4 ms·

Te actual example is pretty bad. And the general case doesn't actually hold up. You can get really decent pair of stable boots that can last many years for pre

Te actual example is pretty bad. And the general case doesn't actually hold up. You can get really decent pair of stable boots that can last many years for pretty reasonable price. The increase in quality compared to price of some super custom boots isn't actually sensable. 99% of what rich people buy is not of some massively superior quality. Specially in terms of clothing. Maybe some really good winter clothing is a exception, but even then layering is probably a better solution to stay warm. So really I don't buy this explanation unless people can give me some better examples.

joe_fishfish 4y ago
Housing. Being a homeowner and paying off a mortgage builds your wealth. Renting builds someone else’s.
- wil421 4y ago
  Not if you believe /personal finance or the like. Renting would mean you have loads of money to invest because you don’t have to repair your home.
  - waynesonfire 4y ago
    Yeah keep believing that. You sound like a poor person. You are paying to repair the house via your monthly rent payment that has it priced in.
    - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
      That's you who think like a poor person. For many people on this specific forum, house is not the main source of their wealth. It's their professional services and/or investments. The former benefits greatly from flexibility provided by renting.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
  Builds your wife's wealth)
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Nations with higher % of home ownership don't actually end up being wealthier or have lower rates of poverty. And if you have a nation where you have lots of apartments buildings, you can actually buy an apartment if you want. And even as a reasonably poor person you might be able to afford mortgage on a cheapish apartment. And even if you concede this example, housing is a special category and one the largest expanses. The whole 'boots' analogy suggest this is an everyday situation.
- graeber_28927 4y ago
  Buying a house also has a risk: what if your house gets flooded due to a broken pipe two months after you moved in? What if they tricked you and you learnt late that the communal garbage bins are stored under your kitchen window, and the property management doesn't let you move them? When you rent, moving is "cheap" and easy, in comparison. Also, taking on 30 years of debt is something, that mathematically might make sense, and many people handle it easily, but it's a huge mental burden to others. You take on the risk above, on the assumption that your income is stable for 30 years, but then you break your leg and get fired during corona. I don't have data on this, but 2/3 of the parents of my sister's classmates were divorced, so how do you smartly assume a stable family income for decades while not being naive about it? This is all for "poor" people, who can't afford the risks mentioned.
- glandium 4y ago
  If by the time you finish paying your mortgage, your home has a literal value of 0, you're not building wealth. This is not a hypothetical, it's like this in Japan. There are reasons to own a home, but wealth is not necessarily one.
Al-Khwarizmi 4y ago
It's from a novel in a fantasy setting. I don't think it's meant to literally reflect what happens with boots in the real world, it's meant to be a metaphor. It does happen quite literally in the real world with umbrellas, by the way. I live in a quite rainy area. Around 7 or 8 years ago I spent around €60 on a good Knirps umbrella, haven't needed another at the moment. When I bought cheaper umbrellas (not really due to skimping, but I didn't really know the good ones) they only lasted 1-2 years before totally breaking and becoming unusable.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Yes I understand that. But then what are the real world example, because non of the once provided are convincing.
  - waynesonfire 4y ago
    Maxing out your 401k, ibonds, HSA, mega backdoor Roth. Having extra money to buy the current market dip we are in.
    - panick21_ 4y ago
      > Maxing out your 401k That's a political choice made in the US not nothing inherent. And I don't have any idea what most of these other things are. And determining if something is a 'dip' is just stock speculation.
      - waynesonfire 4y ago
        > I don't have any idea what most of these other things are It's what a poor person would invests in. There is great truth in your comment. We are ignorant of opportunities available to those in higher classes. Tax tricks, off shore businesses, multi million dollar art collections. I have no idea how these things work but I guarantee you it helps wealthy people build more wealth through opportunities not available to the poor.
WhyIsItGlowing 4y ago
I've had it happen to me quite literally; I've had two pairs of cheap boots not even last a month before the soles detached. There's always a point of diminishing returns, but it doesn't really make much odds where that is if you've not got the money. If you've only got £20, it doesn't really matter that good long lasting boots can be bought for £50 not £300.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Ok but once we are admitting that you can get really good boots for £50 we are talking about a much smaller part of society. If you can buy one pair of shoos for £50 and it will last you for years, then the vast majority of society can afford it. Those that can't should be on social welfare and that should be a small % of the population. So the question really is how many % of you society requires welfare to live above the poverty level and how can you reduce that number. One can argue that this effect is real, but I don't think it works as an explanation for poverty.
