoLooking up the biggest(?) online player in the space: "We offer payments at a rate between 0–30% APR based on customers' credit." There it is. Barely hidden by more advanced financing.
- foobar33333 5y agoI'm not sure what the global scene is like but in Australia "After Pay" has taken over, they charge the fees to the retailer and ban passing them on directly so the system is subsidized by everyone.
- Broken_Hippo 5y agoThose "buy now, pay later" schemes aren't really available to poor folks in the same way, not the least of which because you are more likely to have bad credit, often because you owe things like utilities (maybe you moved and the old company still wants money) and medical bills. When they are available, it is never really for things like shoes or the specialty-sized bra you really need that they do not sell at Wal-mart or a non-specialty store (I spent over $100 for my last one, and had to order in the US or wear something that didn't fit). Instead, they'll lease you furniture, refrigerators, and stoves with the promise that you'll own it some day (and honestly, for washer/dryers, this might be the intelligent choice as it is cheaper than the pay laundry if you have a family). They'll give you a car loan for a bad car, too. Buy now pay later schemes aren't even worth it if you are financially insecure: I'd have never done this with my ex, for example, even if I knew that on paper, we might have the money. My ex, you see, is my ex for a reason, and part of that reason was money simply going missing, sometimes meaning that I couldn't buy more food or be afraid of running out of gas. Poverty - on paper - is like this.
- kstenerud 5y agoThe responses to this comment pretty much sum up the wealthy person's understanding of the daily struggles of the poor.
- Elinvynia 5y ago"Hacker" is pretty much synonymous with ruthless capitalist these days.
- quickthrower2 5y agoBoot longevity has nothing to do being rich (let’s say that rich means being a 5 millionaire). The rich are rich because they played the game somehow and won, or maybe their parents did. That simple.
- bruce343434 5y agoIt's still largely a game of chance
- DanBC 5y agoThe story is to illustrate why poor people stay poor, not how rich people got rich.
- DoomHotel 5y agoSam Vimes's $10 boots have become the 800 dollar cars in that article. But cars are optional if you live somewhere with working mass transportation.
- projectileboy 5y agoIt’s cliche, but it’s nonetheless true that it’s very expensive to be poor.
- pontifier 5y agoHomes are the new boots. I buy cheap hotdogs for meat, and cheap cars that I drive into the ground to get my money's worth out of them, but I can't afford to pay rent. I've been almost homeless for the last year. But, I just bought a house a few days ago. I bought it super cheap, and it needs a lot of work that I'm doing myself. I still can't afford to pay rent, not because I couldn't, but because it's a waste of money. I didn't think twice about buying this house because it was a fantastic deal. 5 years from now I will have spent less than someone that is still one payment away from being evicted if they miss a rent payment.
- enimodas 5y agoIs having roommates not common where you live?