P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
Can you explain something to me? An example is generally a way to solidify or convey an idea. Why do some people think that attacking the example somehow invalidates the idea? It's an excerpt from a fantasy book.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Yes, I can explain. Usually when you hear an example, even a bad one, you can easily in your head find many other examples. In this case however, not only is the example flawed. But also, most other things I can think of don't line up with this idea. Cars for example, a 2nd hand Prius from Toyota is more reliable then a BMW. Most clothing is costed based on style, not functionality. Public transit doesn't line up with this concept. Electronics don't really line up with this concept either. For food concept also doesn't really seem to work, more expensive food doesn't have better nutritional value. Beef and fancy wild rice isn't better for you then chicken and pasta. So when you use an example, making it a really good example is generally preferable. And boots I don't think are that great of an example. Specially because most richer people don't buy some fancy shoes and then wear them for years and years. So if your gone have a whole theory of wealth inequality, then I would hope some better examples exist, but so far I have been unable to think of any. Housing is the only one that might come close, but housing is always somewhat special and doesn't work that well.
  - chownie 4y ago
    Food is a perfect example, you've just pigeonholed your thought process to "expensive" meaning "higher perceived quality" but what about quantity? Let's imagine you're a poorer person with no access to a car. You can still buy the same beans and the same rice but you're paying corner store prices rather than supermarket and you can't buy in bulk because you can't transport the goods home. This is an example of poor people paying more despite having less and it's common.
    - panick21_ 4y ago
      Ok but to buy in levels bulk you need a car right? So what's cheaper, buying food in bulk while owning a car. Or buying food at the corner store while not owning a car? Not to mention that with a cheap second hand bicycle you should be able to reach the same super-market chain that most people drive to and pay the same prices. And you are also ignoring the storage issue. If you buy in bulk you just pay for the storage cost. The same goes for waste, the US has absurd levels of food waste. The reason, people buy in bulk don't consume it and throw it away. That what you get when you have a culture where people make big trips to big box stores. Also, what about infrastructure cost. How much infrastructure cost is between your house and that big box store, who pays for that? Also where do you park the car? Free street parking is clearly society subsidizing the rich, and should be abolished. How much does a garage cost? In your world the ideal society is one where everybody can drive to Cosco once a month and load a car full with ever possible thing? So you are complaining on the wrong level. People aren't poor because a corner store is slightly more expensive, they are poor because land use patterns for them and society into ineffective way off live.
bombcar 4y ago
Manufacturing has gotten substantially better even in the last thirty years - things that used to be absolute crap at the low end are usually good enough to be thrown out before they wear out. Two cases where it can still apply are toys (Lego lasts forever even if some pieces get lost/broken but damn is it spendy) and things like https://saddlebackleather.com/mens-leather-backpacks/ https://saddlebackleather.com/mens-leather-backpacks/ - I have one that has lasted 10+ years so far and none of the previous Walmart specials lasted more than three years. Could a middle ground be found? Sure. Another example these days might be energy related - if you’re “well off” you can afford to get a well insulated house with solar and such to offset future energy costs.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Talking about backpacks, its quite funny, like 12-14 years ago the local super-market Migros ran this promotion for a backpack, it was super cheap and an incredibly amount of people had them. I still see those quite often. Now it could be that the same model was sold later. I had mine for many years and used it daily. And to be honest I could have continued using it but we were rich enough that my mother simply bought another one. Cheap backpacks go for 30$, so even replacing them every 3 years isn't a bad deal compared to the 600$ backpack that lasts 10$+. > Another example these days might be energy related - if you’re “well off” you can afford to get a well insulated house with solar and such to offset future energy costs. The most effective way to reduce energy cost is to have a smaller living space and not drive a car. Also, instead of lots of heating, you can heat to lower home temperature and wear layers. Now for the really poor in cold climates heating is certainty an issue sometimes and state welfare should be provided for those that can't afford that.
ozozozd 4y ago
I am assuming you never heard of "I'm not rich enough to buy cheap shoes" or some variation of that and this doesn't intuitively make sense for you. And I hope this doesn't come off like I'm mansplaining or smartsplaining or whatever :) - Renting in San Francisco and New York. $$$ gets you way bigger and better places than $. It's not thrice the value. It's over 5x the value. This becomes very obvious as you move up the salary ladder. - To plagiarise a Reddit post on this exact topic (which the OP article was plagirising but...) "poor people can't buy in bulk, so they never get to enjoy the savings of Costco" - A whole cow costs less than the sum of the prices of its parts. Same applies to poultry and fish. Vegetables seem to have a linear price to amount ratio but that's largely priced in way earlier so it's kind of an illusion. There is no evil force at work. Simple economics really. - Economics of scale. This probably applies so widely that it's hard to overstate. e.g. Costco, better boot, whole cow. There are fixed costs to transport, customs, maintaining a store, sales people etc. Cheap stuff has to sacrifice quality so you come back more often - frequent enough to help with the fixed costs. - Money today > money tomorrow. Not sure if there is an economic principle behind this because it doesn't always hold, but everyone except banks believe it always holds. Maybe because we believe we can invest it real good, or we enjoy the security of it (unless you're better than banks at collecting and/or selling debt). E.g. rent in SF. It takes longer to find tenants for $$$ apartments. And landlords lose more money when they let $$$ apartments sit empty. So, they can't expect to charge 2x the rent for 2x the square footage. Usually 2x the rent offers >= 2x square footage AND more amenities. Apologies for errors. Had to write this on mobile.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Yes but you need to balance these things in the other direction. You are just listing all of the economics of scale, without any of the drawbacks. First of all about shoes. Yes, as I wrote in another post, some % of society can not even afford a decent pair of shoes, but those people should be on welfare. The question is, how do you make a society where this applies to very few people. > - Renting in San Francisco and New York. $$$ gets you way bigger and better places than $. That is questionable, location is the main benefit. Maybe in terms of space. But in terms of getting access to the local job market, local transportation system and access to the local market this isn't the case. > - A whole cow costs less than the sum of the prices of its parts. Yes, but unfortunately I can not store a whole cow in my apartment. Even the poorest people can usually buy a 5kg bag of rice or something like that. Going beyond that and buying a 100kg pack becomes unpractical. The reality is most middle class people don't shop at Costco. Specially in urban places this simply doesn't make sense. Most shopping is done at the closest local store, because that safes on time and money (and for lots of people gas). So the idea that rich people are rich because they can go to Cosco and buy 5 years worth of rice is nonsense. When I go to the shop I'm walking there, in and out and home within 20min flat. Sure if I had a car and if I had the storage space I could drive across town, to the mega store and buy in bulk but that's not actually practical and it also doesn't safe a huge amount of money. I do that once a year for my birthday party. > There is no evil force at work. Simple economics really. Yes but you are ignoring the reverse incentive. The need to own a car. The need for a big fridge and lots big storage space. You need a place to put your car, and society might finance that for you with free street parking (should be abolished) or you need to have a garage. Then you need to heat that space and on and on. And on a society level, you need to build stroads, you need to bring water and other services to those big box stores. You need to have lots and lots of policing for every Walmarket (2 police visits a day on average). Who pays for that? Local property taxes, that guess what you have to pay, and the garage that your car is in has to pay that too. There is a reason that in most cities in the world and historically most people walk to the closest convenient store that is often not owned by the largest cooperation in the world, but rather by some immigrant family. The Soivets built their whole society around micro-districts that had everything that you need in them. And among all the dumb shit they did, that actually did was the cost efficient way of doing things. When you think systematically about what actually cost money and how to account for those costs, and how you can structure a society so that the most amount of people people can live without government welfare, designing a system so that poor people can go to Cosco and buy 3 month worth of grocery to get economics of scale is the exact wrong solution. But that is exactly the pattern of development encouraged and promoted. Instead of complaining about all the individual issues, high taxes, high transportation cost, high housing cost, high cost for utilizes. These are the trees, but the forest here seems to be missed. The real economics of scale are in the density and the accessibility of your urban environment, not in the individual buying choice of each consumer. The idea that poor people are poor because a 50kg bag of rice cheaper per kg, then a 5kg bag of rice is wrong. They are poor because the land use pattern force them (and society) into a long term unhealthy, in-efficient and wasteful form of living. Do you get where I am coming from?
AnimalMuppet 4y ago
From an example that I watched: He just got out of prison. He had very little money. He bought a cheap car that kept breaking because he couldn't afford payments on a good one, but the repair bills kept costing him. He couldn't pay the car insurance six months in advance, so he had to pay month-by-month, which is more expensive. Those are the ones I remember, but it seems that there were others. It was literally more expensive for him to do things than it was for me to do the same things.

joe_fishfish 4y ago

Housing. Being a homeowner and paying off a mortgage builds your wealth. Renting builds someone else’s.

wil421 4y ago
Not if you believe /personal finance or the like. Renting would mean you have loads of money to invest because you don’t have to repair your home.
- waynesonfire 4y ago
  Yeah keep believing that. You sound like a poor person. You are paying to repair the house via your monthly rent payment that has it priced in.
  - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
    That's you who think like a poor person. For many people on this specific forum, house is not the main source of their wealth. It's their professional services and/or investments. The former benefits greatly from flexibility provided by renting.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
Builds your wife's wealth)
panick21_ 4y ago
Nations with higher % of home ownership don't actually end up being wealthier or have lower rates of poverty. And if you have a nation where you have lots of apartments buildings, you can actually buy an apartment if you want. And even as a reasonably poor person you might be able to afford mortgage on a cheapish apartment. And even if you concede this example, housing is a special category and one the largest expanses. The whole 'boots' analogy suggest this is an everyday situation.
graeber_28927 4y ago
Buying a house also has a risk: what if your house gets flooded due to a broken pipe two months after you moved in? What if they tricked you and you learnt late that the communal garbage bins are stored under your kitchen window, and the property management doesn't let you move them? When you rent, moving is "cheap" and easy, in comparison. Also, taking on 30 years of debt is something, that mathematically might make sense, and many people handle it easily, but it's a huge mental burden to others. You take on the risk above, on the assumption that your income is stable for 30 years, but then you break your leg and get fired during corona. I don't have data on this, but 2/3 of the parents of my sister's classmates were divorced, so how do you smartly assume a stable family income for decades while not being naive about it? This is all for "poor" people, who can't afford the risks mentioned.
glandium 4y ago
If by the time you finish paying your mortgage, your home has a literal value of 0, you're not building wealth. This is not a hypothetical, it's like this in Japan. There are reasons to own a home, but wealth is not necessarily one.

Al-Khwarizmi 4y ago

It's from a novel in a fantasy setting. I don't think it's meant to literally reflect what happens with boots in the real world, it's meant to be a metaphor. It does happen quite literally in the real world with umbrellas, by the way. I live in a quite rainy area. Around 7 or 8 years ago I spent around €60 on a good Knirps umbrella, haven't needed another at the moment. When I bought cheaper umbrellas (not really due to skimping, but I didn't really know the good ones) they only lasted 1-2 years before totally breaking and becoming unusable.

panick21_ 4y ago
Yes I understand that. But then what are the real world example, because non of the once provided are convincing.
- waynesonfire 4y ago
  Maxing out your 401k, ibonds, HSA, mega backdoor Roth. Having extra money to buy the current market dip we are in.
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    > Maxing out your 401k That's a political choice made in the US not nothing inherent. And I don't have any idea what most of these other things are. And determining if something is a 'dip' is just stock speculation.
    - waynesonfire 4y ago
      > I don't have any idea what most of these other things are It's what a poor person would invests in. There is great truth in your comment. We are ignorant of opportunities available to those in higher classes. Tax tricks, off shore businesses, multi million dollar art collections. I have no idea how these things work but I guarantee you it helps wealthy people build more wealth through opportunities not available to the poor.

WhyIsItGlowing 4y ago

I've had it happen to me quite literally; I've had two pairs of cheap boots not even last a month before the soles detached. There's always a point of diminishing returns, but it doesn't really make much odds where that is if you've not got the money. If you've only got £20, it doesn't really matter that good long lasting boots can be bought for £50 not £300.

panick21_ 4y ago
Ok but once we are admitting that you can get really good boots for £50 we are talking about a much smaller part of society. If you can buy one pair of shoos for £50 and it will last you for years, then the vast majority of society can afford it. Those that can't should be on social welfare and that should be a small % of the population. So the question really is how many % of you society requires welfare to live above the poverty level and how can you reduce that number. One can argue that this effect is real, but I don't think it works as an explanation for poverty.

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago

Can you explain something to me? An example is generally a way to solidify or convey an idea. Why do some people think that attacking the example somehow invalidates the idea? It's an excerpt from a fantasy book.

panick21_ 4y ago
Yes, I can explain. Usually when you hear an example, even a bad one, you can easily in your head find many other examples. In this case however, not only is the example flawed. But also, most other things I can think of don't line up with this idea. Cars for example, a 2nd hand Prius from Toyota is more reliable then a BMW. Most clothing is costed based on style, not functionality. Public transit doesn't line up with this concept. Electronics don't really line up with this concept either. For food concept also doesn't really seem to work, more expensive food doesn't have better nutritional value. Beef and fancy wild rice isn't better for you then chicken and pasta. So when you use an example, making it a really good example is generally preferable. And boots I don't think are that great of an example. Specially because most richer people don't buy some fancy shoes and then wear them for years and years. So if your gone have a whole theory of wealth inequality, then I would hope some better examples exist, but so far I have been unable to think of any. Housing is the only one that might come close, but housing is always somewhat special and doesn't work that well.
- chownie 4y ago
  Food is a perfect example, you've just pigeonholed your thought process to "expensive" meaning "higher perceived quality" but what about quantity? Let's imagine you're a poorer person with no access to a car. You can still buy the same beans and the same rice but you're paying corner store prices rather than supermarket and you can't buy in bulk because you can't transport the goods home. This is an example of poor people paying more despite having less and it's common.
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    Ok but to buy in levels bulk you need a car right? So what's cheaper, buying food in bulk while owning a car. Or buying food at the corner store while not owning a car? Not to mention that with a cheap second hand bicycle you should be able to reach the same super-market chain that most people drive to and pay the same prices. And you are also ignoring the storage issue. If you buy in bulk you just pay for the storage cost. The same goes for waste, the US has absurd levels of food waste. The reason, people buy in bulk don't consume it and throw it away. That what you get when you have a culture where people make big trips to big box stores. Also, what about infrastructure cost. How much infrastructure cost is between your house and that big box store, who pays for that? Also where do you park the car? Free street parking is clearly society subsidizing the rich, and should be abolished. How much does a garage cost? In your world the ideal society is one where everybody can drive to Cosco once a month and load a car full with ever possible thing? So you are complaining on the wrong level. People aren't poor because a corner store is slightly more expensive, they are poor because land use patterns for them and society into ineffective way off live.

bombcar 4y ago

Manufacturing has gotten substantially better even in the last thirty years - things that used to be absolute crap at the low end are usually good enough to be thrown out before they wear out. Two cases where it can still apply are toys (Lego lasts forever even if some pieces get lost/broken but damn is it spendy) and things like https://saddlebackleather.com/mens-leather-backpacks/ https://saddlebackleather.com/mens-leather-backpacks/ - I have one that has lasted 10+ years so far and none of the previous Walmart specials lasted more than three years. Could a middle ground be found? Sure. Another example these days might be energy related - if you’re “well off” you can afford to get a well insulated house with solar and such to offset future energy costs.

panick21_ 4y ago
Talking about backpacks, its quite funny, like 12-14 years ago the local super-market Migros ran this promotion for a backpack, it was super cheap and an incredibly amount of people had them. I still see those quite often. Now it could be that the same model was sold later. I had mine for many years and used it daily. And to be honest I could have continued using it but we were rich enough that my mother simply bought another one. Cheap backpacks go for 30$, so even replacing them every 3 years isn't a bad deal compared to the 600$ backpack that lasts 10$+. > Another example these days might be energy related - if you’re “well off” you can afford to get a well insulated house with solar and such to offset future energy costs. The most effective way to reduce energy cost is to have a smaller living space and not drive a car. Also, instead of lots of heating, you can heat to lower home temperature and wear layers. Now for the really poor in cold climates heating is certainty an issue sometimes and state welfare should be provided for those that can't afford that.

ozozozd 4y ago

I am assuming you never heard of "I'm not rich enough to buy cheap shoes" or some variation of that and this doesn't intuitively make sense for you. And I hope this doesn't come off like I'm mansplaining or smartsplaining or whatever :) - Renting in San Francisco and New York. $$$ gets you way bigger and better places than $. It's not thrice the value. It's over 5x the value. This becomes very obvious as you move up the salary ladder. - To plagiarise a Reddit post on this exact topic (which the OP article was plagirising but...) "poor people can't buy in bulk, so they never get to enjoy the savings of Costco" - A whole cow costs less than the sum of the prices of its parts. Same applies to poultry and fish. Vegetables seem to have a linear price to amount ratio but that's largely priced in way earlier so it's kind of an illusion. There is no evil force at work. Simple economics really. - Economics of scale. This probably applies so widely that it's hard to overstate. e.g. Costco, better boot, whole cow. There are fixed costs to transport, customs, maintaining a store, sales people etc. Cheap stuff has to sacrifice quality so you come back more often - frequent enough to help with the fixed costs. - Money today > money tomorrow. Not sure if there is an economic principle behind this because it doesn't always hold, but everyone except banks believe it always holds. Maybe because we believe we can invest it real good, or we enjoy the security of it (unless you're better than banks at collecting and/or selling debt). E.g. rent in SF. It takes longer to find tenants for $$$ apartments. And landlords lose more money when they let $$$ apartments sit empty. So, they can't expect to charge 2x the rent for 2x the square footage. Usually 2x the rent offers >= 2x square footage AND more amenities. Apologies for errors. Had to write this on mobile.

panick21_ 4y ago
Yes but you need to balance these things in the other direction. You are just listing all of the economics of scale, without any of the drawbacks. First of all about shoes. Yes, as I wrote in another post, some % of society can not even afford a decent pair of shoes, but those people should be on welfare. The question is, how do you make a society where this applies to very few people. > - Renting in San Francisco and New York. $$$ gets you way bigger and better places than $. That is questionable, location is the main benefit. Maybe in terms of space. But in terms of getting access to the local job market, local transportation system and access to the local market this isn't the case. > - A whole cow costs less than the sum of the prices of its parts. Yes, but unfortunately I can not store a whole cow in my apartment. Even the poorest people can usually buy a 5kg bag of rice or something like that. Going beyond that and buying a 100kg pack becomes unpractical. The reality is most middle class people don't shop at Costco. Specially in urban places this simply doesn't make sense. Most shopping is done at the closest local store, because that safes on time and money (and for lots of people gas). So the idea that rich people are rich because they can go to Cosco and buy 5 years worth of rice is nonsense. When I go to the shop I'm walking there, in and out and home within 20min flat. Sure if I had a car and if I had the storage space I could drive across town, to the mega store and buy in bulk but that's not actually practical and it also doesn't safe a huge amount of money. I do that once a year for my birthday party. > There is no evil force at work. Simple economics really. Yes but you are ignoring the reverse incentive. The need to own a car. The need for a big fridge and lots big storage space. You need a place to put your car, and society might finance that for you with free street parking (should be abolished) or you need to have a garage. Then you need to heat that space and on and on. And on a society level, you need to build stroads, you need to bring water and other services to those big box stores. You need to have lots and lots of policing for every Walmarket (2 police visits a day on average). Who pays for that? Local property taxes, that guess what you have to pay, and the garage that your car is in has to pay that too. There is a reason that in most cities in the world and historically most people walk to the closest convenient store that is often not owned by the largest cooperation in the world, but rather by some immigrant family. The Soivets built their whole society around micro-districts that had everything that you need in them. And among all the dumb shit they did, that actually did was the cost efficient way of doing things. When you think systematically about what actually cost money and how to account for those costs, and how you can structure a society so that the most amount of people people can live without government welfare, designing a system so that poor people can go to Cosco and buy 3 month worth of grocery to get economics of scale is the exact wrong solution. But that is exactly the pattern of development encouraged and promoted. Instead of complaining about all the individual issues, high taxes, high transportation cost, high housing cost, high cost for utilizes. These are the trees, but the forest here seems to be missed. The real economics of scale are in the density and the accessibility of your urban environment, not in the individual buying choice of each consumer. The idea that poor people are poor because a 50kg bag of rice cheaper per kg, then a 5kg bag of rice is wrong. They are poor because the land use pattern force them (and society) into a long term unhealthy, in-efficient and wasteful form of living. Do you get where I am coming from?

AnimalMuppet 4y ago

From an example that I watched: He just got out of prison. He had very little money. He bought a cheap car that kept breaking because he couldn't afford payments on a good one, but the repair bills kept costing him. He couldn't pay the car insurance six months in advance, so he had to pay month-by-month, which is more expensive. Those are the ones I remember, but it seems that there were others. It was literally more expensive for him to do things than it was for me to do the same things.